Misc. science facts

[xvi]

Mercury is very dense

Woah woah woah! Easy there! Intellectually challenged!
*comforts Mercury*

 

[twilyth]

And all of that came from an infinitesimal speck smaller than a proton.

The singularity was so small that it has to be observed using quantum physics, which deals with things on the smallest scale scientists have ever postulated. At the beginning of existence, the universe had a temperature of 1 x 1032 degree Celsius and only covered a region of 1 x 10-33 centimeters. It’s hard to believe that expanded to become the universe spanning billions of light years we know today!

 

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How to fold a record-breaking paper plane

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2937778/How-fold-record-breaking-paper-plane-Maker-reveals-aerodynamic-secrets-offers-1-000-fly-design-him.html


How to make a paper plane fly forever...nearly

 

[Drone]

 

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The banner at the end of the superb video

Keep Looking Up.........ace

 

[Drone]

There's even better one by Stephen Hawking

Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.

 

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Vatican observatory where priests are also astrophysicists




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31051635

 

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From bioluminescence to laser beams and lightning strikes, mesmerising images light in different forms.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2939439/Beyond-light-bulb-bioluminescence-laser-beams-lightning-strikes-mesmerising-images-light-different-forms.html

 

[twilyth]

I decided to look up redshift to get some idea of distance. I couldn't find a table that linked cosmological redshift to distance but did find this in wikipedia

The cosmic microwave background has a redshift of z = 1089, corresponding to an age of approximately 379,000 years after the Big Bang and a comoving distance of more than 46 billion light years.[75]

So if I'm reading that correctly, even though the universe is only 13.7B years old, the microwave background is 46B ly away. I guess that gives us a rough idea of how quickly the universe is expanding.

The most precise measurement ever made of the speed of the universe's expansion is in, thanks to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and it's a doozy. Space itself is pulling apart at the seams, expanding at a rate of 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers (46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles) per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years).

 

[Drone]

I decided to look up redshift to get some idea of distance. I couldn't find a table that linked cosmological redshift to distance but did find this in wikipedia So if I'm reading that correctly, even though the universe is only 13.7B years old, the microwave background is 46B ly away. I guess that gives us a rough idea of how quickly the universe is expanding.

Nope. The CMB is ~ 13.8B ly away from any reference point in the Universe. But for all that time Universe was expanding (still expanding) and everything keeps getting away from us. Hence the diameter of observable Universe is ~ 90 B ly or something (things that were close to us 13.8 b years ago aren't there anymore ... ugm there was no us then but you know what I mean) but that visible light since that time stretched back to microwave because universe is expanding. What lies beyond 13.8 b ly will get to us eventually but what lies beyond 45 B will never ever reach us because it's getting away due to expansion. It's really complicated but here's a diagram

 

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@Drone where does brane theory fit in with this.?

I know none of this is easy to understand, for me anyway, the scale of everything is baffling enough.

Cosmic inflation is different to expansion in that inflation was an almost instantaneous thing and expansion is ongoing ?


Point me in the right direction mate, i'm struggling with this.

 

[Drone]

Lol everybody struggles with that and nobody knows for sure, it's just a theory XD

But yeah that's correct inflation happened, expansion/redshifting still happening. It's impossible to measure redshift for close objects (close I mean our 'neighborhood' - galaxies that lie tens/hundreds million ly away), it works only for spectra of galaxies/objects that are really far away (billions ly away).

Big Bang theory says that everything happened from nothing while brane theory says that there's always something. Always was always will be.

 

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Big Bang theory says that everything happened from nothing while brane theory says that there's always something. Always was always will be.

At least i know whats confusing me now. I hope that is at least part of the battle..

Soooooo, the rate of inflation was immeasurably greater than the current rate of expansion, and the redshift should enable us to discover /..........

.. LOOK what youve done to me this time...................................my brain is just melting now.


I want to lie down.................no i need to lie down.


ps . ... . dont stop (we will have to come up with a "safe word")

 

[Drone]

Yup inflation was a "big deal" it was fast and furious. Expansion is more steady and stable more or less.

BOSS established that 10.8 billion years ago, the universe was expanding by 1% every 44 million years. If we look back to the universe when galaxies were 3 times closer together than they are today, we'd see that a pair of galaxies separated by 1 M ly would be drifting apart at a speed of 68 km/s as the universe expands.

WMAP confirms that number, they say that the Hubble constant is 69.3 km/s/Mpc (give or take 0.8 km/s/Mpc)









some other unrelated but interesting news:


Biologists Find Deep-Sea Sulfur Bacteria that Have Not Evolved in 2.3 Billion Years

Scientists found that half-life of iron-60 is 2.6 million years


edit: here's some nice video

 

[twilyth]

There are patterns in the microwave background revealed by Planck that don't fit with standard inflation theories. For example the so-called 'axis of evil'

If you can't view the article, there are plenty others, just search for Planck 'axis of evil'.

 

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Is dark matter lighter than we thought?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...erse-s-greatest-mystery-remains-unsolved.html

Some reading, lovely pics and a video.

 

[Drone]

Carbon gives so many possibilities lol things get better and better:

Scientists Discover New Allotrope of Carbon - penta-graphene [unique 2D carbon allotrope composed exclusively of pentagons]

The material might outperform graphene in certain applications, as it would be mechanically stable, possess very high strength, and be capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 1000K. The material's mechanical strength, derived from a rare property known as Negative Poisson's Ratio.

"If you stretch graphene, it will expand along the direction it is stretched, but contract along the perpendicular direction but if you stretch penta-graphene, it will expand in both directions."

 

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Putting your hand in the LHC

serious people hypothesising about a stupid idea, interesting though...

 

[xvi]

Putting your hand in the LHC

Reminds me of a video from the same producer about drinking heavy water.
Sort of a theory exercise.

 

[twilyth]

Triple moon transit of Jupiter

 

[twilyth]

Better optical tweezers

A new way to create and guide beams of "twisted light" has been created by researchers in the UK. The team used a cylindrical array of ultrasound loudspeakers to create a pattern of density waves in a fluid through which a laser beam is shone. The system creates twisted "Bessel beams" that can be reconfigured at a rate of about 150 kHz and shows promise for use in a wide range of applications including optical tweezers, high-speed data transmission and aberration correction for microscopes.

Twisted light refers to a beam with a wavefront that rotates around its direction of propagation with a corkscrew-like motion – and therefore carries orbital angular momentum. Bessel beams are a type of twisted light that have been created in the lab using special lenses and have been used in optical tweezers. An important feature of Bessel beams is that they do not diverge as they propagate, which makes them well-suited for optical tweezers.

Illustration of a Bessel beam.

 

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Better optical tweezers

Illustration of a Bessel beam.

Amazing, the design and engineering and everything about it is incredible. The process these teams must go through to achieve something like this and other stuff like it is beyond belief really......to me anyway.
I really enjoyed reading that


How they make a cpu.

This is a good vid, only 10 minutes long

 

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@Drone added a great one a couple of weeks ago about raindrops
I like this article as well

Rain again


The team ran experiments with dozens of types of common foliage, including ivy, bamboo, peppermint, and banana leaves.

The researchers captured the sequence of events as raindrops hit each leaf, using high-speed videography at 1,000 frames per second.


some interesting reading, extraordinary pics and good vid

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ges-reveal-raindrops-spread-disease-leaf.html[/QUOTE]


And while we are on the subject of rain


How Much Does a Cloud Weigh ?

Some reading
http://mentalfloss.com/article/49786/how-much-does-cloud-weigh

And then a guy on a video (im not sure if hes got really long arms)

Milky Rain Anyone?

A little bit of reading and pics.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...st-ash-spewed-Japan-s-Sakurajima-volcano.html

 

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Positive and Negative lightning


Most cloud-to-ground strikes are negative, and a much less common number are positive. The only difference between the two kinds is the reversal of polarities in the cloud base. Normally the negative charge collects in the cloud base, with a corresponding net positive charge in the ground under the cloud. Lightning strikes originating from this configuration are negative strikes.

But if the cloud base becomes positively charged relative to the top of the cloud, the ground below then assumes a net negative charge, and any lightning that develops will be a positive strike.

The lightning detection sensors used by many data observation and collection organizations are able to distinguish between positive and negative strikes, and report them as such. Research is ongoing, to determine if there is a relationship between positive strokes and certain types of severe weather.

.



Lightning Facts Video


http://oceantoday.noaa.gov/lightning/

 

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Elements in the Human Body


Element Percent by Mass
Oxygen 65
Carbon 18
Hydrogen 10
Nitrogen 3
Calcium 1.5
Phosphorous 1.2
Potassium 0.2
Sulfur 0.2
Chlorine 0.2
Sodium 0.1
Magnesium 0.05
Iron, Cobalt, Copper, Zinc, Iodine
Selenium, Fluorine

40 interesting human body facts

1. The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razorblades.
2. The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
3. Humans lose an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.
4. Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair.
5. The lifespan of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average.
6. Every inch of the skin, there are about 32 million bacteria.
7. 300 billion new cells are produced every day. 300 million old cells die every minute.
8. The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself.
9. On average, your kidneys will filter around 1.3 liters of blood every minute.
10. Men produce around 10 million sperm per day.
11. On average, a woman’s body produces about 1/2 a million eggs.
12. On average, an individual grows over 450 miles of hair in a lifetime.
13. The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm.
14. There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
15. A human sneeze creates a blast of air that can be moving more than 100 miles per hour.
16. The average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in his or her lifetime.
17. A baby human’s fingerprints are formed after just three months of the pregnancy.
18. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb.
19. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood the number is reduced to 206.
20. By the time they are 60 years old, most humans have lost half of their taste buds.
21. The human body has enough iron in it to make a 3 inches long nail.
22. The average human head has about 100,000 hairs.
23. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.
24. An adult human body contains approximately 100 trillion cells.
25. There are nearly 46 miles of nerves in an adult’s body.
26. Fingernails grow 4 times faster than toenails.
27. The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.
28. The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
29. Everyone has a unique smell, except for identical twins, who smell the same.
30. All babies are color blind at birth, they see only black and white.
31. Your body requires 1000-1500 calories per day just to simply survive: breathing, sleeping and eating.
32. To completely regrow a human fingernail or toenail, all the way from base to tip, takes about 6 months.
33. The brain has approximately 100 billion nerve cells that send and receive information around the body.
34. A normal human being can survive 20 days without eating but can survive only 2 days without drinking.
35. By the time it is seventy years old, your human heart will have beat an average two-and-a-half billion times.
36. The only part of your body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It gets its oxygen directly from air.
37. In just 30 minutes, the average person’s body produces enough heat to boil a 1/2 gallon of water.
38. Your lungs need a lot of breathing room. The total surface area of the lungs is approximately equal to the size of a tennis court.
39. The human brain cells can hold between 3 and 1000 Terabytes of information. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes.
40. The brain only makes up about 2% of the body but uses 20% of the oxygen that enters the bloodstream.