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Things that are allegedly 'science', but are self-evidently magic

 IHN
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[#13261031]

Some things have been bugging me for a while that clearly demonstrate that we're being hoodwinked. Things that are given 'scientific' explanations but clearly run on magic.

1) Syphoning liquid - Yes, I had it explained to me in GCSE physics, and yes, I understand the 'principle', but it's making water flow uphill, and that cannot be natural.

2) Induction hobs - Anyone who's watched a large pan full of cold water and potatoes start to bubble within a minute of being placed on an induction hob knows that can only be possible by harnessing the power of the Old Gods.

Any other examples?


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:41 am
dirkpitt74, funkmasterp, oldnpastit and 7 people reacted
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Magnetism.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:44 am
milan b., mashr, funkmasterp and 23 people reacted
 Alex
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Not so much science, but definitely technology. I find solace in these two axioms:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic AND

Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things

Oh and anything to do with Quarks. Other than a noise a posh duck makes, I assume physicists are just trolling the rest of us 🙂


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:45 am
milan b., twistedpencil, kelvin and 5 people reacted
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TiRedFull Member
Magnetism.

Just here to say this


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:51 am
Simon and Simon reacted
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Aircraft.  You expect me to believe that you can chuck a metal tube weighing hundreds of tonnes down a road at 100mph and it just magically takes off?  Obvious nonsense - they are clearly held up in the air by faith and crashes occur when someone realises this and stands up on the plane shouting " what is holding us up here?".  If enough people question it then the plane crashes for lack of faith


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:51 am
funkmasterp, silvine, Murray and 9 people reacted
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The kidney, once explained to one of our trainees as "blood goes in, magic pixies, blood and urine come out".

This stands up quite well as an explanation as if someone is shocked/hypoxic then the pixies go on strike.

I can of course explain in painful detail how CVVHDF works.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:52 am
Murray and Murray reacted
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If Quarks were not bad enough how about gluons?  Obviously made up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluon


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:53 am
Alex and Alex reacted
 IHN
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Magnetism.

Is a very good point


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:53 am
fazzini, jeffl, fazzini and 1 people reacted
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The popularity of Mrs Browns Boys

without a doubt someone had to sacrifice their firstborn to get that made, let alone successful


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:55 am
sop, hightensionline, crossed and 103 people reacted
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Aircraft. You expect me to believe that you can chuck a metal tube weighing hundreds of tonnes down a road at 100mph and it just magically takes off? Obvious nonsense – they are clearly held up in the air by faith and crashes occur when someone realises this and stands up on the plane shouting ” what is holding us up here?”. If enough people question it then the plane crashes for lack of faith

Unless the aircraft is on a treadmill obviously - in which case there's no doubt about whether or not it can take off...


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:57 am
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Trutune inserts.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:58 am
dirkpitt74, kimbers, dirkpitt74 and 1 people reacted
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Is a very good point

Magnetic fields don't have points.  😉


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 10:58 am
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@kimbers Someone put it down to the COVID and resulting loss of taste.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:04 am
jamesoz, garage-dweller, ChrisL and 3 people reacted
 Alex
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If Quarks were not bad enough how about gluons?  Obviously made up

@tjagain - well I read that wiki page and now I feel very stupid 🙂


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:06 am
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Basic magnetism is relatively easy as it is really just metal loves metal.

Wait until you get to Geo-magnetism where the 'simpleintroduction for dummies' starts with : [i]The geomagnetic field vector, B, is described by the orthogonal components X (northerly intensity), Y (easterly intensity) and Z (vertical intensity, positive downwards); total intensity F; horizontal intensity H; inclination (or dip) I (the angle between the horizontal plane and the field vector, measured positive downwards) and declination (or magnetic variation) D (the horizontal angle between true north and the field vector, measured positive eastwards). Declination, inclination and total intensity can be computed from the orthogonal components using the equations

where H is given by

.

The International System of Units (SI) unit of magnetic field intensity, strictly flux density, most commonly used in geomagnetism is the Tesla. At the Earth's surface the total intensity varies from 22,000 nanotesla (nT) to 67,000 nT. Other units likely to be encountered are the Gauss (1 Gauss = 100,000 nT), the gamma (1 gamma = 1 nT) and the Ørsted.[/i]


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:07 am
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Hmmm,looks like the equations got stuck to the other webpage, must be magnetism of something


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:08 am
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Have you every watched a photograph develop?

Its definitely witchcraft.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:08 am
fasthaggis, avdave2, chipps and 3 people reacted
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The sheer longevity of Joe Cocker's career.
Songwriting is the science bit, but how he keeps going all this time is pure magic.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:11 am
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@ratherbeintobago As someone who has spent a professional lifetime in renal computing now you have me curious as to what you do (and where) 😉


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:22 am
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Anaesthesia.

we'll put you to sleep, and magically, you won't feel a thing - say the actual experts in the field, when pressed further about the detailed mechanism; will shout "squirrel" and run out of the room. True Story


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:23 am
supernova, funkmasterp, silvine and 11 people reacted
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Whenever a physicist mentions the words 'dark matter ', swap in 'magic' and there's really no difference.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:25 am
nickc and nickc reacted
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@littlerob I'm curious what renal computing is.

@nickc Please don't start on the other half of my job. Anyway, isn't it something to do with GABA in the reticular activating system?


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:25 am
nickc and nickc reacted
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Have you every watched a photograph develop?

It's 28 years now since I last had a darkroom and still the memory of watching images appear before my eyes never leaves me.

Consciousness - currently reading Anil Seth's Being You. I could tell you something about it but you'd hear something different from what I'm saying  😂


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:27 am
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The landing of toast on the floor butter side down, its a tragedy.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:28 am
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"flow".  Only experienced it a handful of times but there's only one answer to "how the **** did I manage that?"

Also superglue when it first came out

@kayak23 - still no sign of a tour 😕


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:29 am
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Anaesthesia.

we’ll put you to sleep, and magically, you won’t feel a thing – say the actual experts in the field, when pressed further about the detailed mechanism; will shout “squirrel” and run out of the room. True Story

I think this might be true because the anesthesiest that put me sleep sure as shit didn't didn't apply any science when i told him morphine would do nothing for me. he just reassured me they'd up the dose. holy shitballs snapping out of general anesthetic to full blown post op pain was quite the awakening.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:30 am
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The majority of face masks worn during the pandemic


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:33 am
leffeboy, matt_outandabout, cinnamon_girl and 3 people reacted
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The landing of toast on the floor butter side down, its a tragedy.

This is why you should always fix your toast to a cat. It'll never land, just spin endlessly just above the ground.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:34 am
milan b., jamiemcf, milan b. and 1 people reacted
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The gold-white vs blue-black dress internet debate a few years prompted some pretty interesting research about colour perception. Safe to say some folks are definitely not seeing the same colour that you are for lots of complex reasons, most of which appear to not have any real logical basis or evolutionary reason at all.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:36 am
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Anaesthesia.

we’ll put you to sleep, and magically, you won’t feel a thing – say the actual experts in the field, when pressed further about the detailed mechanism; will shout “squirrel” and run out of the room. True Story

Doesn't this apply to a lot of painkilling and sedatives'?  We know they work. We know which ones work better than others. We're really good at making them work how we want to.

But why? No one really knows. That's why you can still go into a chemist and buy aspirin which is really just synthetically made Willow bark extract.

Same with Lithium, it's been used in the treatment of mental health issues for ~80 years.  Still not sure anyone's figured out why it works though.

Anyway, isn’t it something to do with GABA in the reticular activating system?

My housemate once gave me a large dose of GABA* to get me to sleep whilst I was suffering a bout of insomnia. That was fun.

*you can buy it as a bodybuilding supplement


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:36 am
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jhinwxm Free Member
The majority of face masks worn during the pandemic

That @jhinwxm hasn't found a new conspiracy to latch onto yet, it's been 4 years.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:39 am
blokeuptheroad, supernova, silvine and 21 people reacted
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Doesn’t this apply to a lot of painkilling and sedatives?

I'd say not a lot, no - opioids and NSAIDs are pretty well understood, as is aspirin. The actual anaesthetic agents, especially volatiles, less so.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:41 am
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Crystalography. So you've x-rayed this tiny sliver of rock which draws some dots on a bit of photograhic paper and from that you know what shape the crystals are, in 3D? oh you're going to take the dots and draw some lines and oh my god they're atoms.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:41 am
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Good noise cancelling headphones.  I know exactly how they work, and it's really very simple, but still - an amazing experience every time.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:41 am
thebunk and thebunk reacted
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I have never understood how condensed water can stay in the sky for such long periods of time.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:43 am
hardtailonly, funkmasterp, anorak and 9 people reacted
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+1 on the aircraft/flight thing.
I did my dissertation looking at a wing in ground-effect (not that I can remember much of it) but it still seems like bonkers stuff.

Even 'simple' things that we take for granted are crazy when you get into the nuts & bolts.
A car engine idling at ~800rpm means that the pistons are going up & down over 13 times/second.
Rev it to 5000rpm and they're now going up & down over 83 times/second.....!!


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:45 am
JAG, TedC, JAG and 1 people reacted
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standing up.  think about how complex it is.  Its clearly impossible to stand on two feet hence why most animals are on 4.  discount birds - they are not real


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:48 am
funkmasterp, silvine, big_scot_nanny and 13 people reacted
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“blood goes in, magic pixies, blood and urine come out”.

I imagine passing a magic pixie would make your eyes water a bit.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:49 am
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I imagine passing a magic pixie would make your eyes water a bit.

That’s why the Cornish call them piskeys.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:52 am
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The universe. It must be infinite but can't be.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:54 am
milan b. and milan b. reacted
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tjagain

discount birds – they are not real

what about full-price birds? Are they real?


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:57 am
milan b., reeksy, tjagain and 17 people reacted
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The universe. It must be infinite but can’t be.

Also universe: Speed of light appears to have changed over time.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 11:58 am
 5lab
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microwaves.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 12:01 pm
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I have never understood how condensed water can stay in the sky for such long periods of time.

That ones easy.

To evaporate water you put a lot of energy in, to condense it you get that energy back out. Which means it's effectively heating the air around it (or in reality the cloud is one temperature and keeps rising through colder air rather then cooling as the pressure drops like dry air would).

A cloud is actually a body of air moving upwards very quickly and that airflow holds the water droplets.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 12:02 pm
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Lasers - take a bit of ruby, shine some light into it and a frikkin laser beam shoots out.


 
Posted : 21/05/2024 12:07 pm
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