Thread by @siddharth3

I have a small file of scientific facts that make me go “wow”. And today, a friend started a thread asking for everyone’s favourite scientific facts, concepts, postulates and questions.

Here are a few of my favourites. #thread

1. The reason ten feels like a round number is totally random: a function of the evolution of ten fingers on our hands. Every number base is base 10.

math.stackexchange.com/questions/1668…

2. We are made up of the same basic matter that makes up the rest of the universe. Some of this matter organised itself and developed “intelligence”. And eyes. We are a way for the universe to look at itself.

livescience.com/32828-humans-r…

3. There isn’t any objective “real” color in the world. It all depends on who is looking at the world. It is how our eyes interpret light. Other creatures interpret it differently.

askamathematician.com/2012/06/q-do-c…

4. Human beings have more bacterial cells in them than human cells. “You” are mostly bacteria, and very little human. (Check that ego of yours).

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mic…

5. There likely are a billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. (And there are at least 100 billion more galaxies in the observable universe.)

So why haven't we found any of intelligent life yet?

waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-…

6. Since time itself was created with the Big Bang, there’s no “before” Big Bang on a linear time svale.

(But the research continues and there are other ideas too).

science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/ast…

7. The language we learn determines how we see colours.

Can you easily spot the odd one out in the image below? People in the Himba tribe can do it immediately.

Here’s why: boingboing.net/2011/08/12/how…

8. Its mind boggling how far everything is in the universe. The human mind just can’t comprehend it.

All the planets of the solar system can fit between the earth and the moon.

Scroll through this to see how vast the solar system is: joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace…

8b. The universe is too vast for the human mind to comprehend.

Have a look at the scale of the universe: htwins.net/scale2/

9. “If you expanded a billiard ball to the size of earth, the imperfections in the ball will be higher than the Everest and deeper than the Marianna trench... the earth is actually so smooth your fingers wouldn’t be able to identify mountains and valleys.”

10. “You are the product of a cell line that has successfully reproduced for 3.7 billion years.”

If you choose to not have children, that’ll end a cell line that began 3.7 billion years ago, and has taken the form of various organisms & creatures before evolving into a sapien.

11. Quantum entanglement.

Imagine two devices, one on earth and one on moon. Imagine you type something here and it appears instantly there. Imagine there is no signal between them. It can’t be intercepted. What on earth is happening?

12. Our perception of time is messed up.

“Cleopatra lived closer to the first Pizza Hut than the great pyramid... by about 500 years.”

So even Cleopatra saw the great pyramid as a 2500 year old monument. Something from waaay back in time even then.

m.imgur.com/gallery/oMwxW

12b. The human mind can’t easily fathom vast stretches of time.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. What does that mean?

If all time was shortened into one calendar year, then all of human history would be less than the last one minute of the year. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Ca…

13. A Klein Bottle has only one side. There no “inside” and “outside”. It’s the same surface.

14. This is a 13 billion year old image.

NASA pointed a telescope at a “dark” part of space.

It captured 10,000 galaxies. Each Galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars.

And the light from this part of the universe took 13 billion years to reach earth.

14b. Because light takes time to travel (even though its the fastest known thing), every time you look at the sky, you’re looking into the past.

The sun you see (through safety glasses) shows its position 8 minutes ago.

The Orion constellation was there 1300 years ago.

14c. If an alien species from the centre of our galaxy looked the earth, they would only see cave people. If they kept observing us, Jesus, Muhammad and others would appear 25,000 years later.

15. This question has also bothered me. If the universe is so vast, why is the fastest thing in it so slow?

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