Science stuff that blew your mind when you first heard of it

[RedDeadFred]

This totally mindfucked me when I first saw it.

Double slit experiment.

What the fuck. Well that's pretty much the craziest most awesome thing I've ever heard. Thank you for sharing. I was going to say something along the lines of just how massive our universe is (and that there could be multiple universes) but this just takes the cake. Is there any explanation for why the electrons behave this way yet?

 

[launchpadmcqwak]

Damn, ninja'd by the OP, when I saw the thread title I immediately thought "uncertainty principle"

Okay, got to add finding out that birds are almost certainly descended from dinosaurs, meaning from a cladistic point of view Dinosauria never really went extinct. Also considering there were a good number of feathered dinosaurs, chances are we would consider birds as a proper sub-group of dinosaur if the non-avian ones were still around today.

this...i could never look at a budgie the same way...

 

[TwiZtah]

Quantum Entanglement.

By the time I heard of it, I was well familiar with the SOL limit on both energy and mass. Then I discover that certain paired particles are capable of "communicating" instantaneously, over any arbitrary distance

No, that is not how Quantum Entanglement could be used, this isn't Mass Effect. You cannot use them to communicate faster than light.

 

[LarenzoAOG]

The fact that the human body is made of a billion jillion cells that work together to do shit unconsciously and almost instantly, it's like the most complex machine ever conceived a billion orders more complex.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

One thing that I found fascinating...

You can walk in space without a suit and live.

You'd think it would be very cold in space, but it isn't, that is to say, not as cold as some of the coldest places on Earth.

There's nothing in space, ergo, nothing to take heat away from your body. So you can, in theory, hold you breath and walk in space for a few moments, unscathed.

[sub]I heard this somewhere, so if I'm wrong, do tell me.[/sub]

I thought you would explode because its a vacuum (or some science-y gobble-y gook)? I'm probably wrong though. :\

My mind gets blown everytime I look at the formulas behind said theories

no, you are right, this guy has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, pressure inside and out side for gas must be balanced, you will explode in order to make this happen in space. Also you can die of radiation poisoning and freezing to death (even if it isn't as cold as the coldest place on earth, you can still freeze to death within seconds).

I never claimed I knew what I was talking about, that's why I asked others to correct me, which they have.

What I didn't do, like your fine self, is say someone didn't know what they were talking about and proceed to be equally incorrect

Ironic huh?

 

[Megacherv]

1. Everything attracts everything else due to gravity. Probably explains why I can't get out of be in the morning

2. Someone's already said it, but Thomas Young's Double Slit theory was really interesting

3. Probably my most mind-blowing is how electrons exist. They're not a particle made of stuff, they're just areas of the electric field which are more excited. To think that we're all made of them is really mind-blowing...

 

[Olas]

This totally mindfucked me when I first saw it.

Double slit experiment.

What the fuck. Well that's pretty much the craziest most awesome thing I've ever heard. Thank you for sharing. I was going to say something along the lines of just how massive our universe is (and that there could be multiple universes) but this just takes the cake. Is there any explanation for why the electrons behave this way yet?

The technical answer has a lot of scary math in it, but I know it has something to do with the Heisenburge uncertainty principle, which basically states that you can't know both the position and momentum of a particle at once.

Now I'm not a physicist so don't quote me on this, but it seems measuring which slit the electron goes through while it's doing it's whole quantum mechanics wave pattern weirdness would violate this uncertainty principle. Using this information you'd be able to mathematically determine both it's momentum and position, violating the most fundamental law of quantum mechanics. Apparently the laws of physics are so adamant about not being broken that they're willing to alter the nature of reality itself to keep keep us from successfully cheating them.

The universe seems to deliberately hide this information from us by having the electrons stop following the laws of quantum mechanics entirely and instead having them act according to the regular physics of larger objects, like tennis balls, which the Heisenburg principle doesn't apply to.

Apparently the math all adds up, however it implies that the universe is physically shaped by our own subjective knowledge of it. Suggesting the scaryass fucking possibility that reality itself might be subjective.

sooo... red pill or blue pill?

 

[Saregon]

The fact that if you were to put every single human, all 7 BILLION+ of us, standing shoulder to shoulder, we would take up less space than the city of Los Angeles. Also, if all humans were to live with the population density of New York City, we could still all fit in an area the size of Texas. So plenty of space to go around!

Also, quantum mechanics. All of it. My mind is constantly blown when reading about physics.

 

[corneth]

Black Holes, specifically how they interact with time.
Underwater Lakes
Euglenas


EDIT: Quantum Physics, really anything to do with it makes my head spin

 

[Heronblade]

Quantum Entanglement.

By the time I heard of it, I was well familiar with the SOL limit on both energy and mass. Then I discover that certain paired particles are capable of "communicating" instantaneously, over any arbitrary distance

No, that is not how Quantum Entanglement could be used, this isn't Mass Effect. You cannot use them to communicate faster than light.

Actually, in theory they can. But the means to do so is not, at present, in sight. If given a way to reliably entangle particles and keep them in that state, and a way to reliably change and detect the quantum state of said particles, point to point FTL communication would be achieved.

Regardless, for the time being all I meant was that the particles affect each other instantaneously. They "communicate" in the sense that their quantum states are a reflection of each other, regardless of the normal rules of distance and time, and without any detectable means of energy transfer.

 

[Bestival]

Googolplex and Graham's number fucked me up, still can't get my head around them.

A googol is 10 to the power 100, or a 1 with 100 zeros. A googolplex is a googol a googol times a googol. If you put a 0 on every known molecule in the universe you still couldn't write the number out. It's a fuck off big number, is the general message here.

Graham's number is still bigger than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number


Shit makes my brain hurt.

 

[TwiZtah]

Quantum Entanglement.

By the time I heard of it, I was well familiar with the SOL limit on both energy and mass. Then I discover that certain paired particles are capable of "communicating" instantaneously, over any arbitrary distance

No, that is not how Quantum Entanglement could be used, this isn't Mass Effect. You cannot use them to communicate faster than light.

Actually, in theory they can. But the means to do so is not, at present, in sight. If given a way to reliably entangle particles and keep them in that state, and a way to reliably change and detect the quantum state of said particles, point to point FTL communication would be achieved.

Regardless, for the time being all I meant was that the particles affect each other instantaneously. They "communicate" in the sense that their quantum states are a reflection of each other, regardless of the normal rules of distance and time, and without any detectable means of energy transfer.

No, I'm refering to this guy. He answers questions on AskScience http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gbrwr/could_someone_please_explain_how_quantum/

 

[Bruenin]

Today, while innocently doing science, I learned that the Escapist has (at least on my end) a 1,050,901 character limit

Any further attempts have resulted in failure (and freezing)

The More You Know!

imagine the sheer size of the wall of text that'd make O.O

 

[Bruenin]

black holes

they scare me <.< There was pic of what the sky would look like if we orbited a black hole, and it took up most of the sky and just creeped me out thinking about it

 

[Denamic]

One thing that I found fascinating...

You can walk in space without a suit and live.

You'd think it would be very cold in space, but it isn't, that is to say, not as cold as some of the coldest places on Earth.

There's nothing in space, ergo, nothing to take heat away from your body. So you can, in theory, hold you breath and walk in space for a few moments, unscathed.

[sub]I heard this somewhere, so if I'm wrong, do tell me.[/sub]

You'd have a pretty hard time holding your breath, as the air would expand inside your chest and get sucked out. Better to exhale before space walking. You'd also be likely to get decompression sickness, and some blood vessels may burst, so you wouldn't be completely unscathed. Other than that, you'd be able to survive a few seconds, yeah.

 

[miketehmage]

One thing that I found fascinating...

You can walk in space without a suit and live.

You'd think it would be very cold in space, but it isn't, that is to say, not as cold as some of the coldest places on Earth.

There's nothing in space, ergo, nothing to take heat away from your body. So you can, in theory, hold you breath and walk in space for a few moments, unscathed.

[sub]I heard this somewhere, so if I'm wrong, do tell me.[/sub]

I'm fairly certain that temperature is the measure of the average kinetic energy of particles in an area, if then there is an area with no particles (ie space) there is no kinetic energy and therefore the temperature is absolute 0. Far colder than anywhere on earth I assure you

OT: The idea that space and time are linked makes my head hurt

 

[Idlemessiah]

The technical answer has a lot of scary math in it, but I know it has something to do with the Heisenburge uncertainty principle, which basically states that you can't know both the position and momentum of a particle at once.

Now I'm not a physicist so don't quote me on this, but it seems measuring which slit the electron goes through while it's doing it's whole quantum mechanics wave pattern weirdness would violate this uncertainty principle. Using this information you'd be able to mathematically determine both it's momentum and position, violating the most fundamental law of quantum mechanics. Apparently the laws of physics are so adamant about not being broken that they're willing to alter the nature of reality itself to keep keep us from successfully cheating them.

The universe seems to deliberately hide this information from us by having the electrons stop following the laws of quantum mechanics entirely and instead having them act according to the regular physics of larger objects, like tennis balls, which the Heisenburg principle doesn't apply to.

Apparently the math all adds up, however it implies that the universe is physically shaped by our own subjective knowledge of it. Suggesting the scaryass fucking possibility that reality itself might be subjective.

sooo... red pill or blue pill?

I'm tempted to say this, seeing as it is one of the most insightful bits of writing I've seen recently, but I'm going to have to go with the human body.

I really noticed it the first time I assembled a human skeleton. It was a complete skeleton from a Victorian cemetery in Manchester and it came in a box, like the other 100 or so from that site, and with no instructions (because it's not a Lego set). I assembled it perfectly, nothing in the wrong place at all, and then I realised that of course I did it properly, since there was no other way that the bones could all go together, they just fit, and every single other one fits together as well, even though they're different people, they still fit together the same way. No matter how different we all are, we are all made of the same 206 bits of bone arranged in the same way.

 

[gostchiken]

The ability to use something we still don't fundamentally understand(quantum mechanics) to make such breathtakingly accurate predictions; I think it was once said that the predictions made are in the order of accuracy of being able to guess the width of North America to a hairsbreadth. Kind of reminds me of that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the super advanced obelisk enables the apes to use tools.

 

[Coppernerves]

I'm guessing most of you have heard Tuberculosis right? or Consumption? Same disease, anyway, the bacterium which causes it does something really clever.

It lives in the lungs for a while, until one of immune systems' "macrophage" cells, which eat bacteria, swallows it by putting it in a little stomach bubble called a phagosome.

Now most bacteria would get digested in that phagosome, with "free radicals" which use the reactive power of non-paired oxygen.

But not our old friend myobacterium tuberculosis, oh no, it has some seriously good antioxidants, so that instead of the phagosome being its' prison, gallows, and crematorium, it makes a cushy home for itself.

It raises a happy family there of lots more tuberculosis bacteria, who break out and spread all over the body.