Startling facts E.G. space is quite big actually

@Sirromj On iplayer, a 2 part documentary called ‘secrets of size: atoms to super galaxies’ is worth a watch.

Cleopatra lived closer to today than to the building of the pyramids.

Although she was Greek, she would have lived in Egypt, which is where the pyramids you’re referring to are I presume. I don’t think there’s even a place called today.

Another fact he stated was the scale of the atom, I don’t remember exactly, but say you scaled up an atom to be a mile in size, the nucleus would still only be the size of a grain of sand – – – note the empty space of nothing. However I did a quick google recently and what I found said a marble in a football pitch.

It depends on the atom, because more massive elements have larger nucleii, but the ratio is in the ballpark of 1:50,000.

So, if the nucleus was 1 cm in diameter, the electron cloud would be 50,000 cm, or 500 meters. So, if the atom was one mile in diameter, the nucleus would be roughly an inch or two in diameter, depending on the specific element.

…and what I found said a marble in a football pitch.

It depends on the atom, because more massive elements have larger nucleii, but the ratio is in the ballpark of 1:50,000.

I see what you did there.

the concept of secularism was an invention of medieval French priests and clerics

Many astronomy stats are mind blowing, even if some of them are just estimates. For example our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains we think around 200 billion stars. If you hold a grain of sand at arm’s length you blot out several hundred other similar sized galaxies.

Kenny’s contribution is based on this image. The Hubble deep field. As he says it’s the area of the sky covered by a grain sand at arms length. It contains 4 stars in our galaxy. Every other spot is a galaxy containing 100s of billions of stars. There are I think 1200 Galaxies in the image

Here is a video of me going on about galaxies and the Hubble Deep Field

@ampthill I think it was that image that Brian Cox talked about and the number of stars was just astounding.
Also like the monkey cage episode from down under where they said we, the northern hemisphere, have a rubbish night sky.

Before they split the kingston bridge up it was 7 lanes each way ( its now divided) and one exit came out of lane 5 ie with two lanes to the right and 4 to the left.

It’s 5 lanes each side, outer to inner, westbound you enter from the Clydeside Expressway x1, city centre x1, A804 x1 and M8 x2 then exit to Tradeston x2 and M8/M77 x3. Eastbound you enter from Tradeston x2 (segregated for the length of the bridge) and M8 x3 then exit to Clydeside Expressway x1, city centre x2 (one for each side of the segregation that merge on the slip) and M8 x2.

I can only assume it’s the amount of cross flow on the eastbound side that means its still divided, not sure how they’re going to square that with the new ULEZ as that is the alternative route since forever.

@ampthill thanks for posting that image. I couldn’t recall where I’d heard that stat, or even what the quoted figures were, but figured I wouldn’t be too far wrong. Would be surprised if I heard it from Brian Cox though. I find him quite irritating. Takes him about 500 words for each fact, and delivered in a patronising tone too. The only thing I’ve enjoyed him in is Monkey Cage.

For the Motorway geeks this is a strangely satisfying YouTube channel.

For the Motorway geeks…

Almost tempted to go off and create a thread about favourite motorway facts but it seems to be existing happily here as a thread within a thread!

There are billions of galaxies! This gas cloud would take 10,000 years to fly across at Mach 1!
The M25 is not continuous!

secrets of the motorway is fab – not just the facts but the guys delivery is good

The Eiffel Tower grows six inches in summer.

At Mach 2, depending on various conditions (humidity, air pressure, interior temps etc) Concorde used to grow between 150 and 200mm.

You could actually see the growth if you were sat near one of the joins in the aisle carpet on the earliest flights. All the other panels and joints inside the cabin had sliding/overlapping joints, the carpet didn’t. So it’d be too short by the time you were in the mid atlantic. Later versions of the carpet were stretchy due to a) the trip hazard when Concorde cooled down and b) gappy carpets look cheap.

This is one of my favourites:

Sharks, have been around for longer than Trees.

Bonkers.

( https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/shark-evolution-a-450-million-year-timeline.html#:~:text=Sharks%20have%20been%20around%20for,record%20before%20trees%20even%20existed.)

Aeroplane fuel tanks – quite big really.
Boeing 747-8 holds nearly a quarter of a million litres!
So that’s enough to fill up the 50 litre tank on my car 5,000 times. I can do 500 miles on a tank, so that would be enough to drive 2,500,000 miles.

The different types of infinities and the fact that some are bigger than others hurt my head.

Diesel tanks on a site I work on had 300,000 litres of diesel. Just as a back up. And they were only 2/3’s full.

The 11kV gensets use 500 litres an hour when running at full load.

We turned 50,000 litres into heat, smoke and noise when testing them. As we weren’t allowed to use the building as a load we had to hire a 50kW 11kV load bank which in itself needed two 400V generators to feed it’s cooling fans.

Glad I didn’t have to pay the fuel bill.

The different types of infinities and the fact that some are bigger than others hurt my head.

It was transfinite numbers that made me realize I’d never understand how maths peoples’ brains work.

@didnthurt shiiiit, at least we can synch ours to grid! That said the MG sets need a load bank for testing, thankfully that’s just a wee trolley.

Aeroplane fuel tanks – quite big really.
Boeing 747-8 holds nearly a quarter of a million litres!
So that’s enough to fill up the 50 litre tank on my car 5,000 times. I can do 500 miles on a tank, so that would be enough to drive 2,500,000 miles.

And at full chat the engines on a 747 will go through nearly 100000 litres an hour.

But at full chat the engines won’t last an hour…

the maths thing that really hurts my head is that pi is such a silly number.  It should be a whole number.  Somethings wrong with maths that it is not.  Makes my brain hurt

TREE(3)

Just don’t go there.

There are slightly more bacteria in your body than there are cells (around 4 trillion bacteria vs around 3 trillion cells).

However, a really big poo can skew the number in your body’s favour…

the maths thing that really hurts my head is that pi is such a silly number. It should be a whole number. Somethings wrong with maths that it is not. Makes my brain hurt

Irrational numbers are just weird. You have a number line with an infinite number of whole numbers. Half way between each of those is a fraction, so you now have twice as many numbers as your original infinite set. But half way between each of that new, doubled set of numbers, there is another fraction, so you’ve doubled the set again. You can repeat this an infinite number of times and keep generating new rational numbers. But, it doesn’t matter how many infinities of infinities times you keep doing that, there are irrational numbers that always fall between the gaps, so there are an infinite number of those too.

it doesn’t matter how many infinities of infinities times you keep doing that, there are irrational numbers that always fall between the gaps, so there are an infinite number of those too.

and what about imaginary numbers?

which is where I and maths parted company. Unfortunately my A level exams were still some way in the future at that point.

TREE(3)

Just don’t go there.

Uh? ’tis a shame there’s only two of us.

thols – there are only 9 numbers.  Everything else is made up of multiples and bits of those 9 numbers.  Zero is not a number.

🙂

there are only 9 numbers.

10 actually, 0 and 1. You can create all the others through logical operations on those 10.

Water is very sticky.

Water is very sticky.

There is a fly so small, that it actually paddles through the air as if it’s swimming through water.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/05/swimming-led-flying-physicists-say

Water is very sticky.

And humans don’t actually feel wetness.

Thanks to @mattyfez, after watching Secrets of size I now know the smallest wasp is Megaphragma caribea, with a body length of 0.17mm. Something that small doesn’t fly through the air, it swims.

DOH! Just seen your post.

@sirromj for some light but facinating relief, check out ‘the magical world of moss’ on iPlayer.

But also check out ‘Einstiens nightmare’
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/einsteins-nightmare/

and what about imaginary numbers?

Useful for electrical engineering when describing inductance and capacitance IIRC.

I’m not an electrical engineer.

Many astronomy stats are mind blowing, even if some of them are just estimates.

Most of them are. One star alone that I was reading about earlier yesterday has staggering stats! VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant, while light takes eight minutes to get from the sun’s surface to Earth, it would take a photon six hours to travel around the circumference of VY Canis, and it could accommodate almost 3 billion stars the size of Earth… 🤪

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/vy-canis-majoris/

Canis Majoris means “big dog” I think

Photons take thousands to millions of years to escape from the core of the sun.

This is good for star size comparisons

But also check out ‘Einstiens nightmare’

It’s excellent!

I could watch Jim Al-Khalili documentaries all day long.

the maths thing that really hurts my head is that pi is such a silly number. It should be a whole number

It is. The problem is with the base 10 system we use to try and describe it. If we just use base pi, there’d be no problem. There’s always a way to refer to these numbers without using decimals, for example Physicists will give an answer as √3/2

The numbers exist independently of the digits we use to write them down.

there are only 9 numbers

Similarly there may only be ten digits in our common base ten system but there’s an infinite number of positive integers. You could replace the digits with fruit machine symbols and nothing would change. But you’d still need ten different symbols not 9!

Base 16 is in common use in IT and that used 0-9 and A-F but similarly it could use any symbols.