True facts you can't get yourself to believe

[Jennacide]

Polar bears are in fact black.
It blew my mind.

Most animals work like this. Cats and dogs are almost universally pink if you want to use skin tone instead of fur color as their defining feature.

Mine is that Britian created the first computer 100 years before the rest of the world, but never finished it's creation. Imagine how different technology would be had they finished. (If you don't believe it, look up The Analytical Engine)

 

[Strazdas]

pluto is a planet.
religion still exists. Some even view it as a good thing.
i have no warnings on escapist. (i most definitely deserve them)
99% of people in the world are complete idiots who doesnt deserve to live, myself included.
that such high level of fanboyism exist that two life-time friends would kill eachother for real because of the argument they had in star trek convention. (true story). one could also add a true story of a guy killing a fellow gamer because he stole a "golden armour" in game which is worth the amount of money that you can gain in around 2-3 hours of solo hunting.

 

[redisforever]

I was going to say the whole "we eat spiders a few times a year when we are asleep" but I pretty sure that is not concrete true fact.
So I guess I go with Pluto is in fact a planet! I just feel that denining it's a planet at all, it's a like a big screw you to the Greek who discover it in the first place and Hades himself.

Greeks didn't discover pluto, it was too small and far away for them to see, it was only discover in 1930, and was a 11 year old came up with the name, as Pluto is also the name of a god of the underworld, who could turn invisible, the point being that the planet is hard to see.

I do think, though, that a Greek scientist claimed that there was another planet, and when Pluto was discovered, people immediately claimed he was right, and called it a planet, wrongly. I may be wrong, though.


OT: The PS3 has 256 MB of RAM. What?! My netbook has 4 times more! (yeah, I know, it's different, and so on, and so on, but meh. Had nothing else to post)

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

People can't see that most Republicans are pretty much fascist.

People also can't tell that Republicans are not the monsters that others make them out to be and such attitudes only make people like me(moderates) dislike Democrats/Independent's that much more.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Polar bears are in fact black.
It blew my mind.

Most animals work like this. Cats and dogs are almost universally pink if you want to use skin tone instead of fur color as their defining feature.

Mine is that Britian created the first computer 100 years before the rest of the world, but never finished it's creation. Imagine how different technology would be had they finished. (If you don't believe it, look up The Analytical Engine)

...then Britain never created it if it was never finished.

 

[Vegosiux]

Subatomic particles and their electronic charge...

Still don't get why...

Please note, I am a chemistry graduate...

There's your problem! That's stuff physics is dealing with!

What I can't wrap my mind around, hm. Oh yes, the fact that the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was discovered merely a year before it crashed straight into Jupiter. Imagine the implications considering a different planet in our solar system could be involved.

 

[Strazdas]

I took A level physics for a year and I just didn't understand most of the stuff we were told. One of the worst ones was that if you fired a bullet from a gun and dropped another identical bullet they would hit the ground at the sametime. It's all about velocity and gravity but it just doesnt sit right in my head

Mythbusters have proven this to be right.

People can't see that most Republicans are pretty much fascist.

People also can't tell that Republicans are not the monsters that others make them out to be and such attitudes only make people like me(moderates) dislike Democrats/Independent's that much more.

all extremists are bad, republican or democrats. why cant it just be people with personal opinions for once?

 

[Vigormortis]

When I was first taught about general relativity I found it hard to believe. I mean, come on, simply by being in low-gravity you age faster and time just general moves quicker?
But it's true, as it turns out. They have to reset the ATOMIC CLOCKS (super accurate clocks) on satellites every day, lest GPS be miles and miles off.

It could be so hard to believe because general relativity isnt true. At least certain aspects you have to use special relativity to get a sensible answer. If we ever get one theory that actually works for everything it may well be a whole lot easier to understnad.

Also, the actually US GPS system, I dont know about GLONASS, GNSS or future Galileo, Compass or IRNSS systems, but I suspect they are the same, you don't actually alter the clock on the satellites (I misspelt this as satalites and auto correct has suggest to me Australites, Natality, Satanism and Satanist.....Go go autocorrect...) they check them individually against known location ground station and then work out the time error based on the error in position, the satalite then as part of the ping it sends out of its position says "I have an error of this" which the handheld devices then compensate for.

Also, I'm fairly sure the standard theory for the loss of time is due to the speed they are travelling relative to the earth is that much greater and the closer you get to the speed of light the slower you age (Though this could just be the special theory of relativity). The actual loss of time per day for satellites is negligible but it does become significant over time. For one day however the inaccuracies generated by the bending of the signal path as it travels through the atmosphere is significantly greater. Compensating for this bending is one of the biggest problems in satellite navigation as the difference it can make is huge.

Actually, you're both partly correct and partly incorrect.

The clocks on the satellites are not "updated" daily. Or even weekly. They are set to be a fraction of a second faster. This is to compensate for time flowing at a different rate for them than for Earth based clocks.

And, this varied rate isn't 'just' caused by their speed in orbit but also the decreased effect of gravity at their altitude.

Here's a 'quick and dirty' explanation: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html

Also, line-of-sight and "bending of the signal path" (as you put it) aren't really issues with how the system works today. At any given time your GPS unit is being tracked by at least three satellites using trilateration. So any variance can usually be 'weeded out' fairly quickly.

 

[IamQ]

That there was internet before the year 2000. I'm not even that young and I still can't picture it

Then I intend to mess with your head even more. The first internet was in the 50s.

 

[WanderingFool]

Oh, people voting Princess Diana's death as the most important thing to happen in the 20th century. Fuck.

Im sorry, but as tragic as it was, there was more serious shit to have gone down that would push her out of the running for being a foot note in history.

*Edit*

Oh, and something else I find unbelievable:

 

[Xanadu84]

In almost any set of numbers (peoples bank account balances, height of the worlds tallest buildings in feet, height of the worlds tallest buildings in meters, information on tax returns, fibbonochi sequences, most anything), approximately 30% of the numbers in the set will begin with 1, compared to about 5% of numbers beginning with 9, and a predictable distribution of decreasing frequency for 2 through 8. This has been used to find companies whose tax information don't follow this law, allowing forensic accountants to accuse them of fraud. It is admissable in court.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law

This is like a real life glitch in the Matrix of Math, and the most profoundly weird thing ive ever heard.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

I took A level physics for a year and I just didn't understand most of the stuff we were told. One of the worst ones was that if you fired a bullet from a gun and dropped another identical bullet they would hit the ground at the sametime. It's all about velocity and gravity but it just doesnt sit right in my head

Mythbusters have proven this to be right.

People can't see that most Republicans are pretty much fascist.

People also can't tell that Republicans are not the monsters that others make them out to be and such attitudes only make people like me(moderates) dislike Democrats/Independent's that much more.

all extremists are bad, republican or democrats. why cant it just be people with personal opinions for once?

sounds good, but that is overlooking what I typed before, which is that Republicans are just as human as Democrats and there is no reason for people(not talking about you particularly) to demonize them.

 

[faspxina]

The cake is a lie.

Somewhere in Skyrim, some poor adventurer is going to end up as a town guard because of some arrow he took in the knee.

 

[Xanadu84]

At some point in the past, my parents must have had sex. I just... can't accept it.

Surprise! You're adopted!!!

Feel any better?

He shouldn't, adopted or not, they definately still boned.

 

[redisforever]

At some point in the past, my parents must have had sex. I just... can't accept it.

Surprise! You're adopted!!!

Feel any better?

Well, then his real parents would still have had sex. So, yeah, not that much of a difference, except if he were adopted, he wouldn't know his real parents.

 

[Redweaver]

That anyone believes any polititian is looking out for the interests of anyone who hasn't given them a lot of money.

Trickle-down economics. Yeah, make rich people even richer and that will somehow help everyone else...we get the crumbs that trickle from the corners of their mouths and that should be good enough.

That religion still exists. Cavemen made up Stone Age explainations for the universe and death and people still believe those stories. Even highly educated and logical people.

A deregulated free market is in any way a good thing for anyone other than those raking in the money.

The entire universe we know of started as nothing more than rotation. We and everything we know are just Nth dimentional shadows of Nth+1 dimentional objects.

Benton Harbor, Michigan. I just don't even know where to begin.

That we can't figure out a cure for cancer or fix global warming or feed our entire population, but we damn sure made a boner pill. Go science!

 

[KillKill]

At some point in the past, my parents must have had sex. I just... can't accept it.

Surprise! You're adopted!!!

Feel any better?

He shouldn't, adopted or not, they definately still boned.

touche.

 

[KillKill]

At some point in the past, my parents must have had sex. I just... can't accept it.

Surprise! You're adopted!!!

Feel any better?

Well, then his real parents would still have had sex. So, yeah, not that much of a difference, except if he were adopted, he wouldn't know his real parents.

I realised that shortly after posting, I should think these things through more...

 

[WanderingFool]

That we can't figure out a cure for cancer or fix global warming or feed our entire population, but we damn sure made a boner pill. Go science!

I see flacidness as natures way of saying , "No, you cant reproduce." Regardless of whether they are a major asset to humanity or some junky off the street.

I think this is also Nature's way of telling us to fuck off and die, but thats just my thought...

Also...

Benton Harbor, Michigan. I just don't even know where to begin.

Huh?

 

[Redweaver]

Benton Harbor, Michigan. I just don't even know where to begin.

Huh?

Republicans in Michigan passed a "financial martial law" law. Then they took over Benton Harbor. The financial manager has supreme power to make unilateral decisions about the town. Like removing from office city officials voted in by the towns citizens. Or selling the town's low power radio station. Or telling the city council they only have the authority to call a meeting to order, approve the minutes of a meeting and adjourn a meeting. Or take the publicly owned parks that were willed to the people of Benton Harbor and sell them to a golf course. The financial manager can straight up make Benton Harbor go away, as in remove it from maps because it is now not a government recognized city. The citizens have no say in the goings on of their own town, and they can't vote this guy out and whatever they voted for in the past is null and void.

It sounds straight out of a dictator's handbook, but it's going on right here in American in 2012.