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Project Orion - a spaceship that uses atomic bombs as a fuel with little mass restrictions. Aside from the fallout issues, we could be living in interstellar arks even now. However, progress was halted in 1963 by The Partial Test Ban Treaty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projec...r_propulsion%29 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Lxx2VAYi8
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 15:44 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 18:26 |
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theflyingorc posted:Oh wait, it was still a computer. I was wrong. "HOLY poo poo!" ~7 year old me
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 16:01 |
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Dogs can't look up. Also, Antarctica is the largest desert in the world. It's a cold desert though so I guess that doesn't count.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 16:45 |
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dog days are over posted:Dogs can't look up. Did you learn that down at the Winchester? The average human has approximately six pounds of skin.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 17:02 |
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I was chatting with my friend about ancient civilizations last night, and I realized that since as far back as I can remember, I've thought of basically every "primative" civilization, the mayans, for example, as cavemen with cool buildings. It kind of blew my mind that every person from those civilizations was as cognizant and logical as us, they just didn't have all of the required information to make as much sense of the world as we do.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 17:29 |
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dog days are over posted:Dogs can't look up. Then what are these dogs doing?  
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 17:32 |
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Phlogiston 4 Lyfe posted:I was chatting with my friend about ancient civilizations last night, and I realized that since as far back as I can remember, I've thought of basically every "primative" civilization, the mayans, for example, as cavemen with cool buildings. It kind of blew my mind that every person from those civilizations was as cognizant and logical as us, they just didn't have all of the required information to make as much sense of the world as we do. Seriously? The Mayans were hardly primitive by any definition of the word.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 17:58 |
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Velociraptors had feathers FEATHERS http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...70920145402.htm I'm not sure if that makes them more or less scary when they're chasing you down. I've had dreams of being attacked by a giant chicken and it was loving terrifying More personal fact next. I'm 25 and my grandfather was born in the 1880's (he spends most of his time being dead these days). It feels like there should be a few more generations in there somewhere
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 18:00 |
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Phlogiston 4 Lyfe posted:I was chatting with my friend about ancient civilizations last night, and I realized that since as far back as I can remember, I've thought of basically every "primative" civilization, the mayans, for example, as cavemen with cool buildings. It kind of blew my mind that every person from those civilizations was as cognizant and logical as us, they just didn't have all of the required information to make as much sense of the world as we do.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 18:00 |
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clarabelle posted:Velociraptors had feathers Birds can look pretty scary. Add some tiny arms and replace beak with teeth and bam dinosaur. 
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 18:21 |
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Swiss Army Knife posted:Birds can look pretty scary. Add some tiny arms and replace beak with teeth and bam dinosaur. Having once been attacked by several gulls (didn't exactly have the time to figure out what kind) after accidentally getting too close to the nest, I can certainly agree that birts can be loving terrifying, especially when they're screaming and swooping at your head
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 19:02 |
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Phlogiston 4 Lyfe posted:I was chatting with my friend about ancient civilizations last night, and I realized that since as far back as I can remember, I've thought of basically every "primative" civilization, the mayans, for example, as cavemen with cool buildings. It kind of blew my mind that every person from those civilizations was as cognizant and logical as us, they just didn't have all of the required information to make as much sense of the world as we do. Holy gently caress.  This sounds so retardedly simple, yet it's something I've never really bothered to think about. I feel like an idiot.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 19:40 |
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It might seem kinda dickish to say but isn't that super obvious?
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 19:54 |
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It might seem kinda dickish to say but isn't that super obvious? The average person might KNOW this is true if they think about it, but almost nobody instinctively thinks it's true.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 20:14 |
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I dunno, it just seems like one of the very first things you learn about history.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 20:26 |
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In a similar vein, everyone knows we've been to the moon, but people don't really stop and think that we've been to the loving MOON Like, people have gotten out of a vehicle and walked around up there. It just amazes me.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 20:30 |
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Corman posted:In a similar vein, everyone knows we've been to the moon, but people don't really stop and think that we've been to the loving MOON I think of that every time i look at the moon, it really is awesome. And then when i see mars i think, we have sent loving robots up there to check it out, Right now this very instant there is a robot up there scoping out the Martian landscape... So wild.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 20:39 |
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Corman posted:In a similar vein, everyone knows we've been to the moon, but people don't really stop and think that we've been to the loving MOON This definitely blows my mind every time I think about it. Not only the fact that we've been to the loving moon, but also that we went from being confined to the ground on the whole (1903) to man standing on the moon (1969) in 66 years. Sixty six years. That's shorter than the average lifespan. Can you imagine living to remember both this things? From "Oh this flying vehicle crap will never get going" to "Wow, that's actually a guy on the actual moon". Jesus Christ we're good at this science lark. EDIT: I do math good. N3RDSTER fucked around with this message at Oct 14, 2010 around 21:05 |
| # ? Oct 14, 2010 20:58 |
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Phlogiston 4 Lyfe posted:I was chatting with my friend about ancient civilizations last night, and I realized that since as far back as I can remember, I've thought of basically every "primative" civilization, the mayans, for example, as cavemen with cool buildings. It kind of blew my mind that every person from those civilizations was as cognizant and logical as us, they just didn't have all of the required information to make as much sense of the world as we do. Why stop there? Behaviourally modern humans (i.e. showing modern levels of abstract thought and artistic creativity) have existed for at least 50,000 years, whilst anatomically modern humans go back as far as 200,000 years. Wiki that shizzle, it's fascinating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolut...an_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 21:11 |
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Phlogiston 4 Lyfe posted:I was chatting with my friend about ancient civilizations last night, and I realized that since as far back as I can remember, I've thought of basically every "primative" civilization, the mayans, for example, as cavemen with cool buildings. It kind of blew my mind that every person from those civilizations was as cognizant and logical as us, they just didn't have all of the required information to make as much sense of the world as we do.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 21:20 |
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Away all Goats posted:I doubt the ones who lived in caves and painted on them ("cavemen") were very different from us either. Seriously, those guys had cars, mailboxes and everything. 
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 21:49 |
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Phlogiston 4 Lyfe posted:I was chatting with my friend about ancient civilizations last night, and I realized that since as far back as I can remember, I've thought of basically every "primative" civilization, the mayans, for example, as cavemen with cool buildings. It kind of blew my mind that every person from those civilizations was as cognizant and logical as us, they just didn't have all of the required information to make as much sense of the world as we do.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 22:14 |
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I saw these facts in an old Popular Mechanics magazine back in early the 2000s --------- * One dragster's 500-inch Hemi makes more horsepower then the first 8 rows at Daytona. * Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1 1/2 gallons of nitro per second, the same rate of fuel consumption as a fully loaded 747 but with 4 times the energy volume. * The supercharger takes more power to drive than a stock hemi makes. * Even with nearly 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into nearly-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock. * Dual magnetos apply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder. * At stoichiometric (exact) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture (for nitro), the flame front of nitromethane measures 7050 degrees F. * Nitromethane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases. * Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression-plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting off its fuel flow. * If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in those cylinders and then explodes with a force that can blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or blow the block in half. * Dragsters twist the crank (torsionally) so far (20 degrees in the big end of the track) that sometimes cam lobes are ground offset from front to rear to re-phase the valve timing somewhere closer to synchronization with the pistons. * To exceed 300mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G's. But in reaching 200 mph well before 1/2 track, launch acceleration is closer to 8G's. * If all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs $1000.00 per second. * Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have read this sentence.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 22:24 |
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In 1884, the Washington Monument was the highest building in the world.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:W...dings,_1884.jpg Edit: Okay, not as mind-blowing as the other facts in this thread, but just trying to contribute. Regression fucked around with this message at Oct 14, 2010 around 22:49 |
| # ? Oct 14, 2010 22:43 |
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Washington DC was at one point occupied by British Soldiers, who burnt and vandalized several buildings, including the White House. The smallest capillaries in your lunges are only wide enough for one blood cell to pass through at a time. The Bible took about 1,600 years to write.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 23:19 |
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theflyingorc posted:Oh wait, it was still a computer. I was wrong. If you had waited just one more post this joke would have been roughly ten million times funnier with the second post topping this page.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 23:32 |
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theflyingorc posted:The average person might KNOW this is true if they think about it, but almost nobody instinctively thinks it's true. No that's just weird, they were the same people as we are, why would anyone think otherwise
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 23:53 |
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Luminous Cow posted:Did you learn that down at the Winchester? The typical human eye can detect roughly ten million different colors. Your eyeball weighs about seven grams and has about 125 million photosensitive receptor cells on the retina. In your mouth there are about ten thousand individual taste buds which, if damaged, will regenerate within two weeks. In your nose you have about twelve million olfactory receptor cells (but don't get too excited; your dog has roughly a billion) A typical adult human heart beats about seventy times a minute. This works out to about a hundred thousand times a day. If you live a nice long life your heart will beat upwards of three billion times before you kick the bucket. You can lose up to 75% of your liver. It will grow back and likely work absolutely fine. Your brain weighs about three pounds. 75% of your brain is water. At any given moment, roughly 20% of the oxygen you breath in is used by your brain. When someone needs brain surgery - say, to remove a tumor - they will put the patient to sleep while they cut their skull open. Then they will wake the patient up, and poke around or conduct small electrical impulses into the brain as they cut, to make sure they're not cutting out regions you need for, say, language processing. In other words: it's not uncommon for a brain surgeon to be physically cutting at a patient's brain while said patient is having an (albeit drugged and sluggish) conversation with another doctor or nurse. You are made of 206 bones, ranging in size from your femur to the bones inside your middle ear. Attached to these bones are 640 some muscles; that's not counting things like your heart and stomach. For all the insane, amazing complexity of the human body, all you really need to do is put food and water in on a regular basis, and it'll take care of itself.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 23:58 |
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N3RDSTER posted:This definitely blows my mind every time I think about it. Not only the fact that we've been to the loving moon, but also that we went from being confined to the ground on the whole (1903) to man standing on the moon (1969) in 66 years. Sixty six years. That's shorter than the average lifespan. Can you imagine living to remember both this things? From "Oh this flying vehicle crap will never get going" to "Wow, that's actually a guy on the actual moon". WHATTT?!?!?!? This blew my mind man. From the first plane to the moon in 66 years... I cannot believe it.
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| # ? Oct 14, 2010 23:59 |
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clarabelle posted:Having once been attacked by several gulls (didn't exactly have the time to figure out what kind) after accidentally getting too close to the nest, I can certainly agree that birts can be loving terrifying, especially when they're screaming and swooping at your head If anyone tells me they doubt that birds used to be dinosaurs, I show them this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhh68bITXM8
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 00:14 |
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localbacon posted:cars The parts that are comprehensible to the layman are pretty cool I guess. edit for content: Queen ants typically live 10-20 years and have been known to live close to 30. e2: vvvvv It's called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and it is loving cool. Chard fucked around with this message at Oct 15, 2010 around 00:51 |
| # ? Oct 15, 2010 00:24 |
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TorpedoFish posted:In other words: it's not uncommon for a brain surgeon to be physically cutting at a patient's brain while said patient is having an (albeit drugged and sluggish) conversation with another doctor or nurse. It gets weirder than that. In my biopsychology class, we watched a video where a handheld device could disable parts of the brain when you held it in certain locations. So they'd have someone talking, then wave the magic wand and suddenly the person's spouting gibberish, or can't think of the right words, or stutters uncontrollably If I worked in a lab like that, I'd be constantly sneaking up on people and holding it over their head while they're talking to someone
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 00:38 |
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Every rock on the surface of the earth was once liquid. A big Granite pluton can take several hundred to thousands of year to go from liquid to completely solid. There was a volcanic eruption from about 75500 years ago to 67500 years ago in south asia in indonesia in a place called Toba, that almost killed off the human species. It deposited a layer of ash 6 inches thick over south asia. There's a place in central india where 20 foot of ash deposits have been found. The scary thing? The ash erupted was about 190 cubic miles by volume. There was 670 cubic miles of volcanic material erupted total. 480 cubic miles of pyroclastic flows were deposited. The eruption created a crater lake that is 62 miles long and 19 miles wide. The average global temperature dropped 3 to 5 degrees celsius worldwide for who knows how long. And this is only the biggest eruption in the last 25 million years. There have been bigger and longer eruptions than this. Ignimbrite fucked around with this message at Oct 15, 2010 around 01:06 |
| # ? Oct 15, 2010 01:02 |
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OK Some Butt Stuff posted:No that's just weird, they were the same people as we are, why would anyone think otherwise American exceptionalism. Res ispa loquitur
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 01:25 |
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Tewbrainer posted:The Bible took about 1,600 years to write. To be fair, the Bible is more of a collection of works than a single, written text. Something that really fascinates me is the idea of DNA. When you think about it from a chemical perspective, its a gigantic line of slightly different aromatic molecules paired together. It goes through a gigantic, elaborate process to be copied into RNA, which makes proteins. This is how your ENTIRE body is formed. Just from codes for proteins. Everything about you comes from your bodies ability to differentiate between these: http://www.ccc.uga.edu/clubs/dnaclub/basics/ATGC.gif
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 01:34 |
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Another thing just popped into my mind: The Black Death killed 50% of the population of Europe. Half of Europe: dead. The population of England went from roughly 7 million to roughly 2 million people in the space of a couple years. Norway lost 60% of it's population. The devastation is mind-blowing enough alone - but wait, there's more! This plague was caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. Last year, there were six cases of plague, caused by Yersinia pestis, in the state of New Mexico, including one fatality. The exact same disease that wiped out half of Europe 660 years ago still kills people. Fatalities are rare, but there's an average of maybe ten cases a year in the Four Corners region.
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 01:41 |
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Never Odd or Even posted:This is how your ENTIRE body is formed. To borrow a line from Dawkins: "Copy me, but build an elephant first" - the instructions on an elephant's genes
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 01:45 |
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Duck quacks cannot echo. Cockroaches live nine days with no head before dying of starvation. Frog eyeballs flatten when they swallow food. Hippopotamuses run faster than humans. My absolute favorite  fact of all time though is that since it takes so long for the image of a star in the night sky to reach us, by the time we look at it, it's usually burned out and gone. Take a look up into the night sky and you're actually looking into the past. I used to marvel at that fact as a kid and I still do today, it's pretty captivating to point up a star and be like, "right this second, that's not there any more." Total mind job. Some scientists even believe that we can see events as far back as the big bang I guess.
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 01:59 |
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Slim Killington posted:Duck quacks cannot echo. I wonder how many of those are actually true. I'd say 2-3 tops.
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 02:02 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 18:26 |
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I would only legitimately question the first. The latter three are entirely plausible.
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| # ? Oct 15, 2010 02:04 |
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