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I was reading a bit of stuff about stars the other day and stumbled across the fact that Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is getting closer to us by 5.5km per second.
That struck me as quite a rapid rate of closing a gap, so initially I thought I had misunderstood something, as surely that would mean it was on top of us/past us in next to no time at all.
So I looked up how far away it is and did some sums. It turns out that even at that speed it takes 5,000 years for the gap between us and Sirius to decrease by 1%. Sirius is one of our nearest neigbours - hence why it appears so bright.
Any facts that have stopped you in your tracks recently?
There are 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 unique permutations of a shuffled deck of cards
Only the female mosquito sucks blood and only to use the protiens in the blood for its eggs.
Therefore if you are bitten, you are 1/3rd mosquito parent, congratulations!
Only the female mosquito sucks blood and only to use the protiens in the blood for its eggs.
Therefore if you are bitten, you are 1/3rd mosquito parent, congratulations!
Midges also.
It turns out that even at that speed it takes 5,000 years for the gap between us and Sirius to decrease by 1%
Doesn't that mean in half a million years we are absolutely fekt? That's quite startling in itself if true.
Everest is getting a few mm taller each year but there's another peak nearby that's currently a bit lower than Everest but is growing slightly faster so in about a quarter of a million years it'll be taller than Everest (as long as Sirius doesn't start messing things up before then)
Doesn’t that mean in half a million years we are absolutely fekt?
No, because it's not moving directly towards us. It will be closest in about 60000 years and will then be moving away.
We're still absolutely fekt though, one way or another.
A person without a beard, is a person with a beard, without a beard.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
By "person" do you mean "bloke"?
Well. Just because I've never seen a lady bloke with a beard doesn't mean they couldn't have one. Maybe they're all just people with beards, without beards?
Makes you think, eh.
Not necessarily 😉
the pig-faced woman carnival attraction was actually a shaved bear in a dress.
Well. Just because I’ve never seen a lady bloke with a beard doesn’t mean they couldn’t have one. Maybe they’re all just people with beards, without beards?
Makes you think, eh.
You could say the same of tails, or wings.
I've never seen a human with a tail or wings...
...Well, at least not outside of Norfolk.
If you take all the positive integers 1,2,3,4,5,6.......up to infinity and sum them together, the answer is equivalent to -1/12
Now, 'clearly' that is nonsense because how can you ever sum all those positive integers anyway and even if you could then any fule can see you'll get a very large positive number.
BUT -
there are some mathematical / scientific sums (eg: string theory) that in order to work out you need an approximation for the sum, and if you plug in -1/12 in place of it - then the rest of the sum works out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_%E2%8B%AF
with windbaggery coming from descendants of today’s protagonists.
I can think of one who’ll still be on the thread even if all that’s left is their brain in a pickle jar
The word ‘mortgage’ comes from a French term that means ‘death pledge‘, or a contract that only expires upon death.
Assuming it's not paid off by that time and you have insurance.
If you put a werewolf on the moon, nothing would happen.
The lane in which the greatest number of vehicles will drive on any motorway is L-1 subject to a minimum value of 2 where L is the number of lanes currently open to traffic.
The speed of any given vehicle in lane L-1 is an infinitely variable value and the only number it cannot be even momentarily is the actual speed limit. Cars driven in L-1 can transition from (for example) 68mph to 74mph without their speed ever actually being 70mph. There's a sort of temporal blip as the needle creeps towards 70.
Edit: sorry I've got the hump after an hour on the M25 and clearly this is not startling at all. 😕
The UK's only continuous circular motorway is the M60.
We're all familiar with it being further round the outside of a bend than the inside - hence Strava lines, and running tracks with staggered starts. But exactly how much further is it then around the 'M25' (nws nickc above) if you were in the left hand lane going clockwise compared to the LH lane going anti-cw?
Must be miles, eh? Nope. Less than 200 metres
Approximate to a circle, with circumference C = pi x D where D = diam of the M25
But, assume that's the inside diameter, now assume the outside is 8 x 3m lanes and a central reservation wider. Call it 30m but that's per radius, at both ends = 60m.
So, distance round outside = pi x (D+60) = pi x D + pi x 60. Leaving a difference of only pi x 60 = 188m. 6s longer at a continuous 70mph.
And that's probably overstated, lanes are typically 2.8m I read somewhere, there aren't always 8 lanes and the central reservation isn't 6m.
Bear that in mind if you have to join and exit at opposite sides, a wise choice could save you 2-3 seconds.
Yes, but the earth is spinning so it's kind of like a giant conveyer belt. You'd be better to take the route where more of the conveyer belt is going in your direction than against you. Not many know this handy hint.
The UK’s only continuous circular motorway is the M60.
It might be signed as such, but to drive right round it you have to exit and re-join at junction 18, Simister Island.
exit and re-join at junction 18, Simister Island
No, Simister Island is subject to motorway rules and the M60 is continuous through it. You don't go on the M62.
Yeah, I know it's all official M60, but the fact you use 2 sliproads and a couple of sets of traffic lights mean I disagree that its continuous.
18 / Simister anti-clockwise got no traffic lights or non-MWay speed restrictions, just a shortcut past the roundabout.
Jesus wept, you lot are argumentative today, has the Brexit thread been closed? 😁
Sorry to derail your thread Tom. I'll try and come up with a less indisputable 'fact' later. 👍
Facts not opinions. Definitely no Fox Newz vibes emanating from me.
‘Pillars of Creation’ pic from Hubble. Left hand thing is over 30 trillion km in length which is around 1000 times the diameter of the solar system.
Andromeda is on a direct collision course with the Milky Way. It's moving towards us at over 110km/s and in about 4.5 billion years it'll be right on us.
Two quite startling vaguely interesting facts:
- even though the galaxies are colliding, there is enough space between the stars in each galaxy that nothing may actually physically contact anything else
- even though it's 4.5 billion years until the main body of the galaxies meet, the outer halo of the two galaxies is already touching!
As well as space being quite big, time is quite long.
Cleopatra lived closer to today than to the building of the pyramids. Dinosaurs lived for so long that fossils from the earliest dinosaurs (Triassic) existed at the same time as dinosaurs from the later (Cretaceous) period.
The Stegosaurus lived 150 million years ago; the T-Rex 67 million years ago.
That means a T-Rex is closer in time to us than it was to Stegosaurus.
but to drive right round it you have to exit and re-join at junction 18
you're not exiting and re-joining, you're still on the motorway. Roads don't stop being themselves just because there's a roundabout.
I teach physics in Luton
So in tell my students that if they get a job commuting to London then they’ll travel about 100km per day by train.
If they commute 300 days per year for 10 years they will have traveled one light second
It’s eight light minutes to the sun, 4 is light years to the nearest star and 10,000,0000,000 to the most distant visible objects
The M25 isn’t continuous?
I didn’t dare ask but was thinking the same.
But is the Blackwell crossing not motorway?
The M25 isn’t continuous?
The Dartford Crossing has a separate road number.
But is the Blackwell crossing not motorway?
It's A road, think it's the A282
Edit, my mistake the A282 is the Dartford crossing. It's the A102.
I didn’t dare ask but was thinking the same.
I'm Northern so I've no idea, I always just assumed. There's Dartford too I suppose?
I teach physics
10,000,0000,000
Good job you don't teach maths. 😁
It might be signed as such, but to drive right round it you have to exit and re-join at junction 18, Simister Island.
There's loads of places around the M60 where if you stayed 'on' it, i.e used the lane that was going 'straight on', you'd end up getting off it. Intuitive it is not.
Intuitive it is not.
I forget exactly where, but there's a point sorta North-East going anticlockwise where a slip road merges you into the 'fast' lane, that's always a fun surprise for the less confident of drivers.
a slip road merges you into the ‘fast’ lane, that’s always fun for the less confident of drivers.
Got one of those here in Glasgow on the M8. Always carnage.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @55.8688968,-4.2398185,3a,75y,275.52h,76.98t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skZ1xLQauwWhikhicSxnFHg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
To add to the joy, about a mile down the road there's an EXIT off the motorway from the 'fast' lane.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @55.8696003,-4.2654655,3a,75y,258.2h,87.07t/data=!3m10!1e1!3m8!1s6OQM_5EjZTWsaVcgoYwdHw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D6OQM_5EjZTWsaVcgoYwdHw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D316.05786%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i38
I love how this discussion of "mind-blowing facts" evolved into a discussion of the technicalities of motorway junctions and numbering within a page. So British.
Okay, back to mind-blowing facts.
I'm probably going to get the specific dinosaurs wrong, but the dinosaurs were around for so long that the T-Rex is closer in history to the iPod than it is to the triceratops.
I love how this discussion of “mind-blowing facts” evolved into a discussion of the technicalities of motorway junctions
indeed, though could hear more about M60's Sinister Island island. Anything to do with the Broadbottom Triangle?
the T-Rex is closer in history to the iPod than it is to the triceratops.
....and we've run out of mind-blowing facts after a page and a quarter, that one having appeared halfway down the first page.
Back to motorways I think...
Got one of those here in Glasgow on the M8. Always carnage.
Yeah, just like that one. I thought my girlfriend was going to have an aneurism. If you're only in Glasgow you probably heard her.
we’ve run out of mind-blowing facts after a page and a quarter,
Oh, no, that can't be right at all.
Here's one: Samsung have a pneumatic arse that they use to test how their phones cope with being sat on.
….and we’ve run out of mind-blowing facts after a page and a quarter, that one having appeared halfway down the first page.
Oh balls. Sorry, I missed it in all the Exciting Motorway Chat.
Okay, not exactly mind blowing, but in any group of 23 people or more, at least two of them will probably share a birthday.
Another: The woodpecker can lick its own brain. (Its tongue can be drawn up the back of its skull to cushion its brain when pecking wood.)
Here’s one: Samsung have a pneumatic arse that they use to test how their phones cope with being sat on.
Not exactly mind-blowing - have you seen the number of pneumatic arses there are on the politics threads, posting 24/7?
oi, it's a while since I've been called pneumatic.
One familiar to the xkcd massiv:
there are species of orchid which are pollinated by bees, imitating a female bee to entice a male to pseudo copulation...
I know. An easy mistake to make but moving on. (Note: these are not honey bees, where it's only the sterile female workers which get out and about round the flowers, most bee species are actually not social insects, so the males have to get heir own food, etc.)
Anyway, closing on the mind-blowing fact: some of these species of orchid have become self-pollinating, because the species of bee they evolved to attract have become extinct (I dunno, too much pseudo-copulation?) So we only know about these extinct bee species because of the idealised pictures of the females preserved by orchid species (themselves heading for extinction, self-pollinating not being a great long-term strategy).
Whew. Wish I hadn't started...
Some people may know the story of the rice and chessboard - there are various versions but basically a king promised a reward to the inventor of the game of chess who asked for 1 grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 etc, doubling each time.
If you actually did that, by the time you got to the 64th square, you'd have 18 quintillion grains of rice on the board which is about 210 billion tonnes. And more than just covering the chessboard, it is about 275x the world annual production of rice.
TLDR: Numbers get big quickly.
The Eiffel Tower grows six inches in summer.
And here's me thinking it was a long way down to the chemist....
As well as space being quite big, time is quite long.
And yet - if you had had one of the latest generation atomic clocks at the exact point the universe was born, and pressed start on it at exactly that moment...... it would have drifted by about 0.1s up until today. 100ms in 13.7 billion years. In fact, when i make a cup of tea in a moment i might make a brief detour and go and look at the UK's master timepiece, that everything else synchronizes to (through a security controlled lab window, they don't let me touch it I quickly add)
In a strange twist, the bloke that knows how it works better than most and leads the team that maintains it can pretty well be relied on to always be late for meetings.
And here’s me thinking it was a long way down to the chemist….
That's just peanuts compared to space.
The most startling fact for me on that video is that Mars is (comparatively) dinky
One teaspoon of soil contains several miles of fungal mycelium.
There is an individual tree in America that covers 100 acres and has over 10,000 trunks.
In a strange twist, the bloke that knows how it works better than most and leads the team that maintains it can pretty well be relied on to always be late for meetings.
Late by how much? Oh and what is an atomic clock compared with to determine the drift?
There is an individual tree in America that covers 100 acres and has over 10,000 trunks.
I misread that for a moment and thought it must be one hell of an impressive elephant.
All the gold that's ever been extracted from the ground would fit in a 23x23x23 metre cube
If you launch a black hole out of a galaxy it can leave a trail of new stars, big enough for us to see, in its wake as it travels through space.
I love how this discussion of “mind-blowing facts” evolved into a discussion of the technicalities of motorway junctions and numbering within a page. So British.
Wait til they get started on railway junctions 😉
Late by how much?
If that was always the same we could calculate in an offset. It is, alas, a random factor.....
Oh and what is an atomic clock compared with to determine the drift?
I knew i'd get hauled up on this. It hasn't exactly drifted (truth be told we didn't start it at the dawn of time either) - rather that's the uncertainty in the measurement. So we know it's correct to within that level.
The second is actually defined as equivalent to "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom" which is measured by tuning microwave lasers to this transition. The accuracy comes from uncertainties induced by other external fields which currently are down in the 1/10^13 range per second of measuring, or if you measure and average over long periods can be at 1/10^16 levels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock
Of course, 'a second' is also a fraction of the time it takes for the earth to revolve, and because that's not at a constant rate every now and then the timekeepers have to agree to add in or subtract a leap second to keep them aligned. So far, only positive additions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_standard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
Mike the Headless Chicken (April 20, 1945 – March 17, 1947) was a male Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off.
Good job you don’t teach maths. 😁
I’m this case a fair point
Ironically i spend a huge amount of my time teaching maths. One of the things I must say every day is to work in standard form. To avoid errors like this
The word pool as in pool of money comes from the French word Poulet. It derives from a game where people would throw stones at chickens.
If you replaced every atom, in a 12 gram piece of charcoal, with a table tennis ball, the table tennis balls would cover the USA to nearly the top of the atmosphere
the table tennis balls would cover the USA to nearly the top of the atmosphere
Which could only be a good thing.
There is an individual tree in America that covers 100 acres and has over 10,000 trunks.
Pando! Being America, there a chance they’re going to put a road through it 🙁
andylc
Free Member
Mike the Headless Chicken (April 20, 1945 – March 17, 1947) was a male Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off
Stretching things a wee bit there. Sadly though, he only died as he choked on a seed
Seeing as we've done chess and the universe:
There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the observable universe!
Sauce:
Wait til they get started on railway junctions 😉
I see we've descended to points scoring as usual!
The surface area of the inside of your lungs is the same as a tennis court - and all your blood vessels if put end to end would reach halfway to the moon
In Roman times Cs in latin were pronounced hard, Caesar was pronounced Kaiser. It was only when the French started to speak latin in the Middle Ages that Cs became soft.
There's enough protein in a single ejaculation from a blue whale, to feed a human for an entire year.
Got one of those here in Glasgow on the M8. Always carnage.
Sounds like fun! Any opportunity to hoof it down an on-ramp! 😁
Before they split the kingston bridge up it was 7 lanes each way ( its now divided) and one exit came out of lane 5 ie with two lanes to the right and 4 to the left.
I watched a video a while back, a man talking about atoms, not sure of his qualifications to speak about them but he appeared to my uneducated mind to be very knowledgeable and persuasive. Anyway something about everything that makes up an atom doesn't exist (because we can't measure it in the same way we measure ordinary stuff) ergo we don't exist, nothing exists, sure, okay. Quite startling, as I say, he was persuasive. Another fact he stated was the scale of the atom, I don't remember exactly, but say you scaled up an atom to be a mile in size, the nucleus would still only be the size of a grain of sand - - - note the empty space of nothing. However I did a quick google recently and what I found said a marble in a football pitch.
Any recommendations for free resources to satisfy my curiosity and delve a little deeper into the subject? Free online courses perhaps?