Things that are allegedly ‘science’, but are self-evidently magic

tjagain

discount birds – they are not real

what about full-price birds? Are they real?

The universe. It must be infinite but can’t be.

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

microwaves.

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.

Lasers – take a bit of ruby, shine some light into it and a frikkin laser beam shoots out.

Why an incline treadmill is harder work than a flat one, you are not actually running up a hill.

A cloud is actually a body of air moving upwards very quickly

Wind isn’t visible!

But thanks for the explanation, I am sure you are right, but it’s easier for me to accept that it’s all just magic. Like rainbows.

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…..!!

A fun thing to calculate is the acceleration of a piston from top dead center.

It’s huge.  You’d think the loads on the crank and con-rods would be the results of all the firey explosions above them. And you’d be right, but not by as much as you would imagine.

At full throttle it’s about 10tones of force, which is a lot.

But at 5000RPM the piston itself (which is ~800g) is accelerating at 15,000 ms^-2, which means it produces a force equal to about 2 tones. And it’s doing that whether you’re at full throttle or just cruising along

Nvidia DLSS and Frame Generation.

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).

Don’t arrive here with knowledge and reason, this thread is about magic.

I don’t get this thread. If something intrigues you educate yourself. The thread started badly and the tone was set  with:

“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.”

….when it’s gravity that makes syphoned liquid flow, and hence only ‘downhill’.

The Quantum Bomb tester experiment is clearly magic…

“The Elitzur–Vaidman bomb-tester is a quantum mechanics thought experiment that uses interaction-free measurements to verify that a bomb is functional without having to detonate it.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur%E2%80%93Vaidman_bomb_tester

I don’t think it’s just a thought experiment it’s been verified experimentally.

I don’t get this thread. If something intrigues you educate yourself.

The internet is full of videos from people who have D0nE Th3yre 0Wn R3sEarch! and look where that has lead…

If something intrigues you educate yourself.

Educate yourself about the mechanism of Anaesthetics and not only can you come back to the thread and let us know, you can do the same for the Royal College of Surgeons, who I’m pretty sure would welcome the news.

Plus also, is nothing at all on this site allowed ever to be light-hearted, ever?

 uses interaction-free measurements to verify that a bomb is functional without having to detonate it.

where’s the fun in that?

Anything vaguely sciencey but also (coincidentally I’m sure) politically hot that the UN or other supra national bodies have colluded with information gatekeepers such as Google to ensure only an approved subset of information is available for public consumption.

These are generally bogus, or magic

If something intrigues you educate yourself.

Won’t help in my case as nobody knows whether or not the universe is infinite or not.

Magnetism?

I’ll raise you gravity……

Magnets. You can’t have perpetual motion, but a magnet  can always generate force

Gillian Anderson. The older she gets, the better she looks. Clearly magic.

The Brighton i360.

I’m no engineering/structural expert.

But.,.. if you ask me it needs a few guy ropes from the top, holding it in place TBH.

It annoys me.

DrP

Music through headphones – that voice is in the middle of my head! That guitar is only in my right ear and the bass might be mainly to the left but my brain is putting it all together in a way that is hard to explain.

If a band is in front of you playing live it all makes sense but stereo stuff in headphones does magic things.

@nickc We have our own royal college these days (since 1992…)

{engineer} opens thread, shrugs shoulders / slowly shakes head, leaves thread.

DrP

The Brighton i360.

But.,.. if you ask me it needs a few guy ropes from the top, holding it in place TBH.

I reckon the pole is stuck in the ground the same distance it protrudes. Should be alright.
For all of the pedants about to leap on this statement & correct me; it’s a joke. Unless it’s true. Then, I am obviously an expert.

@DrP – what’s even more amazing from your pic is why all the water isn’t draining onto the beach, given how wonky the horizon is!!

Waderider

I don’t get this thread. If something intrigues you educate yourself.

You can understand something, but still find it amazing/magical. Magnets, radio waves, gravity, white dog eggs. The world is a truly wondrous place.

My iPad.

I don’t get this thread. If something intrigues you educate yourself.

And people call me a fun sponge.

The universe. It must be infinite but can’t be.

This. The whole cosmos thing. A clear, dark night in a bivi bag prompts thoughts or feelings I struggle to describe. Generally I give up and literally just stare into space.

There’s a good documentary on Netflix titled ‘A Trip to Infinity’ with cosmologists and physicists talking about the idea of an infinite universe and they’re clearly mind-blown by the idea of it too.

And Cosmos is one of my favourite books, we describe so many things as ‘genius’ but Carl Sagan was on another level with his ability to understand and communicate this stuff.

where’s the fun in that?

Ah, just continue reading a bit:

it is possible for the experiment to verify that the bomb works without triggering its detonation, although there is still a 50% chance that the bomb will detonate in the effort.

Music.

How can soundwaves, in a series of varying frequencies simultaneously affect the brain chemistry of thousands of individuals in a stadium to joy and rapture? The same frequencies, arranged in a slightly different order can pass unnoticed in a lift.

Properly mad, that.

Since I was young this has been a mystery to me:

Why is the sky blue?

Because the sunlight goes through the atmosphere and the longer wavelengths get scattered so only the short ones (blue) make it through.

Why is the sunset red?

Because the sunlight goes through the extra dust in the atmosphere and the shorter wavelengths get scattered so only the long ones (red) make it through.

Why is snow white?

Because the sunlight gets scattered through all the crystals and all mixed up together, therefore white.

Clearly some magic going on here.

I don’t get this thread. If something intrigues you educate yourself.

Away with you and your logic.

Thermos Flasks .

Great at keeping things hot or cold.

But how do they know?

I reckon the pole is stuck in the ground the same distance it protrudes. Should be alright.
For all of the pedants about to leap on this statement & correct me; it’s a joke. Unless it’s true. Then, I am obviously an expert.

you should see how they built it – top first then adding more and more underneath. Bonkers

2.20ish onwards

Wifi.

My laptop is not currently connected physically to anything. Yet it works (thanks to a battery with some magical hamsters in it, you can’t fool me with this “electrons” nonsense…) and all the info that I’m viewing/hearing is sent through the air (definitely magic) from a “router” (more magic) which is connected to some cables, at the end of which is some more magic allowing me to access the sum total of human achievements in seconds.

Imagine just how many millions of special pixies must be finding all that stuff and pushing it through the wires to me!

🤯

I can’t post mine, but it involves a statistical analysis which is in contempt of court.

Waderider

I don’t get this thread. If something intrigues you educate yourself.

Because at the sharp pointy end of science, no one knows the answer. Let alone is able to explain it in a brief wikipedia page.

Quantum physics and relativity is still a field of physics populated by some very clever monkeys with some very clever tools looking at some very hot fire and going “oooooohhhhhhhh”, Just like they did in a cave a million years ago.

Most people could probably have it explained to them what fire actually is and why it’s generally red, hot and painful.

Ask them what the Higgs field is and even someone fairly intelligent will get stuck at the first “but why”, after “it gives things mass when they move through it”.

• The universe is expanding. I’m ok with this.
• The expansion of the universe is speeding up. Getting twitchy now.
• Scientists (of whatever species) on earth (or a planet of you choosing) in 100 billion years will have no idea of the size of the universe. All they’ll be able to see are very local neighbouring galaxies. There will be no evidence of anything else being out there as the expansion will be so fast by then that no light will ever make it from distant galaxies to us. Now I need a wee lie down.

Oooh!

Olfactory memory. A certain smell can flash you back to a place and time, all because of something toy didn’t notice the time. Sometimes it’s good but other times it’s not.

The universe is expanding. I’m ok with this.

This is the problem – I am NOT at all fine with the universe expanding. What is it expanding into? What is it beyond the universe that enables the universe to expand into it? Is it something (it must BE something)? So what is it? Or is it nothing? If it is nothing, then how can the universe occupy nothing?

We live at an amazing time.

A time will come when, due to entropy, there will be no light in the universe.

Every star will have died. Any sentient being still around will see nothing but a uniform blackness in their sky.

what about full-price birds? Are they real?

Yeah, they are on Only Fans.