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What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

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Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#101

Post by endlessvoid94 »

Avshalom wrote: post #10
btilly wrote: post #6

My favorite isn't there. Back in the 1920s Hubble did photographic surveys of the sky with long exposures. Here is what he found. Pick a random spot in the sky. Take a long exposure. Count the stars you can see. Take a magnifying glass. Count the galaxies you can find. With a few obvious exceptions, there will be more galaxies than stars. A lot more. (Obvious exceptions would include things like nebulae that you can'…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_ultra_deep_field_hi... Every light there is a galaxy (okay Like and 7 stars). I remember seeing that photo when it came out and sort of brushing it off because it wasn't some sweeping nebula. Four years of an astrophysics degree later it nearly brought me to tears just thinking about looking at 10000 galaxies and the full weight of that sight. It's one of those things thats mo…

Is that photo, by any chance, the background of the COSMOS intro? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/21/Cosmos_a_speci...

Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#102

Post by bapadna »

TamDenholm wrote: post #86

I've no idea if this is true or not (probably not due to where i heard it) but a poll was taken in the US about foreign aid. 68% said that too much was spent on foreign aid, 59% said they thought it should be cut. Thus 9% think foreign aid is too high but shouldn't be cut. It isnt so much this specific example, but i bet pollsters get this kind of thing all the time, which i find fascinating. Bonus points if you know…

As presented, that just means 9% of people think it's too high, but shouldn't be eliminated.

I think the issue with your presentation is that 'cut' can mean either 'reduced' or 'eliminated'.

Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#104

Post by bapadna »

Alex3917 wrote: post #97
philwelch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs. You're lucky if their beliefs are consistent with each other.

"Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs." Do they really believe them then? Is there any reason not to say that a belief, by definition, is something (among other things) that you act logically consistently with.

If somebody says "evolution is a lie, and it shouldn't be taught to children", the fact that they don't actually live their life according to that credo is sort of irrelevant.

Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#105

Post by philwelch »

Alex3917 wrote: post #97
philwelch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs. You're lucky if their beliefs are consistent with each other.

"Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs." Do they really believe them then? Is there any reason not to say that a belief, by definition, is something (among other things) that you act logically consistently with.

I'm sure there's a word you can define as something that you act logically consistent with, but I think it's closer to the word "motivation" than the word "belief".

Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#106

Post by [deleted] »

Alex3917 wrote: post #97
philwelch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs. You're lucky if their beliefs are consistent with each other.

"Most people don't act in ways that are logically congruent with all their beliefs." Do they really believe them then? Is there any reason not to say that a belief, by definition, is something (among other things) that you act logically consistently with.

[deleted]

Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#107

Post by rsaarelm »

You can represent any book, any image or any sound with a large number.

You can set up a cipher where anyone can write you messages using publicly available information, but only you can read them.

Human DNA is essentially a digital code, has a finite number of bits, and is smaller than data sets which we routinely manipulate today.

Every known way of making meaningful computations can be represented in a formal system which you can write down on the palm of your hand.

You can also write a recipe for producing the entirety of an infinitely detailed image, that keeps being visually interesting as you zoom in, on the palm of your hand.

Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#108

Post by substack »

I couldn't see how anything could possibly stay in orbit when gravity pulled everything together until I wrote a computer program to simulate orbits in 2d: http://ln-s.net/7oFZ

It was really enlightening to fiddle with the constants and to create events that show how kinetic and potential energy interact in space.

Re: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?

#110

Post by alinhan »

Not the most mind-blowing facts, just recent ones that come to mind:

1. The volume of water and air on Earth, compared to the Earth:

http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/download_lo_res.html?id=6...

2. The relative sizes of Earth, Sun and the biggest known stars, and the fact that a passenger airplane would take 11,000 years to circle the biggest known star:

http://www.vplay.ro/watch/qtg8z7kg/

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