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

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

#151

Post by Zecc » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 9:08 AM UTC

AndrewO wrote: post #17

I'm not sure if this is the most, but Cantor's Diagonal Argument[1] is the first that comes to mind, probably even more as an example of a creative approach than for its implications (although those are pretty huge too). Charles Petzold's "Annotated Turing" has a great run down of this and a bunch of the other mind-blowing things that came out of math in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org…

Your URL is missing the apostrophe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument

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

#152

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 12:43 PM UTC

That we differ only 2.5 percent in our DNA from mice.

It still blows my mind.

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

#153

Post by wr1472 » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 1:49 PM UTC

danielrm26 wrote: post #49

Over half of people in the U.S. don't believe in evolution.

Conversely almost half of people in the US believe in Evolution.

ie. You can make statistics say almost anything you want.

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

#154

Post by dfhfghfg » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 2:34 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #152

That we differ only 2.5 percent in our DNA from mice. It still blows my mind.

Along the same lines... we share 50% of our DNA with bananas :)

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

#155

Post by bendmorris » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 4:11 PM UTC

HilbertSpace wrote: post #145

(1) All life on Earth is based on DNA. There is no alternative, no second choice, no runner up. (2) While there are millions of species on Earth that have long been stable and successful and still are, humans have by some astronomically wide margin the most powerful capabilities with, again, no alternative, no second choice, no runner up. (3) For all we have done with working with information, computing, human physio…

While it's debatable whether viruses count as a form of life, RNA viruses do exist. It's also generally believed that there were RNA-based forms of life before the advent of DNA.

You are spot on about #4. The more we learn about our world, the more creative ways we come up with to destroy it.

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

#156

Post by uptown » Thu, Oct 14, 2010, 2:23 AM UTC

Probably not the MOST mind-blowing, but dual-photography rocked my world. Here's the video demo: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8237361566146405294

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

#157

Post by nl » Thu, Oct 14, 2010, 3:38 AM UTC

lnnegativeone wrote: post #114

kaokun wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mine too. How is it possible that * the ratio between the a circle's circumference and diameter * the number such that the derivative of e^x = e^x * the square root of negative 1 Have anything to relate them to one another?? That last one isn't even a number! Mind. Blown. The universe is one crazy place.

which also means that ln(-1) = i*pi o, and another cool one is (1/2)! = sqrt(pi)

appropriate username!

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

#158

Post by ebrenes » Thu, Oct 14, 2010, 6:23 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #65

icefox wrote: post #38

Most recently I found out that the Russian Salyut 3 space station (whos missions were to take 3" resolution pictures of the US) had a cannon mounted on the bottom of it. Not only was there a machine gun in space, but it was fired too.

How did the space station keep its position?

This article I found while pondering the same question states that it was de-orbited a day after the test firing (http://maikelnai.elcomerciodigital.com/2009/12/30/salyut-3-d...), granted it doesn't provide sources for that specific claim.

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

#159

Post by magnusdeus123 » Fri, Oct 15, 2010, 10:11 PM UTC

jd wrote: post #62

When I was nine I was playing with BASIC and wrote a simple program that would enumerate all colors of all pixels on the screen. I wanted to see all possible images "fly by" so to speak. First I got frustrated because it was running so slowly, only then I started to think... If I can display a picture of a car on this monitor, then that picture would eventually also show up 'by chance' with my program! Mind blown. Th…

Damn. I watched a short film very similar to this where a mathematician woman made a super computer in her home to do the same thing. It pissed off her husband who finally takes off and she's left with her obsession. Can't remember the name.