Tell me a fun fact.

[StarlightDreamer]

Bears sound like very large engines when they are happy.

 

[Burden_Bailey]

Penguins are gay. Two penguins of the same sex can be seen caring for an egg together and in pairs. It's really sweet.

 

[breatheout]

lemon sharks can become acquainted and possessive (not sure the word, not in an obsessive way tho?) of divers apparently

 

[leavingthesoultrap]

Pyramids don't have a single hieroglyph inside them.

 

[Celerity]

Fanfiction as we know it today was birthed by Trekkies all the way back in the 60s, but it didn't gain larger popularity until the Internet was more widely accessible. The fan base credited for jumping on this Internet boom in the 90s to put fanfiction on the cultural map was for The X-Files.

Haha, I managed to track down some of that early X-files fanfiction. It was pretty weird to read smut that was published when I was a toddler, LOL.



To answer OP, the Appalachian Mountains are older than Saturn's rings.

 

[underscore_nine]

It's okay if this doesn't get any replies but if you want please share a fun fact or give me a light-hearted rabbit hole to go down, pun half-intentional. I like hearing them and could use a little distraction.

You're more than welcome to infodump to me as well should you feel like it, I don't care if it's a long post. I just want something else to think about so I might ask questions if I have any.

The reason a error inside a computer program is called a bug is as a result of Grace Hopper in the mid 50s having a moth inside the computer eat through the wire causing it to short circuit resulting in that name being given to computer errors

 

[IWishToDie]

See my picture.

 

[natthebrat]

In Sweden, fines for traffic/speeding tickets aren't fixed amounts like they are in the US, they vary based on the person's income. Makes sense given that the crazy drivers are always some rich person in a fancy car!

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Etymology

From Middle English fonne, fon ("foolish, simple, silly") or fonnen ("make a fool of"), from Middle English fonne ("a fool, dupe"), probably of North Germanic origin, related to Swedish fånig ("foolish"), Swedish fåne ("a fool"). Compare also Norwegian fomme, fume ("a fool"). More at fon, fond.

As a noun, fun is recorded from 1700, with a meaning "a cheat, trick, hoax", from a verb fun meaning "to cheat, trick" (1680s). The meaning "diversion, amusement" dates to the 1720s. The older meaning is preserved in the phrase to make fun of (1737) and in usage of the adjective funny. The use of fun as adjective is newest and is due to reanalysis of the noun; this was incipient in the mid-19th century.

Alternative etymology connected Middle English fonne with Old Frisian fonna, fone, fomne, variant forms of fāmne, fēmne ("young woman, virgin"), from Proto-West Germanic *faimnijā, from Proto-Germanic *faimnijǭ ("maiden"), from Proto-Indo-European *peymen- ("girl"), *poymen- ("breast milk"). If so, then cognate with Old English fǣmne ("maid, virgin, damsel, bride"), West Frisian famke ("girl"), Saterland Frisian fone, fon ("woman, maid, servant," also "weakling, simpleton").

 

[sserafim]

Bears sound like very large engines when they are happy.

I wish I could've been a bear

 

[MiMif]

Bungee gum has the properties of both rubber and gum
Bungee gum has the properties of both rubber and gum

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

 

[greebo6]

On the planet Mars when the sun sets the sky turns blue

 

[Kit1]

Apparently there are about 48 kinda of snow - well I know for definite that there is one type of snow anyway.

 

[DarkRange55]

If you know anything about relativity theory you know that whenever you're looking outside yourself, you're actually looking into the past. Which means that whatever you see with your eyes, whatever is outside your body, that has already happened.

Apparently there are about 48 kinda of snow - well I know for definite that there is one type of snow anyway.

There are +17 different types of ice but at a given temperature, what you call "ice" has a fixed density like water. Ice can definitely become more dense with pressure, but it takes a lot of pressure to make much difference at all.

On planets outside of the inner solar system like Titan and Pluto some of the hardest rocks in the crust of those worlds are made of water ice (ice is a mineral & water a mineraloid).

Snow is also mostly air…

 

[Green Destiny]

Bear with me because I could be wrong but Male Seahorses are capable of also having children just like female seahorses.

 

[DarkRange55]

Bear with me because I could be wrong but Male Seahorses are capable of also having children just like female seahorses.

The female transfers the eggs to a pouch in the male seahorse where they are fertilized, carried and fed oxygen and nutrients. So yes, male pregnancy.

Male pregnancy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

On the planet Mars when the sun sets the sky turns blue

The statement "the sky turns blue on Mars when the sun sets" is not accurate. On Mars, the sky typically appears reddish-orange or pinkish in color, especially during sunrise and sunset. This is due to the presence of fine dust particles in the Martian atmosphere that scatter sunlight in a way that creates a reddish hue.

The phenomenon of the red sky on Mars is known as Rayleigh scattering, similar to the effect that causes the sky to appear blue on Earth. However, on Mars, the composition of the atmosphere and the size of the dust particles lead to the distinctive reddish coloration.

So, while the sky on Mars may exhibit different shades of red, it does not turn blue when the sun sets. The unique atmospheric conditions on Mars give the planet its own distinctive and beautiful color palette, with hues ranging from red to pink to orange.

Sky color is mainly scattering, molecules and dust.
Dust can produce red/yellow.
Water droplets can produce many colors (rainbow) - refraction and refraction of light by ice particles and water droplets suspended in the sky causes rainbows. Water droplets can have other effects (clouds change the color of the sky).
The oceans do have some effect – both a direct effect by reflecting light back up to the bottoms of clouds, but also indirect effects by adding water vapor and salt that forms condensation nuclei...

Rayleigh scattering - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[BorderlineChellery]

Female penguins prostitute themselves for pebbles

 

[DarkRange55]

Haha, I managed to track down some of that early X-files fanfiction. It was pretty weird to read smut that was published when I was a toddler, LOL.



To answer OP, the Appalachian Mountains are older than Saturn's rings.

Yes, they are older than Saturn's rings. That is accurate.
The Appalachian mountains are not the oldest by any means. As for stability, they are stable on a time scale of millions of years, but in a few tens of millions of years the Yellowstone hotspot will be under the Appalachian mountains. I think of cratons (cores of continents) as the most stable, but those are more typically hills than mountains.

Penguins are gay. Two penguins of the same sex can be seen caring for an egg together and in pairs. It's really sweet.

Homosexuality exists across a wide spectrum in the animal kingdom: dogs, zebras, penguins, ect.

 

[asian.neet]

Dying is the best thing anyone can experience

 

[MyChoiceAlone]

Otters hold each others hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart

they also wrap their kids is seaweed so they don't float away

 

[BlissAssistance]

3D objects cast 2D shadows. By that logic, 4D objects cast 3D shadows.

Your cats meow to you the same way they would a kitten.

My cat just killed an endangered bird, and ate it in front of me.

 

[sserafim]

3D objects cast 2D shadows. By that logic, 4D objects cast 3D shadows.

How would something be 4D? How would one access that dimension?

 

[BlissAssistance]

How would something be 4D? How would one access that dimension?

4D would be 'out', and humans can't access it yet.
It's hard to explain but imagine yourself as a person in Flatland, a 2D world, where everybody is a 2D shape of some kind, and location is defined by an x and y coordinate. The people of the 2D world finds it extremely hard to conceptualize 3D space since the third dimension involves going 'up' or 'down' or otherwise gaining a z axis, but Flatland has no 'up', only forward/backward and left/right. And no, they can't just 'look up' like they're ants on a piece of paper or something.
When a 3D object passes through Flatland (like imagine Flatland is a holographic projection that you can pass through perfectly), the people there see a 2D cross-section of the 3D shape. They can't see 3D even if they try, and like that humans can't perceive 4D even if we try.

If you pass a sphere through Flatland, the inhabitants see a circular cross section that begins as a point (top of the sphere), gradually increases in surface area (getting towards the middle of the sphere where the cross section is the largest), then gradually getting smaller (moving away from the middle of the sphere), and then shrinking to a point and disappearing completely (the sphere is no longer in contact with Flatland).
From this example, it can be extrapolated that if a 4D object, say a hypersphere, were to pass through our 3D space, it would look like a sphere that appears out of thin air, increasing then decreasing in volume, before vanishing without a trace.

TLDR: one cannot access the fourth dimension, but a fourth dimensional object would presumably cast a 3D shadow.

(im not a math person sorry if this is convoluted or mildly wrong)

 

[leavingthesoultrap]

Silver has anti-bacterial and anti-microbial properties.

 

[MyChoiceAlone]

op asked this on my b day

 

[whiteclaudia]

plague doctors used to strap chickens to people because they thought the plague would leave the person and infect the chicken instead.

 

[DarkRange55]

4D would be 'out', and humans can't access it yet.
It's hard to explain but imagine yourself as a person in Flatland, a 2D world, where everybody is a 2D shape of some kind, and location is defined by an x and y coordinate. The people of the 2D world finds it extremely hard to conceptualize 3D space since the third dimension involves going 'up' or 'down' or otherwise gaining a z axis, but Flatland has no 'up', only forward/backward and left/right. And no, they can't just 'look up' like they're ants on a piece of paper or something.
When a 3D object passes through Flatland (like imagine Flatland is a holographic projection that you can pass through perfectly), the people there see a 2D cross-section of the 3D shape. They can't see 3D even if they try, and like that humans can't perceive 4D even if we try.

If you pass a sphere through Flatland, the inhabitants see a circular cross section that begins as a point (top of the sphere), gradually increases in surface area (getting towards the middle of the sphere where the cross section is the largest), then gradually getting smaller (moving away from the middle of the sphere), and then shrinking to a point and disappearing completely (the sphere is no longer in contact with Flatland).
From this example, it can be extrapolated that if a 4D object, say a hypersphere, were to pass through our 3D space, it would look like a sphere that appears out of thin air, increasing then decreasing in volume, before vanishing without a trace.

TLDR: one cannot access the fourth dimension, but a fourth dimensional object would presumably cast a 3D shadow.

(im not a math person sorry if this is convoluted or mildly wrong)

(Physics person here) - yes.
An easy way to understand a dimension is you just need one number to understand where you are. A ruler, for example would be one dimension, 10cm. Two dimension would require two numbers on the axis. Same with 3D, a third one at a right angle to those, you need three numbers from each dimension. So the fourth spacial dimension, thats what it's going to be, you need four numbers to describe where you are. Add a right angle to all three of those. So try to imagine that (you can't, the closest representation/analog in our world is a tesseract - see below)

In Einstein's relativity, time is what the fourth dimension is. He treats it as time, it's a temporal dimension though, not a spacial dimension. If you want to know where you are space time, you need the three spacial dimensions and you also need to know where you are in time because space and time are kind of the same thing, they're like two sides of the same coin. As you move through space, you're moving through time. So the further you look out into space, the earlier in time you're looking, so it's very important to know where you are in time. So thats why we treat it as another dimension. You can't not travel through time. If you're not moving, you're still traveling through time. You can slow it down if you travel near the speed of light or go next to some really large mass (see time dilation).
The shape of the universe, its theoretical, we don't know for sure, but many physicists think that there is a slight possible curative to it. It looks flat, don't worry about that right now it's not what I'm trying to get at, we think that the geometry of the universe is flat. And some physicists think it only looks flat because we're only looking at a very small chunk (our observable universe) and so there might be some really slight curvature that we can figure out through physics. And if there is some slight curvature that might mean that it might actually form this single object that comes back in on itself. This is all theoretical, there is no current evidence for any curvature, it looks completely flat. It's a distinction because in mathematics a dimension doesn't have little bits of curvature.
I don't think there's really any evidence that are higher dimensions spatially. There are theoretical higher dimensions in our universe in theoretical physics (the bulk).

Q: I heard physics mostly happens in four dimensional space? If so, then why can't physics of 2 or 3 dimensions be easily extended to 4?
A: The physics that happens in four dimensional space includes time as the fourth dimension, so it is the standard physics that we understand best.



I have felt the warmth of moonlight (concentrated ~400X with a parabolic mirror). Starlight energy can be measured, but is not significant (think of how dark it is at night compared to the day)..

Darker baking trays are generally steel, which is much less thermally conductive than the bright aluminum baking trays. However, the darker surface absorbs heat better, and the material is thin enough that the thermal conductivity makes little difference.

Dirt has enough air pockets in it to act as a decent thermal insulator (but sitting on dirt is still colder than sitting on a cushion). With no continuous metal, dirt is a poor electrical conductor. Thick dirt (a few feet) has enough mass to block radiation.

Most terpenes are chiral. Synthetics are usually a mix of left- and right-handed; naturals are usually all the same-handed.

Salt is pretty non-reactive with oils and waxes (unless quite hot). Molten salt is quite reactive, both sodium and chlorine, for example, will attack most oils once things are hot enough to break a few bonds (this happens even at room temperature, where the sodium in sodium hydroxide will eventually attack fats to produce soap).

Everything produces byproducts- even with H2, one gets H2O plus traces of OH- and H2O2.
Short chains like butane produce less and fewer byproducts than long chains.

Q: They cannot synthesis a complete and total 100% purity? i.e., the highest I've seen is 99.98\.99, why can't they get the last .01%, whats the barrier? What is the remaining .01%?
A: Cost versus need.
Each "9" cost more than the previous 9, and after a while another "9" makes less difference to the user.
Computer chips often start with 99.9999999% pure silicon.

Electrons bounce around on a scale from microseconds to seconds, and quarks morph far faster, so by the time you use the compounds anything below the level of atoms will have homogenized and make no difference at all.
On the other hand, the placement of the atoms is stable for extended periods, so chirality doesn't homogenize and it can matter.

0.15 M sodium chloride means 0.15 moles of sodium chloride per liter of water (which is about as salty as sweat or tears and 20% to 25% as salty as seawater.

plague doctors used to strap chickens to people because they thought the plague would leave the person and infect the chicken instead.

Yes, this was known as the Vicary Method.

The masks they wore were to protect from "miasma," or the foul-smelling air, which they believed spread diseases like the plague. The beaks were filled with aromatic substances like herbs or spices.

Silver has anti-bacterial and anti-microbial properties.

Yes, so does metallic copper

 

[DarkRange55]

(Physics person here) - yes.
An easy way to understand a dimension is you just need one number to understand where you are. A ruler, for example would be one dimension, 10cm. Two dimension would require two numbers on the axis. Same with 3D, a third one at a right angle to those, you need three numbers from each dimension. So the fourth spacial dimension, thats what it's going to be, you need four numbers to describe where you are. Add a right angle to all three of those. So try to imagine that (you can't, the closest representation/analog in our world is a tesseract - see below)

In Einstein's relativity, time is what the fourth dimension is. He treats it as time, it's a temporal dimension though, not a spacial dimension. If you want to know where you are space time, you need the three spacial dimensions and you also need to know where you are in time because space and time are kind of the same thing, they're like two sides of the same coin. As you move through space, you're moving through time. So the further you look out into space, the earlier in time you're looking, so it's very important to know where you are in time. So thats why we treat it as another dimension. You can't not travel through time. If you're not moving, you're still traveling through time. You can slow it down if you travel near the speed of light or go next to some really large mass (see time dilation).
The shape of the universe, its theoretical, we don't know for sure, but many physicists think that there is a slight possible curative to it. It looks flat, don't worry about that right now it's not what I'm trying to get at, we think that the geometry of the universe is flat. And some physicists think it only looks flat because we're only looking at a very small chunk (our observable universe) and so there might be some really slight curvature that we can figure out through physics. And if there is some slight curvature that might mean that it might actually form this single object that comes back in on itself. This is all theoretical, there is no current evidence for any curvature, it looks completely flat. It's a distinction because in mathematics a dimension doesn't have little bits of curvature.
I don't think there's really any evidence that are higher dimensions spatially. There are theoretical higher dimensions in our universe in theoretical physics (the bulk).

Q: I heard physics mostly happens in four dimensional space? If so, then why can't physics of 2 or 3 dimensions be easily extended to 4?
A: The physics that happens in four dimensional space includes time as the fourth dimension, so it is the standard physics that we understand best.



I have felt the warmth of moonlight (concentrated ~400X with a parabolic mirror). Starlight energy can be measured, but is not significant (think of how dark it is at night compared to the day)..

Darker baking trays are generally steel, which is much less thermally conductive than the bright aluminum baking trays. However, the darker surface absorbs heat better, and the material is thin enough that the thermal conductivity makes little difference.

Dirt has enough air pockets in it to act as a decent thermal insulator (but sitting on dirt is still colder than sitting on a cushion). With no continuous metal, dirt is a poor electrical conductor. Thick dirt (a few feet) has enough mass to block radiation.

Most terpenes are chiral. Synthetics are usually a mix of left- and right-handed; naturals are usually all the same-handed.

Salt is pretty non-reactive with oils and waxes (unless quite hot). Molten salt is quite reactive, both sodium and chlorine, for example, will attack most oils once things are hot enough to break a few bonds (this happens even at room temperature, where the sodium in sodium hydroxide will eventually attack fats to produce soap).

Everything produces byproducts- even with H2, one gets H2O plus traces of OH- and H2O2.
Short chains like butane produce less and fewer byproducts than long chains.

Q: They cannot synthesis a complete and total 100% purity? i.e., the highest I've seen is 99.98\.99, why can't they get the last .01%, whats the barrier? What is the remaining .01%?
A: Cost versus need.
Each "9" cost more than the previous 9, and after a while another "9" makes less difference to the user.
Computer chips often start with 99.9999999% pure silicon.

Electrons bounce around on a scale from microseconds to seconds, and quarks morph far faster, so by the time you use the compounds anything below the level of atoms will have homogenized and make no difference at all.
On the other hand, the placement of the atoms is stable for extended periods, so chirality doesn't homogenize and it can matter.

0.15 M sodium chloride means 0.15 moles of sodium chloride per liter of water (which is about as salty as sweat or tears and 20% to 25% as salty as seawater.

Yes, this was known as the Vicary Method.

The masks they wore were to protect from "miasma," or the foul-smelling air, which they believed spread diseases like the plague. The beaks were filled with aromatic substances like herbs or spices.

Yes, so does metallic copper

Until recently it was assumed that all directions were equivalent (space), but there are hints of anisotropy.

Anisotropy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Minerals in mineral water are generally not inert, but in a good mineral water most are non-toxic and some are even beneficial (magnesium, calcium). However, some old mineral waters contained radium, and some natural springs are high in arsenic!