Totally Random Science Facts

Wiccan_Child

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C elegans worms are made up of exactly 959 or 1031 (somatic) cells, depending on the sex.
If they're the worms I'm thinking of, you can actually identify the exact family tree of every single cell! Dawkins wrote about them in his latest book, so it must be true.
 
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TemperateSeaIsland

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Kent Hovind calls himself 'Dr' because of this. If anyone can read page by page to beyond page 30, I'll be impressed. That's all I managed before giving up in despair and running out into the street screaming.

The best thing about that whole thing is that the last page number looks like "LOL", which is pretty much my reaction to it.
 
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MorkandMindy

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C elegans worms are made up of exactly 959 or 1031 (somatic) cells, depending on the sex.


If the sex is good, I mean really good, do they end up with more cells and total 1031, or do they lose cells to become 959?
 
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Targ

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The best thing about that whole thing is that the last page number looks like "LOL", which is pretty much my reaction to it.

Maybe I should keep on reading it every time I need a lol. Usually for that I just pick up my copy of "The Genesis Flood" by Morris and Whitcomb, open at a random page and cringe my way through it.
 
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Naraoia

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It would require a very long journey for a polar bear to be able to eat a penguin. :)
Hey, weren't auks originally called penguins? I can't even remember where I read that (one of the BBC/Attenborough books???), so I'm sure I'm totally right ^_^

9^2 = 81
99^2 = 9801
999^2 = 998001
9999^2 = 99980001

The result of a number comprised of X 9s squared is (X-1) 9s, an 8, (X-1) 0s and a 1

This also holds true in bases other than 10 for the largest digit. In base 8:
7777^2 = 77760001

Thus in base N with X digits of N-1 the square is (X-1) "N-1"s, a single N-2, (X-1) 0s and a single 1, for N>2
Positive integers are so darned cool.

If they're the worms I'm thinking of, you can actually identify the exact family tree of every single cell! Dawkins wrote about them in his latest book, so it must be true.
:D You bastard, you stole my comment! The bit about the cell lineages, not Dawkins, I mean :p
 
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Wiccan_Child

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At the beginning of the twentieth century it was still a hotly contested issue whether or not atoms existed. Until a little known physicist, by the name of Albert Einstein, settled the question.
I'm not sure that's true. Einstein did a lot of things, but I don't think he proved the existence of atoms. Atoms were known to exist about a century and a half before Einstein's time: chemists were honing in on atomic theory by as early as 1750CE. The idea of atoms itself dates back to Ancient Greece.
 
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lesliedellow

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I'm not sure that's true. Einstein did a lot of things, but I don't think he proved the existence of atoms. Atoms were known to exist about a century and a half before Einstein's time: chemists were honing in on atomic theory by as early as 1750CE. The idea of atoms itself dates back to Ancient Greece.

Einstein showed that Brownian motion is exactly what you would expect if atoms existed. Up until then there were scientists who rejected the idea for philosophical reasons, as much as anything else.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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Einstein showed that Brownian motion is exactly what you would expect if atoms existed. Up until then there were scientists who rejected the idea for philosophical reasons, as much as anything else.
Exactly, and not for scientific reasons. It was no more contestable then than evolution is now. The atomic nature of matter was known in the 1800s, and research into atoms thereafter wasn't to see if atoms exist, but how they exist. In 1909, for instance, research wasn't going into trying to disprove atomic theory, but in disproving one model of atomic physics in favour of another - specifically, Rutherford's model over the 'plum pudding' model.

Further, Einstein's paper on Brownian motion wasn't a proof of the existence of atoms, but an explanation of one phenomenon in terms of another. Atoms were known to exist at the time Brownian motion was discovered in the early 1800s; Einstein simply developed the mathematics that could adequately explain their apparently random behaviour. His triumph wasn't in the discovery of atoms, but rather an explanation of a hitherto mysterious thermodynamic response.
 
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lesliedellow

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Exactly, and not for scientific reasons. It was no more contestable then than evolution is now.

It was contestible and contested. So was the theory of evolution in 1859, and not for obscurantist reasons, or, in the case of evolution, even for unscientific ones. Until the atomic theory of matter had been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, which it hadn't until Einstein came along, people were free to doubt it for whatever reason they liked, without being accused of obscurantism.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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It was contestible and contested.
I'd ask by whom, but individual names aren't that helpful.

So was the theory of evolution in 1859, and not for obscurantist reasons, or, in the case of evolution, even for unscientific ones.
True, but, both atomic theory and evolution were accepted by 1910, and the former had a 100 year head start on the latter.

Until the atomic theory of matter had been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, which it hadn't until Einstein came along, people were free to doubt it for whatever reason they liked, without being accused of obscurantism.
As I said, atomic theory had been demonstrated before Einstein's time. Richard Lambing was postulating on the structure of the atom in the 1830s, and the flow of subatomic particles was the prevalent theory of electricity in the 1870s. Hittorf was well aware of atoms and molecules when he conducted his experiments into electricity - in 1879, he was explaining the curvature of electron beams by way of negatively-charged molecules. If atomic theory was widly contested in the early 1900s, what were all these physicists doing experimenting on things that, according to you, were unproven to even exist?

No, atoms were a fact of science from the early 1800s; the experiments conducted in the 1800s demonstrate this, as does the terminology used by scientists as early as the turn of the century (the 19[sup]th[/sup] century, that is). They knew atoms exist, just as we know they exist today.
 
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lesliedellow

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If atomic theory was widly contested in the early 1900s, what were all these physicists doing experimenting on things that, according to you, were unproven to even exist?

You do not have to wait until a theory had been conclusively proven true until you conduct experiments on the assumption that it is true. If you did, it never would, in fact, be proven true. At what point you cross the line, and say something is finally proven, is a subjective judgment, and one which different scientists can make at different times. However, after Einstein's paper, it was no longer being contested by anybody.
 
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MorkandMindy

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If India drove all of the cattle in the country to Pakistan, both countries would be better off




(that's just a random guess, another guess is it might be even better to get some sheep or goats to replace them, anyway does anyone know if a millipede can walk backward?)
 
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MorkandMindy

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Flea jumping facts are the most useless facts in existence.

A flea can jump 200mm or 250mm (8 to 10 inches), and on rare occasions even 325mm (13 inches) has been observed.

it is downright pointless to scale that to a 7 foot human jumping over the Eiffel Tower or a Blue whale leaping out of the sea and hitting a jetliner.

What is happening is chemical energy in the flea is being converted into potential gravitational energy.

The same ratio of conversion of chemical energy into potential energy would allow a human athelete to jump, 13 inches.
 
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MorkandMindy

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My thought experiment is to stick half an acre (or so) of fleas together side by side and get them all to jump at once. The total mass of fleas is 100kg, then when they all jump at once they are producing the same energy as on 100kg human doing the same thing.

The scaling has to be done in parallel, not series.

That most humans can jump higher than this shows the jumping mechanism is better, or we are less affected by air resistance (any opinions on which?)

cheers M of M&M
 
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