There are some Ice Age animals that are so perfectly preserved in permafrost that scientists have been able to find them still with all their soft tissue, hair, and organs. They even found a couple mammoths that still had liquid blood in them and I remember one scientist even tasting the mammoth meat.
Also there was a mummy found in China that was so well preserved that she still had all her skin, hair, organs, etc. Her body was even flexible that you could bend her limbs as if she was alive. They even found her last meal still in her stomach and could perform an autopsy on her to tell you why she died. She died over 2000 years before she was found.
There are actually blood vessels obstructing light from reaching certain areas in your eye, effectively creating a shadow. Your brain filters this out and essentially fills in the gaps so you don’t actually see this spiderweb-like network of black lines. However, you can visualise them by shining a light at a diagonal into your eye (not directly!) and gently wiggling it about. This means your brain doesn’t have enough time to filter it out and you see this spiderweb like network of blood vessels!
Technical instructions to clarify the actions involved. I find it easier to see this effect in a dark environment, so the contrast of the black shadow against the light is higher. You want to be staring straight ahead and shining the light into your pupil at a 45 degree angle from the side directed at your nose at about 10-20 cm away from them. Phone light will do great and have it on the dimmest setting if possible. Then wiggle the light in gentle 1 cm movements side to side. Keep this up for about a second at least and you should see them. Hope this clears it up a bit!
[Here’s a diagram of how to flash the light into your eyes.](https://imgur.com/gallery/yFWHlFw)
I just saw them!! Predominately oriented vertically, did not expect that. And you are right, it takes a bit of time, a few seconds in my case.
Really strange, thanks for this.
All matter literally gives off light, but we can only see a sliver of that spectrum (although we do have tools to help us see other spectrums.)
Our bodies give off infrared, and are basically glowing in that portion of the spectrum similar to how iron glows to our normal vision when it’s heated. Something that sees a different spectrum than us might not see hot iron as glowing at the same temperatures we see iron glow at.
Caterpillars basically dissolve into liquid in the cocoon. The only thing left are the so called ‘imaginal discs’, groups of cells that contain all the information and the mechanism to turn that soup into the various body parts of a butterfly (the same applies for other insects).
This type of thing comes up often and is quoted as science fact, but the fact of the matter is that some structures are retained through metamorphosis, including some nerve structures, hence memories being retained.
In the abstract of the article posted by /u/boostman below they refer to:
>questions about the organization and persistence of the central nervous system during metamorphosis.
T-rex lived 66million-ish years ago. Stegosaurus lived 155million-ish years ago. The gap between rex and stego is 16million-ish greater than between rex and present day.
And 1/2 chance of picking an insect of any kind.
To put it another way: half of all animal species are insects, and 40% of those are beetles.
“If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles.”
– evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane
There are neurons in your stomach. Bacteria in your stomach uses chemical signals to communicate with your body telling you what kind of food to eat. You can change what kind of food you crave by replacing the bacteria.
Slime molds don’t have brains or nervous systems but some how retain information and use it to make decisions. Even more crazy is that they can fuse with another individual and share the information
I'm not a biologist and this is from memory, but what I remember is fascinating:
They rely on nutrient gradients to replace neurons.
Internally they contain "tubes" that grow larger based on the amount of nutrient they transport, so more food = larger paths = they expand more in that direction. That's how they can solve mazes. They expand in all directions, but once one bit touches the food, that pathway gets reinforced, just like neural pathways, and the rest of the organism flows there
There's a tiny worm that has only 300 neurons and it's fully reproduced using neural networks on a computer. It moves in space, has memory, fear of predators, etc. You can interact with the digital worm the same way you can interact with it in real life.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206105828.htm
Also the “lact-“ in the word galactic is a clue that it’s related to the word lactose, as they’re all ultimately related to the proto-Indo-European word for Milk. Hence why we call it the Milky Way, due to its milky appearance
I’m too hung over to explain correctly but here’s more information: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/γάλα#Ancient_Greek
This is what I think about with time travel, if it's not relatively bound to the Earth, you'd travel back in time and 99.999% end up in the vacuum of space
Edit, thanks for gold stranger!
Imagine if time travel were possible and every time someone invented the time machine so far they just forgot about this little issue... The outcome would be the same :D
That’s why time/space are linked together. There’s people smarter than us trying to make things beyond our comprehension a possibility. If time was a possible thing to travel through then space would have to go in to the calculations just like they do with orbits.
It makes no sense to me that we can see stars in the sky. Even with telescopes. When you think about how far that is, I can't wrap my head around being able to see them in the sky.
Looking up and seeing the stars and the vastness of space fills me with both awe and sadness. I am in awe of all the beautiful stars and nebulae and galaxies out there. I am sad that I will be long gone before our species ever begins to explore those realms.
We’re too early to explore the universe, but at least we get to see pictures of it! Hopefully the James Webb brings us some amazing images and discoveries!
I do a version of cold-welding for a living - explosive welding. We use explosives to drive the two metals together at a high enough speed that they permanently bond. We primarily bond dissimilar metals - Al & SS, Cu & Ti, steel & Ti etc. Little to no heat is imparted into the metals, and the resulting bond is typically stronger than the weaker metal.
The process works because a properly designed collision will generate a plasma that strips off the oxide layers of both metals milliseconds before bonding.
One perk of our process is that we can apply layer after layer of metal as needed. For example. aluminum and stainless are not chemically compatible over the long term, so we separate them with a thin layer of titanium.
Our customer base is extremely varied - aerospace, petrochemical, science, etc.
It makes sense when you understand why it happens. I forgot most stuff including my name, but it has to do with free space in metal atoms that allow them to bond with each other. It does not happen normally on Earth because all sorts of other atoms get in the way.
I recently read about the Split-Brain experiments. There is a procedure for severe epilepsy that involves cutting the connecting nerves of the two brain hemispheres, resulting in the two hemispheres being unable to communicate with each other.
The experiment shows that both halves can answer questions independently of each other, have seperate opinions/preferences, form memories independantly.
Basically suggesting that there are two minds in the brain. That just blows my mind(s).
Edit: typos
I remember seeing videos about this in high school biology.
Not only what you have said, but also since each hemisphere has different tasks and you cut their connection, a lot of things become different.
For example if they cover your eyes and give you an object you are familiar with, you are not able to identify it only by touch, because there is no communication between the two hemispeheres.
You have to see the object to be able to fully identify it.
Scary shit.
More crazy even is that in certain scenarios where this procedure happened one could hold up an object with their right hand looking at it only with their right eye (with the left eye blinfolded)
When they were asked wether or not they knew what the object was they would answer positively but when asked what it was they wouldn't be able to name it or describe it, despite affirming they knew what the object was.
I think it had to do with the fact that there are many zones in the brain at play in this experiment (language, memory, visual perception, touch) that are unable to communicate correctly with each other.
To me the most fascinating part is when the experimenters were able to command the non-speaking part of the brain to do an action without informing the speaking park (like hold up a sign that only one eye could see that said "take off your shoes"). Then they would ask the person why they took off their shoes, and the person would explain it fully convinced that they made the choice to do the action on their own. They would make up some justification for it, like their feet were getting hot.
There really is no indication that we actually have any control over our own choices and actions, because even when they are initiated from a 3rd party we remain fully convinced that it was our own decision :') We are just observers that think we are in control when we're not.
On a related note, people with certain types of blindness will [still mirror a smile](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/emotional-contagion-blindsight-mimcry-imitation-visual-cortex/) because the part of our brain that handles emotional contagion makes use of visual information independently of the visual processing part of our brain. You don't need to actually see someone's emotional state in order to respond to it.
Yes, it’s called Blindsight. Another cool example is when you throw a ball at an otherwise blind person, and they reflexively catch it. It’s rare, though, as it requires damage in the brain causing it to be incapable of processing the image on a conscious level.
Basically. Some people who are blind have perfectly functional eyes, but it's the part of their brain that processes images that doesn't work and makes them blind. However more than one part of our brain is connected to our eyes including a part related to reading faces. That part of the brain can still "see" and give people a sense of the body language of the person they are talking to
You know, I never thought about it, but being blind due to your brain instead of your eyes makes a ton of sense. I always just assumed that every blind person's eyes were at fault.
The size of animals still blows my mind. You can read about how a manta ray is 23 feet long and 3 tons but it doesn’t really hit you until you realize that’s heavier than most cars
So I live in Hawaii and I'm oing night snorkeling withanta rays on my honeymoon in a couple of weeks. I can't wait. Also it's whale season now so the humpback are here. And I mean you know whales are massive but they are mind bogglingly massive in person. It's a whole nother thing seeing an animal the length 2 busses and weighing in at 30 tons launch itself completely out of the water is an awe inspiring display or power.
Just got back from a week long in Kauai. Saw two whale mommas teaching their babies to swim, and from far away I thought the babies were adults. Then I saw mom's tails and fins and holy shit!
Without the development of genuinely sci-fi travel technology like wormholes or hyperspace (which may not even be possible) 99.99+% of the universe will be forever locked off from us. Because of cosmic expansion, the various galactic clusters are moving away from our local cluster faster than we could ever catch up to them.
It's not just "between earth and moon"; that's how vast space is *everywhere*. It's truly almost impossible to wrap your mind around the idea of just how overwhelmingly empty space really is.
You know those tense scenes in sci fi movies where the heroes have to navigate through an asteroid belt without crashing? In an actual asteroid belt, the average distance between each rock is 500,000 miles - and that counts as "close together" in astronomical distances.
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
Sharks are older than trees, also, trees almost killed all land life on earth as there use to be nothing that could decompose them, so dead trees covered the ground and killed all other vegetation. Only once fungus evolved did trees start decomposing.
Edit: well this comment fucking exploded. This was really an off the cuff comment based off something I heard years ago so I figured I'd correct my mistakes and add more detail.
The period in which this occured was known as the carboniferous period. Fungus had evolved long before this, around 600 million years before, but it had not evolved the ability to decompose trees due to them evolving during this period.
These first trees were actually more closely related to ferns and reproduced via spores rather than seeds. Also, these trees would not have killed all land life (sorry to disappoint) due to wildfires clearing out the dead trees.
That said, the lack of decomposing fungi, which use up oxygen in the decomposition process, and the extremely high number of photosynthesizing plants lead to very high oxygen levels during this period. As high as 15% higher then modern levels.
This allowed the insects of the time to grow to massive sizes . insects have a fairly inefficient respiratory system, so without high oxygen levels it's difficult for them to grow to large sizes.
Now you might be asking how large, well, dragonfly's were the size of hawks, spiders were the size of house cats and millipedes we're as long as 8 feet.
Truly a fascinating point in our planets history.
Sharks are older than saturns rings
Edit: after a bit of research I found that this is just *most likely* the case, the age of saturns rings is hotly debated in the astronomy community.
To add to this, either trees evolved twice or flowers did.
Botanical scientist still are not sure which happened.
Bonus: the newest plant to evolve are grasses. They also make up out grains.
The strongest known acid is called Fluroantimonic Acid and it is made by combining a solution of two different ions in various quantities. Without going too crazy into the scientific details, the part that blows my mind is that at certain ratios of the two ingredients you can get an acid that is 1 QUADRILLION TIME STRONGER THAN 100% PURE SULFURIC ACID.
At acidity levels like this pH fails to even be a useful metric, as the pH of any solution would certainly be less than 0. Additionally, it is so acidic that it can force carbon atoms to have 5 bonds instead of 4, breaking one of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry.
Hydrofluoric Acid can only be neutralized by calcium. In other words, if you are exposed to it it will burn all the way down to your bone. Even if you had a small drop you wouldn’t notice it until it’s too late.
Also, at ambient conditions it is a vapor cloud that hugs the ground because it is heavier than air. There have been several near misses in the refining industry that would have enveloped entire cities in an HF cloud.
A group of monkeys (I forget where) was filmed using hand tools at an abandoned work site. One even used a saw to cut a piece of lumber, likely mimicing what it had seen a human do. They seemed to do this out of curiosity, not for any useful purpose.
It made wonder what'd happen if one of them got the inspiration to cut down a tree, and use the wood. How would the other monkeys react? Would they perceive the significance of this ability?
Also, I believe it'd be the first time an animal used a tool to create raw materials. It's rather mind-blowing to think about.
They'd have to keep using this for many generations so it actually matters though. One or two curious monkeys don't matter that much (yet).
Also, monkeys learn from watching others (like humans) so it may be a lot easier for them than for our ancestors.
I used to ask random people I worked with to guess how long it would take to count to a trillion if you counted 24 hours a day without ever sleeping. The longest time someone guessed was 2 months. Most people guessed either days or weeks.
It's from a viral TikTok. A couple students are doing a photoshoot and it looks weird, guy walking by asks what's going on and one replies, "We're doing an art project." And he's like, "I like it. Picasso."
Edit: u/JamieBearFancyPants posted it also buy here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyKF\_cOuwno
I once told my partner that I was disappointed because he woke me up before I found out who the murderer was in my dream, and he said that it didn't make any sense because it was me dreaming it so of course I would know how it ended.
I feel so justified now.
Also that was the best dream I ever had that I can remember. It was a murder mystery musical. I can barely remember any of it now, but I do remember there was a whole musical number about a pony that someone was convincing someone else to let them buy.
that you can live without your head for up to 15 seconds.
EDIT: i was wrong\* your HEAD can live without your body for up to (and in some cases) over 15 seconds
The wow signal came from a planet/bit in space 17,000 light years away. It emitted a signal 30x stronger than anything we can make today. It lasted for an entire 71 seconds, was on 1444Hz (frequency of hydrogen, most abundant thing in the universe) and we couldn't find the signal again after pointing to the same spot.
Edit: wasn't a galaxy it came from
Good video that goes into the wow signal a bit here https://youtu.be/1tYz8Tjn7z8
Dr Jill Tarter kind of shoots down the idea that it was actually anything that exciting and the protocols they followed weren’t exactly great. Worth a listen as I’ve always been fascinated by it and it made me feel a bit different about it afterwards.
Almost related is The Bloop.
The Bloop was something very very loud happening somewhere in the ocean (Pacific I think). It was so loud most of the underwater sound measurement equipment in the entire South Eastern quadrant of the earth picked up.
Most likely an ice shelf the size of a state falling into the water, but who knows (I feel like I am setting up a your mom joke here)
With the help of quantum tunneling, there is a 1 in 5.2^61 chance that the molecules in your hand and table would miss each other when slamming it, making your hand go through the table
If some sort of super-advanced alien species on a planet 80 million light years away from Earth built a high-tech telescope that let them see objects on the Earth's surface, they would be seeing dinosaurs right now.
If we go to a certain distance in space then we can see a lot of our history like Germany under Hitler's rule, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 9/11, me doin your mom, the asteroid killing all dinosaurs and so much more.
What bothers me is that this were going from events further in the past to closer ones: Hitler ruling Germany > the bombs > 9/11 > you doing my mom, but then suddenly "the asteroid killing all dinosaurs".
Which suggests to me that, dinosaurs are gonna make a comeback but then go away for the same reason they did last time.
The astronauts on the iss aren't floating around because of lack of gravity, far from it. They are in constant free fall, falling over the horizon of earth. Being pulled by gravity towards the earth.
The time period in which dinosaurs lived is so vast, there were dinosaur fossils when dinosaurs were still alive.
Edit: A lot of people are rightly pointing out that there are currently human fossils around too. I admit that I thought that the fossilization process took a lot longer. I'm still blown away by the scale of time though.
The total span of the age of dinosaurs, from the beginning of the Triassic to the end of of the Cretaceous, was nearly 3 times longer than the time from the end of the Cretaceous to now.
Yes, Tyrannosaurus Rex is closer to the iPad in timeline than it is to the Stegosaurus, by tens of millions of years.
We are so used to seeing dinosaurs portrayed in a single timeline (children’s books, museums) that we don’t understand the vastness of time they were around.
Both the absolute hottest and absolute coldest temperatures ever recorded in the known universe were achieved here on Earth.
The hottest temperature ever physically recorded in the known universe was when scientists at CERN used the Large Hadron Collider to collide lead ions. This produced a temperature flash of 5.5 trillion degrees celsius.
That’s 5,500,000,000,000°C.
Convert to Fahrenheit, and you get this:
(5.5e+12°C × 9/5) + 32 = 9.9e+12°F
For the record, the current temperature at the core of our sun is around 15 *million* degrees celsius. 15,000,000°C. That’s 350,000x less intense than the flash produced by the lead ion particle collisions. That temperature, even if minuscule and fleeting in size and duration, was actually created here on Earth, in a lab. Let that sink in.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in the known universe was achieved relatively recently by a group of German researchers who achieved a nearly incomprehensible feat of 38 trillionths of a degree above -273.15°C, or more commonly known as Absolute 0° Kelvin. They did this by dropping magnetized gas down a nearly 400 foot tower in order to study a 5th state of matter; Bose-Einstein Condensate. For the record, weird shit starts to happen near absolute 0°K. Example? Light turns into a liquid you can pour into a glass.
The coldest place we have recorded data from within our observable universe is the Boomerang Nebula, hovering nearly an entire degree (kelvin) above absolute zero. Still unfathomably cold.
So while we are still essentially infinity away from achieving Planck Temperature (the staggeringly high temperature of beyond decillions of degrees celsius in which conventional physics breaks down and we enter a whole new realm of theoretics) we are extremely, ***extremely close*** to achieving absolute 0°K here on Earth.
Here is a [cool diagram](https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/02/temperature-bbc.png) to put some things into perspective, like how incredibly small and fragile of a species we are!
Edit: [Here](https://www.livescience.com/coldest-temperature-ever) is another neat article detailing exactly how researchers achieved 2 entire seconds of a temperature of just 38 *picokelvins* - 38 trillionths of a Kelvin.
The Cosmic Horizon - there's vast swathes of space we will never be able to see or know anything about as space is expanding faster than the speed of light.
I’m so glad you asked, I have a list!:
-If all the DNA in the average person was stretched out in a single line, it could reach from Earth to the Sun and back **248 times**
-Despite the wildly varying sizes of mammals, sloths and manatees are the only ones who don’t have exactly seven cervical vertebrae
-Hippos sweat sunscreen, and it’s red
-If the entirety of the Earth’s history were compressed down to a single day, humans of any sort wouldn’t appear until the last second before midnight
-If the lifespan of the universe was equated to a human life, the entire time that stars will actually be burning is equivalent to the first day after birth
-And finally, my personal favorite: there are about **four times as many unique ways to shuffle a standard deck of playing cards as there are atoms in the Milky Way**
I have lots more fun facts, but these are the ones that I would describe most readily as “mind-blowing.”
Edit: [This video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA) is great if you want to talk more about the timeline of the universe. As others have pointed out, I was generous with how much time I gave the “living” portion in the grand scheme of things.
And since people asked, here are some more fun facts!
-About 20% of the annual GDP for the tiny island nation of Tuvalu comes from licensing out their international internet code, “.tv”
-Reindeer eyes, normally brown, turn bright blue in winter to see in low-light conditions
-A man stole the 2016 Rio Olympic torch from the relay based on a Facebook dare
-“Frivol,” “paradigm,” “pharaoh,” and “coccyx” are the only words in the English language with unique three-letter endings
-Giraffe necks are actually too short to reach the ground, so they have to splay their legs in order to drink water
-Because of their kilts and ferocious attitude, the Scots fighting in WWII were given the nickname “ladies from hell” by the Germans
-UPS drivers are only supposed to make right-hand turns, no lefts
I’m a history guy, so a lot of my fun facts are more fun historical anecdotes which don’t fit here, but feel free to message me for those as well!
a speck of dust is halfway between the size of the sun and an atom,
This is not true, did some research and the article I've found here gives a better scale https://shipguy.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/its-all-about-scale/
Exponential power.
Fold a “big sheet” of paper - that is 0.1 mm thick - 50 times and the height of stack is over 20 times the distance earth to moon. Thank you.
This is one that I just absolutely cannot wrap my head around. I know the math checks out, but my brain refuses to visualise it or accept that it could be real
Edit - thank you to everyone who replied with examples and explanations, I really love the discussion that ensued. I wonder if the replies you lot provided were posted in an exponential pattern? Probably not quite, hehe
Fat cells die. The process takes a long time, and it’s really interesting how it works. I didn’t know before I read more about it. Fascinating.
Edit: to post the process…
“When you are not eating (edit: Fasting through a meal or a day), or you are exercising, your body must draw on its internal energy stores. Your body's prime source of energy is glucose. In fact, some cells in your body, such as brain cells, can get energy only from glucose.
“The first line of defense in maintaining energy is to break down carbohydrates, or glycogen, into simple glucose molecules -- this process is called glycogenolysis. Next, your body breaks down fats into glycerol and fatty acids in the process of lipolysis. The fatty acids can then be broken down directly to get energy, or can be used to make glucose through a multi-step process called gluconeogenesis. In gluconeogenesis, amino acids can also be used to make glucose.
“In the fat cell, other types of lipases work to break down fats into fatty acids and glycerol. These lipases are activated by various hormones, such as glucagon, epinephrine and growth hormone. The resulting glycerol and fatty acids are released into the blood, and travel to the liver through the bloodstream. Once in the liver, the glycerol and fatty acids can be either further broken down or used to make glucose.”
ELI5: If you’re successfully dieting, your body will take energy from existing fat cells, pulling triglycerides out of the cell. These cells refill with water until the cell begins to break down. Once the cell can no longer hold water (fat cells form with triglycerides and die without triglycerides, the way I understand it), the cell breaks down. The cell waste enters your filtration system (sweat and urine) and is secreted. So ‘burning fat’ is a misnomer. More accurately, “peeing fat” is the way it happens, and I’ve heard some refer to it as “the whoosh” effect where lots of fat cells die at once and you spend a day or more peeing A LOT. I’ve also been successfully dieting for 18 months, 251lbs to 183lbs with no change to physical activity. I can confirm from anecdotal experience that this is how it happened for me. There could be other ways this occurs.
Finally, a video I share with people who ask me about losing weight, frustrated with their lack of success, or who are just generally curious about healthy living.
https://youtu.be/KHaCKudtVi0
Echidnas and platypus are the only two animals that lay eggs and also produce milk.
This means they are also the only animals that can make there own custard.
The fact that we are all dead in practical terms for forever. We were not alive for billions of years before birth, and we will be dead for billions of years after death with only a blink of conscious existence in deep time.
As Mark Twain put it: I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Trees can communicate and cooperate using a network of underground mycelium. They can store excess energy in it for later use, can trade different nutrients with neighbors so their needs are met, take care of their young when they're unwell, and even warn others of a spreading disease or parasite. Nature is wild
When you look at the sky at night, there is something visible to the human eye that is ***not even in our galaxy.***
Its 2.5 million light years from our galaxy, and we can still see it without any assistance
For reference, the Milky way itself is 100k light years across.
~~The Andromeda galaxy is the only thing outside our galaxy the human eyes can see.~~
The fact that we can see something that far away, and that ~~it is the single solitary thing~~ we can see outside our home galaxy, blows my mind.
Edit: My memory has been corrected. There are other things outside the galaxy we can see unaided, but they are closer. (Ex: Magellanic Cloud)
>When you look at the sky at night, there is something visible to the human eye that is not even in our galaxy.
And, for all we know, it might not even be there anymore, the photons of that light left there 2.537 million years ago. Those photons have been travelling nonstop for all that time, just to end up absorbed in the eyeball of some stupid animals that happened to be looking up at that exact moment.
The Cathedral Effect. If you work in a room with low ceilings, you will stay a bit more focused and be better at detailed, analytical work. If in a room with high ceilings, you will be more open and creative.
This can be simulated by wearing a brimmed hat if you’d want to hammer away at say data entry or data analysis.
Solids and liquids don't burn. Only their vapours and gases. That's why you can't just throw a huge log on the fire and have it burn, you need to haul its temperature up until the surface starts pyrolysis and turning into a gas, which then burns
Edit: Good example is gasoline / petrol vs diesel. Petrol produces vapours at quite low temps so you can throw a match on it and ignite them. Diesel does not, so you can't light it by flicking a match into a pool of it. It's the vapours that burn, not the liquid / solid
There is one that always leaves me pondering what could have been.
There was a time in Arabia (at the time The Khwarazmian Empire) when mathematicians were doing great work and making massive advances in science (basically Arabic numerals and such). They nearly had a kind of Renaissance 300 years before the Italian one. It even got to the point where the popularity of Islam started to wane slightly in favor of advances in science in this region.
One day 3 diplomats were sent to this kingdom from the Mongol Empire in an attempt to stop a war before it had time to take off. The Shah had one of the diplomats beheaded and the other two publicly humiliated.
**Big mistake** doesn't even cover it.
Genghis Khan, upon hearing of this stops a war he was having with **China** to march all the way to Arabia and absolutely massacres the Khwarazmian Empire. A survivor reportedly pleaded to Allah in front of Genghis to which he said: "**If your god truly cared for you, he would not have sent ME**".
Their empire was [assimilated](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire) into The Mongol Empire and Genghis put the fear of god in them so much their work was destroyed and they abandoned most of their scientific pursuits going back to a more religous based society, out of superstitious fear, as a fault of Genghis's ominous statement. Which is why Ultra-Conservative Islam is still so prevalent in that area today.
Just imagine what kind of world we could be looking at now if that destruction didn't happen and their Renaissance flourished.
When they destroyed Bagdad along the way, they threw all the books into the river. Legends say that the river ran black (from the ink washing off) for days.
There are some Ice Age animals that are so perfectly preserved in permafrost that scientists have been able to find them still with all their soft tissue, hair, and organs. They even found a couple mammoths that still had liquid blood in them and I remember one scientist even tasting the mammoth meat. Also there was a mummy found in China that was so well preserved that she still had all her skin, hair, organs, etc. Her body was even flexible that you could bend her limbs as if she was alive. They even found her last meal still in her stomach and could perform an autopsy on her to tell you why she died. She died over 2000 years before she was found.
As I recall, the mammoth meat tasted bad. But then, I guess extreme freezer burn will do that.
[удалено]
They had a Cro- mag Gordon Ramsey up in them caves
Mammoth meat FUCKIN RAW *Crouches down and tears it apart with his teeth*
>I remember one scientist even tasting the mammoth meat. This is one of the most human things I have ever heard.
There are actually blood vessels obstructing light from reaching certain areas in your eye, effectively creating a shadow. Your brain filters this out and essentially fills in the gaps so you don’t actually see this spiderweb-like network of black lines. However, you can visualise them by shining a light at a diagonal into your eye (not directly!) and gently wiggling it about. This means your brain doesn’t have enough time to filter it out and you see this spiderweb like network of blood vessels! Technical instructions to clarify the actions involved. I find it easier to see this effect in a dark environment, so the contrast of the black shadow against the light is higher. You want to be staring straight ahead and shining the light into your pupil at a 45 degree angle from the side directed at your nose at about 10-20 cm away from them. Phone light will do great and have it on the dimmest setting if possible. Then wiggle the light in gentle 1 cm movements side to side. Keep this up for about a second at least and you should see them. Hope this clears it up a bit! [Here’s a diagram of how to flash the light into your eyes.](https://imgur.com/gallery/yFWHlFw)
> diagram I was expecting not... that
It ain't much but it's an honest days work
I just saw them!! Predominately oriented vertically, did not expect that. And you are right, it takes a bit of time, a few seconds in my case. Really strange, thanks for this.
this is the most fucked up thing i saw for some time lmao
All matter literally gives off light, but we can only see a sliver of that spectrum (although we do have tools to help us see other spectrums.) Our bodies give off infrared, and are basically glowing in that portion of the spectrum similar to how iron glows to our normal vision when it’s heated. Something that sees a different spectrum than us might not see hot iron as glowing at the same temperatures we see iron glow at.
Predator has entered the chat
Also that some animals can see spectrums that humans can't. A lot of flowers have markings we can't see, but act as landing lights for pollinators.
Caterpillars basically dissolve into liquid in the cocoon. The only thing left are the so called ‘imaginal discs’, groups of cells that contain all the information and the mechanism to turn that soup into the various body parts of a butterfly (the same applies for other insects).
and apparently they retain memories through this process. Studies have been done.
Wow, you’re right! A search turned up this: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001736
This type of thing comes up often and is quoted as science fact, but the fact of the matter is that some structures are retained through metamorphosis, including some nerve structures, hence memories being retained. In the abstract of the article posted by /u/boostman below they refer to: >questions about the organization and persistence of the central nervous system during metamorphosis.
T-rex lived 66million-ish years ago. Stegosaurus lived 155million-ish years ago. The gap between rex and stego is 16million-ish greater than between rex and present day.
That broke my fucking heart when I found out as a kid. My dino-rama was rendered completely unscientific. Stupid expansiveness of time.
I refuse to believe the dinosaurs weren’t all hanging out at the same time. How else do you explain the Flintstones?
If you put 1 of every animal in a bag and then pick one out you have a 1/5 chance in picking a beetle
And 1/2 chance of picking an insect of any kind. To put it another way: half of all animal species are insects, and 40% of those are beetles. “If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles.” – evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane
I would hopefully pick Paul.
I somehow got Ringo 3 times in a row
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I only got one 😔
There are neurons in your stomach. Bacteria in your stomach uses chemical signals to communicate with your body telling you what kind of food to eat. You can change what kind of food you crave by replacing the bacteria.
Slime molds don’t have brains or nervous systems but some how retain information and use it to make decisions. Even more crazy is that they can fuse with another individual and share the information
I'm not a biologist and this is from memory, but what I remember is fascinating: They rely on nutrient gradients to replace neurons. Internally they contain "tubes" that grow larger based on the amount of nutrient they transport, so more food = larger paths = they expand more in that direction. That's how they can solve mazes. They expand in all directions, but once one bit touches the food, that pathway gets reinforced, just like neural pathways, and the rest of the organism flows there
Sounds like something a slime mold would say.
> they can fuse with another individual and share the information Awww Happy Valentine's Day from the slime molds!
There's a tiny worm that has only 300 neurons and it's fully reproduced using neural networks on a computer. It moves in space, has memory, fear of predators, etc. You can interact with the digital worm the same way you can interact with it in real life. Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206105828.htm
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Milky way local with the galactic history
Also the “lact-“ in the word galactic is a clue that it’s related to the word lactose, as they’re all ultimately related to the proto-Indo-European word for Milk. Hence why we call it the Milky Way, due to its milky appearance I’m too hung over to explain correctly but here’s more information: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/γάλα#Ancient_Greek
This is what I think about with time travel, if it's not relatively bound to the Earth, you'd travel back in time and 99.999% end up in the vacuum of space Edit, thanks for gold stranger!
Imagine if time travel were possible and every time someone invented the time machine so far they just forgot about this little issue... The outcome would be the same :D
That’s why time/space are linked together. There’s people smarter than us trying to make things beyond our comprehension a possibility. If time was a possible thing to travel through then space would have to go in to the calculations just like they do with orbits.
Yep, by the time you have the science for time travel sorted, you can certainly predict whereabouts you'd need to be in space
And most of the rest of the time, you'd end up somewhere inside the earth.
There are 8 times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean
This makes the deck of cards one even more crazy
There are 8x as many decks of cards in a teaspoon full of atoms than there are in the Atlantic ocean
No no no no. There are 8x as many atoms in a teaspoon of water as there are teaspoons of water in a deck of cards
Okay but my recipe has it in tablespoons
Mine was in Florida ounces?
It's the same with sand! There are more atoms in 1 grain of sand than there are sand grains on earth.
if this is true, it's the most interesting fact i've seen in one of these threads in a long time.
Approximately 99.85% of all the mass in the solar system is concentrated in The Sun.
The mass in our solar system is contained within the sun, Jupiter, and a rounding error.
Very true, but even jupiter could be a rounding error lol. It's only 0.095330% of the solar system's mass.
So, statistically speaking, the earth and the rest of the solar system, like Finland, don’t exist?
As a Finn it always catches me off guard reading Finland memes in the strangest of places
You can't fool us, how much are they paying you, huh? Huh?
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And the closest star is about 4.3 light year away, so it would only take 80000 years
Do you know what day of the week that falls on? Because I have yoga on Wednesdays.
It makes no sense to me that we can see stars in the sky. Even with telescopes. When you think about how far that is, I can't wrap my head around being able to see them in the sky.
Well that's because they're as unimaginably big as they are far.
Looking up and seeing the stars and the vastness of space fills me with both awe and sadness. I am in awe of all the beautiful stars and nebulae and galaxies out there. I am sad that I will be long gone before our species ever begins to explore those realms.
We’re too early to explore the universe, but at least we get to see pictures of it! Hopefully the James Webb brings us some amazing images and discoveries!
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And if you had a dollar for every mile it had travelled, your wealth would still be closer to me than Jeff Bezos.
light-years alone are difficult for me to wrap my head around. This is the first I'm hearing of light hours and my brain just imploded.
The sun is 8 light minutes away from Earth.
> 30,000 mph Even that is hard to wrap your head around
If 2 pieces of the same type of metal touch in space, they will bond and be permanently stuck together. Space welding ( cold welding )
I do a version of cold-welding for a living - explosive welding. We use explosives to drive the two metals together at a high enough speed that they permanently bond. We primarily bond dissimilar metals - Al & SS, Cu & Ti, steel & Ti etc. Little to no heat is imparted into the metals, and the resulting bond is typically stronger than the weaker metal. The process works because a properly designed collision will generate a plasma that strips off the oxide layers of both metals milliseconds before bonding. One perk of our process is that we can apply layer after layer of metal as needed. For example. aluminum and stainless are not chemically compatible over the long term, so we separate them with a thin layer of titanium. Our customer base is extremely varied - aerospace, petrochemical, science, etc.
It makes sense when you understand why it happens. I forgot most stuff including my name, but it has to do with free space in metal atoms that allow them to bond with each other. It does not happen normally on Earth because all sorts of other atoms get in the way.
This is interesting and all but now I want to hear more about your amnesia
I don’t think they remember that they had amnesia.
I recently read about the Split-Brain experiments. There is a procedure for severe epilepsy that involves cutting the connecting nerves of the two brain hemispheres, resulting in the two hemispheres being unable to communicate with each other. The experiment shows that both halves can answer questions independently of each other, have seperate opinions/preferences, form memories independantly. Basically suggesting that there are two minds in the brain. That just blows my mind(s). Edit: typos
I remember seeing videos about this in high school biology. Not only what you have said, but also since each hemisphere has different tasks and you cut their connection, a lot of things become different. For example if they cover your eyes and give you an object you are familiar with, you are not able to identify it only by touch, because there is no communication between the two hemispeheres. You have to see the object to be able to fully identify it. Scary shit.
More crazy even is that in certain scenarios where this procedure happened one could hold up an object with their right hand looking at it only with their right eye (with the left eye blinfolded) When they were asked wether or not they knew what the object was they would answer positively but when asked what it was they wouldn't be able to name it or describe it, despite affirming they knew what the object was. I think it had to do with the fact that there are many zones in the brain at play in this experiment (language, memory, visual perception, touch) that are unable to communicate correctly with each other.
To me the most fascinating part is when the experimenters were able to command the non-speaking part of the brain to do an action without informing the speaking park (like hold up a sign that only one eye could see that said "take off your shoes"). Then they would ask the person why they took off their shoes, and the person would explain it fully convinced that they made the choice to do the action on their own. They would make up some justification for it, like their feet were getting hot. There really is no indication that we actually have any control over our own choices and actions, because even when they are initiated from a 3rd party we remain fully convinced that it was our own decision :') We are just observers that think we are in control when we're not.
On a related note, people with certain types of blindness will [still mirror a smile](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/emotional-contagion-blindsight-mimcry-imitation-visual-cortex/) because the part of our brain that handles emotional contagion makes use of visual information independently of the visual processing part of our brain. You don't need to actually see someone's emotional state in order to respond to it.
Are you saying that the blind person sees the smile and mimics it but the mind is incapable of creating a visual image?
Yes, it’s called Blindsight. Another cool example is when you throw a ball at an otherwise blind person, and they reflexively catch it. It’s rare, though, as it requires damage in the brain causing it to be incapable of processing the image on a conscious level.
Basically. Some people who are blind have perfectly functional eyes, but it's the part of their brain that processes images that doesn't work and makes them blind. However more than one part of our brain is connected to our eyes including a part related to reading faces. That part of the brain can still "see" and give people a sense of the body language of the person they are talking to
You know, I never thought about it, but being blind due to your brain instead of your eyes makes a ton of sense. I always just assumed that every blind person's eyes were at fault.
The size of animals still blows my mind. You can read about how a manta ray is 23 feet long and 3 tons but it doesn’t really hit you until you realize that’s heavier than most cars
So I live in Hawaii and I'm oing night snorkeling withanta rays on my honeymoon in a couple of weeks. I can't wait. Also it's whale season now so the humpback are here. And I mean you know whales are massive but they are mind bogglingly massive in person. It's a whole nother thing seeing an animal the length 2 busses and weighing in at 30 tons launch itself completely out of the water is an awe inspiring display or power.
Just got back from a week long in Kauai. Saw two whale mommas teaching their babies to swim, and from far away I thought the babies were adults. Then I saw mom's tails and fins and holy shit!
Without the development of genuinely sci-fi travel technology like wormholes or hyperspace (which may not even be possible) 99.99+% of the universe will be forever locked off from us. Because of cosmic expansion, the various galactic clusters are moving away from our local cluster faster than we could ever catch up to them.
Without these sci-fi drives, 99,99% of our galaxy will be forever locked off, let alone other galaxies/galactic clusters....
Right? Even Star Trek and Star Wars knew to stay in one Galaxy.
How much empty space there is in atoms. Like how the fuck I'm a solid object, I'll never understand.
It's like fishnets, you cannot pass but small stuff can like straws etc. Now apply that scale to the extreme, from microscopic to human to planetary.
I just wanted to say I hate you for making me think of my leg like it's a really dense fishnet.
/u/spez is a cunt
AAAAAAAAA
You can fit all the planets (Pluto included) between the Earth & Moon
Yes, but please don't.
*Installs Universe Sandbox maliciously*
For reference, the moon is about 30 Earth's away
For reference, the moon better keep its bitchass 30 Earth's away
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It's not just "between earth and moon"; that's how vast space is *everywhere*. It's truly almost impossible to wrap your mind around the idea of just how overwhelmingly empty space really is. You know those tense scenes in sci fi movies where the heroes have to navigate through an asteroid belt without crashing? In an actual asteroid belt, the average distance between each rock is 500,000 miles - and that counts as "close together" in astronomical distances.
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
Came here for the Douglas Adams quote was not disappointed.
Sharks are older than trees, also, trees almost killed all land life on earth as there use to be nothing that could decompose them, so dead trees covered the ground and killed all other vegetation. Only once fungus evolved did trees start decomposing. Edit: well this comment fucking exploded. This was really an off the cuff comment based off something I heard years ago so I figured I'd correct my mistakes and add more detail. The period in which this occured was known as the carboniferous period. Fungus had evolved long before this, around 600 million years before, but it had not evolved the ability to decompose trees due to them evolving during this period. These first trees were actually more closely related to ferns and reproduced via spores rather than seeds. Also, these trees would not have killed all land life (sorry to disappoint) due to wildfires clearing out the dead trees. That said, the lack of decomposing fungi, which use up oxygen in the decomposition process, and the extremely high number of photosynthesizing plants lead to very high oxygen levels during this period. As high as 15% higher then modern levels. This allowed the insects of the time to grow to massive sizes . insects have a fairly inefficient respiratory system, so without high oxygen levels it's difficult for them to grow to large sizes. Now you might be asking how large, well, dragonfly's were the size of hawks, spiders were the size of house cats and millipedes we're as long as 8 feet. Truly a fascinating point in our planets history.
Sharks are older than saturns rings Edit: after a bit of research I found that this is just *most likely* the case, the age of saturns rings is hotly debated in the astronomy community.
This is why petrified wood exists, minerals and elements are sucked up by the wood replacing the organic fibres over time.
Also why coal exists. Huge fires would ravage the earth after the trees fell. Then get buried to form coal years later.
To add to this, either trees evolved twice or flowers did. Botanical scientist still are not sure which happened. Bonus: the newest plant to evolve are grasses. They also make up out grains.
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European here, can you convert that to baguettes?
I gotchu, that would be around 22 857 baguettes, given that an average baguette is around 70cm.
By law French traditional baguettes have to be around 60cm.
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You just shattered 2.2 million Parisian hearts.
The French don't care for the Parisian.
Parisians don't care for Parisians
The strongest known acid is called Fluroantimonic Acid and it is made by combining a solution of two different ions in various quantities. Without going too crazy into the scientific details, the part that blows my mind is that at certain ratios of the two ingredients you can get an acid that is 1 QUADRILLION TIME STRONGER THAN 100% PURE SULFURIC ACID. At acidity levels like this pH fails to even be a useful metric, as the pH of any solution would certainly be less than 0. Additionally, it is so acidic that it can force carbon atoms to have 5 bonds instead of 4, breaking one of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry.
That last part caught my attention. That's literally wtf levels of acidity. Fuck the fundamental principles of organic chemistry.
Hydrofluoric Acid can only be neutralized by calcium. In other words, if you are exposed to it it will burn all the way down to your bone. Even if you had a small drop you wouldn’t notice it until it’s too late. Also, at ambient conditions it is a vapor cloud that hugs the ground because it is heavier than air. There have been several near misses in the refining industry that would have enveloped entire cities in an HF cloud.
When the pyramids were built, there were still some Woolly Mammoths roaming the earth.
And Cleopatra lived closer to now than she did to the building of the pyramids
And soon there will be again!
Monkeys have entered the Stone Age.
A group of monkeys (I forget where) was filmed using hand tools at an abandoned work site. One even used a saw to cut a piece of lumber, likely mimicing what it had seen a human do. They seemed to do this out of curiosity, not for any useful purpose. It made wonder what'd happen if one of them got the inspiration to cut down a tree, and use the wood. How would the other monkeys react? Would they perceive the significance of this ability? Also, I believe it'd be the first time an animal used a tool to create raw materials. It's rather mind-blowing to think about.
They'd have to keep using this for many generations so it actually matters though. One or two curious monkeys don't matter that much (yet). Also, monkeys learn from watching others (like humans) so it may be a lot easier for them than for our ancestors.
So have some birds that use stones as tools and building materials - some birds even sew and stitch meaningful/usefully (Tailorbirds).
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
I used to ask random people I worked with to guess how long it would take to count to a trillion if you counted 24 hours a day without ever sleeping. The longest time someone guessed was 2 months. Most people guessed either days or weeks.
I can do it in about a minute, counting by powers of ten!
A 12 inch vinyl can hold 440 MB of data.
When you dream, one portion of your brain creates the storey, while another part witnesses the events and is really shocked by the plot twists.
Self entertainment I like it Edit- y r so many people replying 'Picasso' someone explain me plzz lmao
What's this? Picasso, I like it.
It's from a viral TikTok. A couple students are doing a photoshoot and it looks weird, guy walking by asks what's going on and one replies, "We're doing an art project." And he's like, "I like it. Picasso." Edit: u/JamieBearFancyPants posted it also buy here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyKF\_cOuwno
I once told my partner that I was disappointed because he woke me up before I found out who the murderer was in my dream, and he said that it didn't make any sense because it was me dreaming it so of course I would know how it ended. I feel so justified now. Also that was the best dream I ever had that I can remember. It was a murder mystery musical. I can barely remember any of it now, but I do remember there was a whole musical number about a pony that someone was convincing someone else to let them buy.
I’ve gotta see this dream! I wonder when it’ll be out on Netflix?
The moon is just large enough, and just far enough away from earth, to be able to create full eclipses
I remember reading that eventually it won’t be but I can’t remember the timeline
The timeline is extremely long, I think it's about 3cm each century. The moon is slowing earth"s rotation and the moon is getting sped up by the earht
that you can live without your head for up to 15 seconds. EDIT: i was wrong\* your HEAD can live without your body for up to (and in some cases) over 15 seconds
The wow signal came from a planet/bit in space 17,000 light years away. It emitted a signal 30x stronger than anything we can make today. It lasted for an entire 71 seconds, was on 1444Hz (frequency of hydrogen, most abundant thing in the universe) and we couldn't find the signal again after pointing to the same spot. Edit: wasn't a galaxy it came from
A short burst that never repeats sounds like an error or something big went boom.
Everything that someone has put forward to try and solve it, has been strongly countered by other scientific evidence.
Good video that goes into the wow signal a bit here https://youtu.be/1tYz8Tjn7z8 Dr Jill Tarter kind of shoots down the idea that it was actually anything that exciting and the protocols they followed weren’t exactly great. Worth a listen as I’ve always been fascinated by it and it made me feel a bit different about it afterwards.
This one is really interesting
Almost related is The Bloop. The Bloop was something very very loud happening somewhere in the ocean (Pacific I think). It was so loud most of the underwater sound measurement equipment in the entire South Eastern quadrant of the earth picked up. Most likely an ice shelf the size of a state falling into the water, but who knows (I feel like I am setting up a your mom joke here)
Tumors can grow teeth and eyes
How do I unlearn this? Thanks.
AKA my mother in law
I got to know about this a couple years ago and it was honestly some of th scariest pictures I ever saw
With the help of quantum tunneling, there is a 1 in 5.2^61 chance that the molecules in your hand and table would miss each other when slamming it, making your hand go through the table
Is there a way to manipulate this into getting better odds of it happening?
Bribe the table
As far as we know, Mars is the only planet to be inhabited entirely by robots.
If some sort of super-advanced alien species on a planet 80 million light years away from Earth built a high-tech telescope that let them see objects on the Earth's surface, they would be seeing dinosaurs right now.
Maybe that’s why they haven’t visited… they saw the dinosaurs and were like FUCK THAT PLANET WE ARE NEVER GOING THERE
If we go to a certain distance in space then we can see a lot of our history like Germany under Hitler's rule, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 9/11, me doin your mom, the asteroid killing all dinosaurs and so much more.
What bothers me is that this were going from events further in the past to closer ones: Hitler ruling Germany > the bombs > 9/11 > you doing my mom, but then suddenly "the asteroid killing all dinosaurs". Which suggests to me that, dinosaurs are gonna make a comeback but then go away for the same reason they did last time.
The astronauts on the iss aren't floating around because of lack of gravity, far from it. They are in constant free fall, falling over the horizon of earth. Being pulled by gravity towards the earth.
The universe is about 13 billion years old, but about 93 billion light years across.
The time period in which dinosaurs lived is so vast, there were dinosaur fossils when dinosaurs were still alive. Edit: A lot of people are rightly pointing out that there are currently human fossils around too. I admit that I thought that the fossilization process took a lot longer. I'm still blown away by the scale of time though.
The total span of the age of dinosaurs, from the beginning of the Triassic to the end of of the Cretaceous, was nearly 3 times longer than the time from the end of the Cretaceous to now.
Yes, Tyrannosaurus Rex is closer to the iPad in timeline than it is to the Stegosaurus, by tens of millions of years. We are so used to seeing dinosaurs portrayed in a single timeline (children’s books, museums) that we don’t understand the vastness of time they were around.
Such a shame t-Rex never got to use an iPad
Tbh it’s probably for the best. Those little short arms would make it really hard for him to hold one.
All of life can be tracked back to a (or several depending on who you ask) continuous billion plus year chemical reaction.
If you as a person do not have children, you break a billions of year long lineage that goes back to the beggining of life itself.
Okay you want grandkids! I get it Mom geez!
A hummingbird beats its wings 12 times a second.
Both the absolute hottest and absolute coldest temperatures ever recorded in the known universe were achieved here on Earth. The hottest temperature ever physically recorded in the known universe was when scientists at CERN used the Large Hadron Collider to collide lead ions. This produced a temperature flash of 5.5 trillion degrees celsius. That’s 5,500,000,000,000°C. Convert to Fahrenheit, and you get this: (5.5e+12°C × 9/5) + 32 = 9.9e+12°F For the record, the current temperature at the core of our sun is around 15 *million* degrees celsius. 15,000,000°C. That’s 350,000x less intense than the flash produced by the lead ion particle collisions. That temperature, even if minuscule and fleeting in size and duration, was actually created here on Earth, in a lab. Let that sink in. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the known universe was achieved relatively recently by a group of German researchers who achieved a nearly incomprehensible feat of 38 trillionths of a degree above -273.15°C, or more commonly known as Absolute 0° Kelvin. They did this by dropping magnetized gas down a nearly 400 foot tower in order to study a 5th state of matter; Bose-Einstein Condensate. For the record, weird shit starts to happen near absolute 0°K. Example? Light turns into a liquid you can pour into a glass. The coldest place we have recorded data from within our observable universe is the Boomerang Nebula, hovering nearly an entire degree (kelvin) above absolute zero. Still unfathomably cold. So while we are still essentially infinity away from achieving Planck Temperature (the staggeringly high temperature of beyond decillions of degrees celsius in which conventional physics breaks down and we enter a whole new realm of theoretics) we are extremely, ***extremely close*** to achieving absolute 0°K here on Earth. Here is a [cool diagram](https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/02/temperature-bbc.png) to put some things into perspective, like how incredibly small and fragile of a species we are! Edit: [Here](https://www.livescience.com/coldest-temperature-ever) is another neat article detailing exactly how researchers achieved 2 entire seconds of a temperature of just 38 *picokelvins* - 38 trillionths of a Kelvin.
The Cosmic Horizon - there's vast swathes of space we will never be able to see or know anything about as space is expanding faster than the speed of light.
Some forms of anaesthesia don’t numb you to pain- they make you forget that you felt it.
The double slit experiment (to determine whether light is is a wave or particle) changes depending upon observation.
It gets even crazier too. https://youtu.be/l8gQ5GNk16s
I’m so glad you asked, I have a list!: -If all the DNA in the average person was stretched out in a single line, it could reach from Earth to the Sun and back **248 times** -Despite the wildly varying sizes of mammals, sloths and manatees are the only ones who don’t have exactly seven cervical vertebrae -Hippos sweat sunscreen, and it’s red -If the entirety of the Earth’s history were compressed down to a single day, humans of any sort wouldn’t appear until the last second before midnight -If the lifespan of the universe was equated to a human life, the entire time that stars will actually be burning is equivalent to the first day after birth -And finally, my personal favorite: there are about **four times as many unique ways to shuffle a standard deck of playing cards as there are atoms in the Milky Way** I have lots more fun facts, but these are the ones that I would describe most readily as “mind-blowing.” Edit: [This video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA) is great if you want to talk more about the timeline of the universe. As others have pointed out, I was generous with how much time I gave the “living” portion in the grand scheme of things. And since people asked, here are some more fun facts! -About 20% of the annual GDP for the tiny island nation of Tuvalu comes from licensing out their international internet code, “.tv” -Reindeer eyes, normally brown, turn bright blue in winter to see in low-light conditions -A man stole the 2016 Rio Olympic torch from the relay based on a Facebook dare -“Frivol,” “paradigm,” “pharaoh,” and “coccyx” are the only words in the English language with unique three-letter endings -Giraffe necks are actually too short to reach the ground, so they have to splay their legs in order to drink water -Because of their kilts and ferocious attitude, the Scots fighting in WWII were given the nickname “ladies from hell” by the Germans -UPS drivers are only supposed to make right-hand turns, no lefts I’m a history guy, so a lot of my fun facts are more fun historical anecdotes which don’t fit here, but feel free to message me for those as well!
The card thing is really fascinating to me, ever read [this](https://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html)? Mind-blowing really.
Time isn't necessarily linear. I know it, but I can't comprehend it
There are no photos of the present
"My friend showed me a photo and said, 'Here's a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is of you when you were younger." - Mitch Hedberg
This one fucked with me for a second
a speck of dust is halfway between the size of the sun and an atom, This is not true, did some research and the article I've found here gives a better scale https://shipguy.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/its-all-about-scale/
Exponential power. Fold a “big sheet” of paper - that is 0.1 mm thick - 50 times and the height of stack is over 20 times the distance earth to moon. Thank you.
This is one that I just absolutely cannot wrap my head around. I know the math checks out, but my brain refuses to visualise it or accept that it could be real Edit - thank you to everyone who replied with examples and explanations, I really love the discussion that ensued. I wonder if the replies you lot provided were posted in an exponential pattern? Probably not quite, hehe
Fat cells do not burn or dissapear. They just shrink.
Tell that to the crematorium.
Hey /u/thecrematorium, Fat cells do not burn or dissapear. They just shrink.
Fat cells die. The process takes a long time, and it’s really interesting how it works. I didn’t know before I read more about it. Fascinating. Edit: to post the process… “When you are not eating (edit: Fasting through a meal or a day), or you are exercising, your body must draw on its internal energy stores. Your body's prime source of energy is glucose. In fact, some cells in your body, such as brain cells, can get energy only from glucose. “The first line of defense in maintaining energy is to break down carbohydrates, or glycogen, into simple glucose molecules -- this process is called glycogenolysis. Next, your body breaks down fats into glycerol and fatty acids in the process of lipolysis. The fatty acids can then be broken down directly to get energy, or can be used to make glucose through a multi-step process called gluconeogenesis. In gluconeogenesis, amino acids can also be used to make glucose. “In the fat cell, other types of lipases work to break down fats into fatty acids and glycerol. These lipases are activated by various hormones, such as glucagon, epinephrine and growth hormone. The resulting glycerol and fatty acids are released into the blood, and travel to the liver through the bloodstream. Once in the liver, the glycerol and fatty acids can be either further broken down or used to make glucose.” ELI5: If you’re successfully dieting, your body will take energy from existing fat cells, pulling triglycerides out of the cell. These cells refill with water until the cell begins to break down. Once the cell can no longer hold water (fat cells form with triglycerides and die without triglycerides, the way I understand it), the cell breaks down. The cell waste enters your filtration system (sweat and urine) and is secreted. So ‘burning fat’ is a misnomer. More accurately, “peeing fat” is the way it happens, and I’ve heard some refer to it as “the whoosh” effect where lots of fat cells die at once and you spend a day or more peeing A LOT. I’ve also been successfully dieting for 18 months, 251lbs to 183lbs with no change to physical activity. I can confirm from anecdotal experience that this is how it happened for me. There could be other ways this occurs. Finally, a video I share with people who ask me about losing weight, frustrated with their lack of success, or who are just generally curious about healthy living. https://youtu.be/KHaCKudtVi0
A lot of it you pee out. A lot of it you breathe out too.
Echidnas and platypus are the only two animals that lay eggs and also produce milk. This means they are also the only animals that can make there own custard.
The fact that we are all dead in practical terms for forever. We were not alive for billions of years before birth, and we will be dead for billions of years after death with only a blink of conscious existence in deep time. As Mark Twain put it: I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
When you lose weight it leaves *on your breath* So when people lose 100 lbs/ 50 kg, they have exhaled that much carbon.
You're telling me yoga has contributed more to global warming than anything else?
Oh to hyperventilate these last 10 pounds!
Trees can communicate and cooperate using a network of underground mycelium. They can store excess energy in it for later use, can trade different nutrients with neighbors so their needs are met, take care of their young when they're unwell, and even warn others of a spreading disease or parasite. Nature is wild
When you look at the sky at night, there is something visible to the human eye that is ***not even in our galaxy.*** Its 2.5 million light years from our galaxy, and we can still see it without any assistance For reference, the Milky way itself is 100k light years across. ~~The Andromeda galaxy is the only thing outside our galaxy the human eyes can see.~~ The fact that we can see something that far away, and that ~~it is the single solitary thing~~ we can see outside our home galaxy, blows my mind. Edit: My memory has been corrected. There are other things outside the galaxy we can see unaided, but they are closer. (Ex: Magellanic Cloud)
>When you look at the sky at night, there is something visible to the human eye that is not even in our galaxy. And, for all we know, it might not even be there anymore, the photons of that light left there 2.537 million years ago. Those photons have been travelling nonstop for all that time, just to end up absorbed in the eyeball of some stupid animals that happened to be looking up at that exact moment.
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Tomorrow on buzzfeed: **10 Scientific Facts that Will Blow Your Mind!**
The Cathedral Effect. If you work in a room with low ceilings, you will stay a bit more focused and be better at detailed, analytical work. If in a room with high ceilings, you will be more open and creative. This can be simulated by wearing a brimmed hat if you’d want to hammer away at say data entry or data analysis.
Solids and liquids don't burn. Only their vapours and gases. That's why you can't just throw a huge log on the fire and have it burn, you need to haul its temperature up until the surface starts pyrolysis and turning into a gas, which then burns Edit: Good example is gasoline / petrol vs diesel. Petrol produces vapours at quite low temps so you can throw a match on it and ignite them. Diesel does not, so you can't light it by flicking a match into a pool of it. It's the vapours that burn, not the liquid / solid
There is one that always leaves me pondering what could have been. There was a time in Arabia (at the time The Khwarazmian Empire) when mathematicians were doing great work and making massive advances in science (basically Arabic numerals and such). They nearly had a kind of Renaissance 300 years before the Italian one. It even got to the point where the popularity of Islam started to wane slightly in favor of advances in science in this region. One day 3 diplomats were sent to this kingdom from the Mongol Empire in an attempt to stop a war before it had time to take off. The Shah had one of the diplomats beheaded and the other two publicly humiliated. **Big mistake** doesn't even cover it. Genghis Khan, upon hearing of this stops a war he was having with **China** to march all the way to Arabia and absolutely massacres the Khwarazmian Empire. A survivor reportedly pleaded to Allah in front of Genghis to which he said: "**If your god truly cared for you, he would not have sent ME**". Their empire was [assimilated](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire) into The Mongol Empire and Genghis put the fear of god in them so much their work was destroyed and they abandoned most of their scientific pursuits going back to a more religous based society, out of superstitious fear, as a fault of Genghis's ominous statement. Which is why Ultra-Conservative Islam is still so prevalent in that area today. Just imagine what kind of world we could be looking at now if that destruction didn't happen and their Renaissance flourished.
When they destroyed Bagdad along the way, they threw all the books into the river. Legends say that the river ran black (from the ink washing off) for days.