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Absolutely useless facts...

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  • DragonKingDragonKing Member Posts: 1,977
    So you hear people say, nothing can move faster than light, well that's BS. Nothing can move faster than light in a vacuum, but there are situations where other things can move faster than light when you take different mediums into account. Take a very thick piece of glass, and fire a beam of muons at 99% the speed of light through it with a laser also aimed at it. The light will slow down in the glass, but the muons can pass through glass without interacting with it, so the muons that enter the glass at the same time as the photons from the laser will exit before the photons.

    @DrHappyAngry actually the speed of darkness is faster than the speed of light,don't believe me, walk into a pitch-black room with a flash light and turn it on. Let me know when you are able to shine light on the darkness.
    Proont
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    DragonKing wrote: »
    So you hear people say, nothing can move faster than light, well that's BS. Nothing can move faster than light in a vacuum, but there are situations where other things can move faster than light when you take different mediums into account. Take a very thick piece of glass, and fire a beam of muons at 99% the speed of light through it with a laser also aimed at it. The light will slow down in the glass, but the muons can pass through glass without interacting with it, so the muons that enter the glass at the same time as the photons from the laser will exit before the photons.

    @DrHappyAngry actually the speed of darkness is faster than the speed of light,don't believe me, walk into a pitch-black room with a flash light and turn it on. Let me know when you are able to shine light on the darkness.

    Vsause actually made a video about this:
    deltagoProont
  • DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
    DragonKing wrote: »
    So you hear people say, nothing can move faster than light, well that's BS. Nothing can move faster than light in a vacuum, but there are situations where other things can move faster than light when you take different mediums into account. Take a very thick piece of glass, and fire a beam of muons at 99% the speed of light through it with a laser also aimed at it. The light will slow down in the glass, but the muons can pass through glass without interacting with it, so the muons that enter the glass at the same time as the photons from the laser will exit before the photons.

    @DrHappyAngry actually the speed of darkness is faster than the speed of light,don't believe me, walk into a pitch-black room with a flash light and turn it on. Let me know when you are able to shine light on the darkness.

    Darkness isn't actually anything, though. Just like cold, it's the absence of something else and doesn't move.
    ThacoBellmlneveseProont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    DragonKing wrote: »
    So you hear people say, nothing can move faster than light, well that's BS. Nothing can move faster than light in a vacuum, but there are situations where other things can move faster than light when you take different mediums into account. Take a very thick piece of glass, and fire a beam of muons at 99% the speed of light through it with a laser also aimed at it. The light will slow down in the glass, but the muons can pass through glass without interacting with it, so the muons that enter the glass at the same time as the photons from the laser will exit before the photons.

    @DrHappyAngry actually the speed of darkness is faster than the speed of light,don't believe me, walk into a pitch-black room with a flash light and turn it on. Let me know when you are able to shine light on the darkness.

    Darkness isn't actually anything, though. Just like cold, it's the absence of something else and doesn't move.

    Well, light recedes at the speed of light too...
    mlneveseProontArvia
  • DragonKingDragonKing Member Posts: 1,977
    Second fact from DK,

    DK is always starting something, hence above xD
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    Dumbbells truly are dumb bells.
    ThacoBellmlneveseProont
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Dumbbells truly are dumb bells.

    I know right?! They don't even ring!
    Proontsarevok57
  • DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
    In Miami, you can see a dude sacrifice a chicken on a street corner. Defining moment of my childhood.
    Balrog99
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    In Miami, you can see a dude sacrifice a chicken on a street corner. Defining moment of my childhood.

    Your comment reminded me of the weird inner-New York City bicycle joust scene in 'Quick Change'. Classic line from Dennis Quaid's character, "It's bad luck just seeing a thing like that!". That's a great lesser-known movie for any Bill Murray fans btw...
    DrHappyAngry
  • DrHappyAngryDrHappyAngry Member Posts: 1,577
    Balrog99 wrote: »
    In Miami, you can see a dude sacrifice a chicken on a street corner. Defining moment of my childhood.

    Your comment reminded me of the weird inner-New York City bicycle joust scene in 'Quick Change'. Classic line from Dennis Quaid's character, "It's bad luck just seeing a thing like that!". That's a great lesser-known movie for any Bill Murray fans btw...

    Yes! I remember that flick and that scene in particular. I do remember the scene when Bill Murray tries to give the bus driver a hundred dollar bill and he refuses to take it because it's not exact change.
    Balrog99Proont
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    edited August 2019
    DreadKhan wrote: »
    ThacoBell wrote: »
    Dumbbells truly are dumb bells.

    I know right?! They don't even ring!

    Hmm.. usually they should ring if you can manage to not hold them in such a way that you dampen the vibrations... or they might be coated I suppose, but cast bare metal pieces should ring if not cracked significantly. They used to test rail car wheels this way I've heard.

    Interesting Fact: Most action of any kind that you take is more or less on autopilot. You will likely be able to make up a reasonable/rational explanation why you did it, but this is almost always a fabrication, because you really didn't think about it all that long before acting. Our minds aren't rational because being more rational is usually a disadvantage in higher stress situations, because for humans, rationality is incredibly slow, while emotional centers can process immense amounts of data incredibly quickly for us, and offer us a good guess, essentially, about what we should do in a situation, but this isn't using rational processes, and its communicated to us through sensations.

    This btw isn't to say it's impossible to ever do a rational thing, but it really isn't in our nature to default to tedious rationality. Even while trying to be fully rational, the limitations of our available data often mean truly rational choices will be questionable, which is why selection heavily favoured more emotional people historically.

    Sounds like you've watched 'Idiocracy'...

    Edit: This is literally one of the scariest insights I've seen in this Forum and I'm a regular in the Politics thread.
    Post edited by Balrog99 on
    mlneveseDreadKhan
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    edited September 2019
    It is widely suggested to chew your food for at least 30 times. Yet in reality it's rare to come by folks even chewing for 5 times. While makes me believe that mankind is slowly evolving into filter feeders that at some point swallow their prey whole.
    Balrog99ArviaProontCrevsDaak
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985
    Two of the three ear bones in mammals start out as jaw bones in embryos.
    mlneveseArviaProont
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    tbone1 wrote: »
    Two of the three ear bones in mammals start out as jaw bones in embryos.

    Hmmm, I wonder if there's a connection between that and the statement above that we don't chew as often as we should.
    Maybe we're just afraid of impaired hearing.
    mlneveseProont
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    mlnevese wrote: »
    Another useless fact I just learned...

    Star Trek's warp factor is a cubic relation.... so when they go easy at warp 2 they are going 2^3 times the speed of light, i.e. 8 times. Warp 8 would be 512 times the speed of light, etc.

    I beg to differ. That's absolutely *not* useless! You have to know if it's worth investing so much more in a warp core that reaches warp 8 instead of just 7!
    mlnevese
  • mlnevesemlnevese Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
    edited February 2020
    Considering any advanced alien species is able to change the original enterprise into a warp engine that can reach warp 11 and keep that speed for 300+ years (season 2 ep. 23), it shouldn't be much more expensive to go from 7 to 8 :)

    Post edited by mlnevese on
    JoenSoProont
  • JoenSoJoenSo Member Posts: 910
    Me: "I really need to go to bed now. I have to work in the morning."
    Also me: "I better try to calculate how many meters you would've traveled after 300 years of warp 11."

    Not sure if I got it right, but my calculator ended up at 3,775084003726358e+21.
    ProontBalrog99
  • JoenSoJoenSo Member Posts: 910
    edited January 2020
    Me: "I really need to go to bed now. I have to work in the morning."
    Also me: "I better try to calculate how many meters you would've traveled after 300 years of warp 11."

    Not sure if I got it right, but my calculator ended up at 3,775084003726358e+21. (And no, I haven't seen that episode)
    mlneveseArviaProontBalrog99
  • mlnevesemlnevese Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
    edited February 2020
    @JoenSo

    Well 1 light year = 9.4607305 x 10^15 meters

    Warp 11 equals 1331 times the speed of light

    So in 300 years the ship would travel 300*1331 light years or 399.300 light years

    399.300 is 3.993x10^5 in scientific notation

    So in 300 hundred years the ship would travel 9.4607305 x 10^15 * 3.993*10^5 or 37,7766968865‬x10^20 that converting to proper scientific notation is 3,77766968865‬x10^21 meters.

    So I would say you're right as I used an 8 decimal places approximation to light speed :)
    Post edited by mlnevese on
    ArviaProontBalrog99
  • OlvynChuruOlvynChuru Member Posts: 3,075
    Arvia wrote: »
    mlnevese wrote: »
    Another useless fact I just learned...

    Star Trek's warp factor is a cubic relation.... so when they go easy at warp 2 they are going 2^3 times the speed of light, i.e. 8 times. Warp 8 would be 512 times the speed of light, etc.

    I beg to differ. That's absolutely *not* useless! You have to know if it's worth investing so much more in a warp core that reaches warp 8 instead of just 7!

    Well, some stars are millions of light-years away, so to get there before the TV episode is over, travelling at an especially high multiplier of the speed of life could be quite helpful.
    ArviamlneveseProontBalrog99
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    Well the original series was old before my birth, I grew up with Picard's Enterprise and everything that followed.
    Still, those calculations remind me of discussions between my friends at 2 am during grad school years :) .
    mlneveseProontBalrog99
  • mlnevesemlnevese Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
    Before anyone asks I'm not a Trek fanatic that memorized every episode. It's just that I'm finally watching the original series in order on Netflix and I just happenned to watch that particular episode that day :)

    @Arvia I was a physics student before I switched courses and became a lawyer. Math discussion just comes naturally although I don't actually remember much of advanced math after 20 years :)
    StummvonBordwehrBalrog99Arvia
  • ArviaArvia Member Posts: 2,101
    mlnevese wrote: »
    Before anyone asks I'm not a Trek fanatic that memorized every episode. It's just that I'm finally watching the original series in order on Netflix and I just happenned to watch that particular episode that day :)

    @Arvia I was a physics student before I switched courses and became a lawyer. Math discussion just comes naturally although I don't actually remember much of advanced math after 20 years :)

    @mlnevese , and I used to hang out with some physics students, because my fellow medical students considered me weird.

    I always liked physics on a high school level, but I'm a very visual thinker and that seriously limits my capability to understand more abstract and advanced math :smile: .
    mlneveseThacoBellBalrog99
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    shabadoo wrote: »
    You can get radiation poisoning from bananas...but... You have to eat approximately 35 million of them.

    Sounds like they're about as dangerous as cyclamates and saccharin then...
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Doesn't all matter release radiation of some kind in some amounts? Its just all so small as to be effectively null.
    DrHappyAngrymlneveseProont
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    Morale of the story: eat enough banana splits and they will eventually split your atoms.
    ThacoBellProontsarevok57
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