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Joe the Stoic

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Joe the Stoic

The Sun has completed about 19 orbits around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Humans have existed for a little bit more than 1/1200th of a single orbit of the Sun.

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*rubs hands together* Science!

The earth is in the Sol system, which is in the Milky Way, which is in the Local Group, which is in the Virgo Supercluster, which is in the universe. (Gives you an existential crisis, doesn't it?)

In theory (that is, according to the principles of homogeneity and isotropy), the universe has no center or edge. (I guess that's not a fact but yeah)

Matter makes up a mere 5% of the mass of our universe. Dark matter is 27% and dark energy is 68%.

10% of all human being ever born are alive at this moment.

The escape velocity of earth is approximately 11 km/h, regardless of mass.

In the 1980s, 37% of computer science majors were women. (It's at 18% in 2012)

The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s (not very eye-opening but okay)

The cyanide in about three cherry pits can kill you (if you bite into it).

Global warming.

Uhmm...that's all I can think of for now, sorry!

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Perissodactyla

"On May 10, 2016, NASA verified 1,284 new exoplanets found by the Kepler Space Telescope; the single largest finding of planets to date.

Since 1988, over 3000 exoplanets have been confirmed by all detection methods, including the Kepler mission, (more specifically, 3422 planets in 2560 planetary systems, including 582 multiple planetary systems, have been confirmed, as of June 1, 2016)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_%28spacecraft%29

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Men are from Mars; women are from Venus.

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A study was done to look into the wing markings on fruit flies vs fruit flies that didn't have any visible markings that uncovered the complex trails of evolution by looking at the DNA segments, CREs (cis-regulatory elements, sequences that are near code proteins) that are responsible for turning "on" or "off" a gene such as markings. Wing spots play the role in attracting mates for the male flies and can be the deciding factor for some different kinds. The mutating of the gene doesn't compromise it, and there are different functions depending on what 'version' of CREs a species has. Studies showed that when the yellow gene was switched "on", it produced a black spot, and whether or not there was a spot on a wing was due to the mutation of this yellow gene. In different groups of flies that didn't have markings, both were caused by independent mutation in the same CRE. But further, the gain of spots were found to also be independent and were a result of distinct ancestral CREs; the wing pattern wasn't generated from scratch, as the gene was already active and needed only modification.

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That beach-ready tan skin and beautiful red eyes tho

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The escape velocity of earth is approximately 11 km/h, regardless of mass.

That would be 11km/s (per second).

This is Earth as seen from the viewpoint of Saturn. The photo was taken by Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013. All of us are in this photo:

20130722_annotated_earth-moon_from_satur

Do you see me, I waved. Did you?

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The escape velocity of earth is approximately 11 km/h, regardless of mass.

That would be 11km/s (per second).

Oh that's right, sorry!

Men are from Mars; women are from Venus.

Nice.

Did you know, on Venus it rains sulfuric acid? There are clouds of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, and an air pressure about 90 times that of earth, even though both planets are about similar size.

Titan has a "methane cycle", similar to the water cycle on earth.

Space is weird. :D

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touching-not-so-much

I was watching a series of psychology video lectures from Stanford, and the professor said that the penis specific form of "phantom limb" syndrome has been documented to happen to straight/cis men who lose their penis due to some accident or necessary surgery, but is not reported by men who felt like they were female, and have had theirs removed as part of transitioning.

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The escape velocity of earth is approximately 11 km/h, regardless of mass.

That would be 11km/s (per second).

This is Earth as seen from the viewpoint of Saturn. The photo was taken by Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013. All of us are in this photo:

20130722_annotated_earth-moon_from_satur

Do you see me, I waved. Did you?

I could see your house.

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Sorry, bit it's impossible to clone a dinosaur. The half life of DNA is 5,240 years. The only way to see one is using a time machine.

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One 5 hour flight in an aircraft exposes you to as much radiation as 8 dental x-rays. Pilots and airline workers are considered radiation workers and their yearly exposure is closely monitored. Restrictions are also placed on pregnant individuals traveling by air.

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just an owl

Sorry, bit it's impossible to clone a dinosaur. The half life of DNA is 5,240 years. The only way to see one is using a time machine.

Haven't you seen Jurassic Park? :p

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Apples, cherries, peaches, apricots all contain cyanide in the seeds.

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IntrovertedBuddhist

Sorry, bit it's impossible to clone a dinosaur. The half life of DNA is 5,240 years. The only way to see one is using a time machine.

Sorry, but time machines are impossible. At least the "Back To The Future" variety. To actually travel backwards in time would require the technology to harness black holes, we not only couldn't build one with current tech (an enormous amount of mass/energy would be needed, planetary engineering levels), but even if we could, you wouldn't want it anywhere near an inhabited solar system.

Still, there's nothing stopping roboticists from building robo-dinosaurs with special effects artists applying their "skin". Or geneticists could bio-engineer a dinosaur-like creature from scratch. :D

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Through use of radio-carbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), researchers have pushed the dates back for the Indus Valley Civilization by 2,500 years, making it older than those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3621622/Indus-Valley-civilisation-pre-date-Egypt-s-pharoahs-Ancient-society-2-500-years-older-thought.html

In France, a cave occupied by Neanderthals has been dated to 176,000 years ago. http://www.livescience.com/54906-neanderthals-built-bizarre-underground-ring-structures.html

I love the way genetic studies have also pushed dates further back in time, too.

Ancient Wolf Genome Pushes Back Dawn of the Dog by several thousand years.

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Siimo van der fietspad

On Venus it snows lead. And tin.

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There are 60 types of bacteria living in your belly button.

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Can we please stick to stating interesting scientific facts and avoiding speculation?

Probably not.

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Amazing scientific facts, eh?

...hm..

...how about this: the fractal dimension of the boundary of the Mandelbrot Set is 2.

This bears some explaining to the majority of you. Lines are 1-dimension of course, planes are 2, cubes are 3, etc. You can take any number of lines, or a line of any finite length or complexity, and it's still just 1-dimensional. The Mandelbrot Set is this lovely guy, and yes, it's a fractal. Fractals, being a bit crazy (technical term I know), behave oddly in some contexts. Relevant here is the notion that you can take something built out of mere lines, and, with the introduction of infinite amounts of detail, those lines can start "filling space" (again, totally a technical term), and start behaving a little like planes. Coastlines also share this property, because you can zoom in as much as you like and there's new twists and turns and wiggles even if they're incredibly small, and the more convoluted it is, the higher the dimension is. Britain's coast has been calculated at about 1.25, South Africa (which is simpler and smoother) is 1.05, and Norway (which has a notoriously complex coast) is 1.52. The fractal dimension of the Koch Snowflake is about 1.262. The Sierpenski Triangle's boundary, its outer edges added all together, gets to about 1.585.

Fractals all have infinite detail by their very nature, but somehow, some manage to be "more infinite" than others. And the "more infinite" a 1-dimensional fractal line gets, the higher its fractal dimension. It's a weird concept, but does make an intuitive sort of sense if you squint at it hard enough. Add sufficiently complex rules in, and you can probably get even higher numbers.

But the fractal dimension of the boundary of the Mandelbrot Set is 2.

Not 1.9. Not 1.997385whatever. Actually 2. The 1-dimensional line you get simply by tracing around the black sections in that first image? It gets so god-awful gnarled, so tangled up in itself, that even the byzantine standards of fractal dimension just throw up their hands and declare it, not a line, but a plane. It's a line that honest-to-goodness has area.

And the rules for constructing this monstrous affront against logic and decency and spacial reality? Take each (complex) number, keep squaring it and adding the original each time, and if it ever gets bigger than 2 in any direction, throw it out. Keep the rest. That's it.

I just... I don't... like... okay so literally every professor I've worked with who's studied these things deeply believes in God (deist, most of them). And I'm no longer surprised why.

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The very different genetic disorders Angelman syndrome and Pader-Willi syndrome are caused by the same deletion on chromosome 15, the difference/what determines which one you get: if it's the maternal or the paternal chromosome (Angelman is a mistake on the maternal chromosome, Pader-Willi a mistake on the paternal one).

Some people have a mutation on chromosome 3 that makes them practically immune to HIV.

lemurs are colorblind, but they have a strong sense of smell. They belong to the primates with wet noses, which use smell as their strongest sense. Humans belong to the primates with dry noses, and therefore have a not particularly strong sense of smell, but colored sight.

(natural wet nose => better sense of smell, example: dog or lemur)

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For Game of Thrones fans-- Dire wolves were real. They lived in the last Ice Age. They were 5 ft long, nearly 200 lbs, and had a bite force of 500 lbs .

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I don't know if you would categorize this as eye-opening scientific fact...it's not space travel or anything.

Since World War II in almost every country the numbers of Jewish inhabitants decreased, stagnated or only slightly increased. The only country with a remarkable increase in Jewish inhabitants next to Israel was Germany (of all countries), with an increase of around 200% between the 1970s and 2010.

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There is a substantial CO2 fertilization effect from increasing atmospheric CO2. According to closed air experiments, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 increases plant growth of C3 plants by ~40% and C4 plants by ~10%. However, for some reason open air experiments only show half this effect (doubling of atmospheric CO2 increases C3 plant growth by ~20% and C4 plant growth by ~5%). Other methods of empirically estimating the CO2 fertilization effect (such as using time series analysis of past crop yields and CO2 levels or using satellite data to measure primary production) tend to agree with the open air experiment results.

If you try to quantify the net external benefit due to the CO2 fertilization effect, it is typically in the $5-$15 per metric ton of CO2 range.

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Between its discovery and its reclasssification/"demotion", Pluto has not been recognized as a planet for long enough to complete even one full rotation around the sun.

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If the earth heats up and global warming kicks our asses then theres going to be no coffee or chocolate :(

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If the earth heats up and global warming kicks our asses then theres going to be no coffee or chocolate :(

Why do you think this?

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