Thread: Interesting, surprising facts

Well there's 1 sequence of three digits which does give you "PIE" and 999 sequences which wouldn't, so it is a pretty funny coincidence. It's not the same thing as arbitrarily naming variables to make them spell something.

The Bible doesn't say anything about an immortal soul. Surprising fact.

No, it gives you pie when you alter it enough to slightly resemble pie. As I said earlier, the number sequence actually bears little resemblance to the word pie when reversed in standard font. You could present the exact same argument that you are just arbitrarily using another font to suit your needs. Even considering the use of non standard naming of variables it's still a coincidence that the volume of pizza can be wrote as PiZZA.
More change is needed to make Pie out of 3.14 than the volume of a pizza into PiZZA. It seems that the novelty surrounding the pie picture is largely created because it uses one of the most common constants in the world, not because anything significant is actually going on.
I'm sure we disagree on this, but I don't think you can say that one is a huge coincidence more than the other.

It may not work with a regular writing of '4' with it open at the top, if that's what you mean, but the thing is, there are no other letters which could be arranged in any font, backwards or forwards, to produce the backwards PIE. If there were a few possible arrangements of numbers that could be morphed into PIE then you'd be right, but I don't see any others. And it isn't like some special, unheard of font. The regular numbers on a calculator or whatever font I'm writing this in have 4=P, I=1, 3=E, you don't have to do much mental stretching to see it.

I tried to calculate the actual probability of it happening but it's beyond my grasp.... though I'm sure it's astronomically high. There are so many factors. It isn't simply the probability that those 3 numbers form PI. You also have to consider the probability that they have the same number of digits and that those digits match (either backwards or forwards, to be fair), the probability that the words PI and Pie would sound the same in English, etc.

(been meaning to respond to Xei's post before but haven't gotten to it yet)

Originally Posted by Xei

...
All the gold ever mined could fit into a 20 metre cube.

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

My hubby has told me that fact about gold. I still find it incredibly hard to believe

Originally Posted by Aristaeus

Great video - at one point it states this fact about all mined gold, and adds to it, that if you used all gold that the planet contains to cover its surface - the thickness of that covering would be more than 50 cm - not that rare after all.

The video also states, that cows sleep with their eyes open and standing on their feet, but that they lie down in order to dream.
The guy illustrates this by lying down and air walking his legs.
Does that mean cows have no REM Atonia?
Somebody know about this?

From other sources:

Giraffes only sleep 1.9 hours per day - in 5 - 10 min. intervals.
Koalas sleep around 22 hours per day.
REM sleep is found in all species of mammals and birds that have been studied, but it probably does not occur in other classes of animals.


More sleep stuff from more sources:

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes.
You’re more likely to die from sleep deprivation before starvation. It takes two weeks to starve, but 10 days without sleep can kill you.
Losing sleep reduces your pain tolerance. It may disrupt the body’s pain signalling system, heightening sensitivity to painful stimuli.
After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would have if you had slept enough.


Having a newborn baby typically results in 400–750 hours of lost sleep for the baby’s parents in the first year.
On average, a newborn sleeps for 10 to 19 hours per day. Bottle-fed infants sleep for longer periods than breast-fed infants.


12% of people dream in black and white.
Before color television the number was 75%.


There are two periods of maximum sleepiness — the late afternoon (from around 3 to 5 PM) and the end of the night (from around 3 to 5 a.m.). There are also two periods of maximum alertness — around 1 a.m. in the morning and 1 p.m. in the afternoon.

image.jpg

Originally Posted by StephL

Great video - at one point it states this fact about all mined gold, and adds to it, that if you used all gold that the planet contains to cover its surface - the thickness of that covering would be more than 50 cm - not that rare after all.

This requires some perspective. The Earth's radius is more than 600,000,000cm. 50cm is therefore... a tiny tiny quantity. And only a tiny quantity of that is close enough to the surface to be mined.

Originally Posted by Xei

This requires some perspective. The Earth's radius is more than 600,000,000cm. 50cm is therefore... a tiny tiny quantity. And only a tiny quantity of that is close enough to the surface to be mined.

I know - so - it is not that much gold after all!
Could we agree on that?
wink.gif

If you look at it in terms of percentage of elements in the Earth´s crust - it´s negligible of course.

Oxygen 47 %

Silicon 28 %

Aluminium 8 %

Iron 5 %

Calcium 3.5 %

Sodium 3 %

Potassium 2.5 %

Magnesium 2 %

All other elements 1 %

What makes this sort of "visualization" attractive is the stuff it´s all about - we wouldn´t be as interested in say - painite .. uhm - wait a minute:

Originally Posted by Huffingtonpost - sic!

Thought to be the rarest mineral on the planet, painite remains priceless. One of the hardest minerals to locate, it can only be harvested in Mogok and Kachin States in Myanmar. Only 25 small crystals and only two faceted crystals have been discovered in the world. Painite costs around 60,000 dollars per carat.

You are correct - I was echoing the tone of the video without much reflection on what "I know"..

It's not really it's rarity that makes gold precious, it's the fact that the aliens use it for their space ships.

a_holyshit.gif..

Oh yeah - that must be right:

A woman holds a Guinness World Record for highest fall survived with no parachute because she was in a plane crash!

On January 26th 1972, a Yugoslavian commercial airliner was attacked by a Croatian terrorist group.

A bomb went off while the airplane was at 33,000 feet. It tore the plane into several pieces, which then proceeded to plummet to Earth. The pieces crashed on a frozen mountain-top below.

Every person on the plane was killed, save for one. Flight attendant Vesna Vulovic survived. A German man found her at the crash site covered by another body and pinned by a refreshment cart.

The man was a trained medic so did all he could for Vulovic until he could get her to a hospital. She suffered a fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae.

She was temporarily paralyzed before surgery allowed her to regain the use of her legs.

Vulovic now holds the Guinness World Record for highest fall survived without a parachute - 33,330 feet! It was later revealed that Vulovic wasn't supposed to be on that flight at all. Her schedule had been mixed up with another flight attendant named Vesna.

eek.gif.. Incredible!! Congratulation!

Just watched this video.

Bump!

I just had to share this. Absolutely fascinating.

Livescience.com | Water Bounces Right Off This Super-Repellent Material