Astonishing Facts....

[Halmyre]

boyse7en said:

Crossflow Kid said:

And in the opening of the chest-burst scene the crew were unaware John Hurt was about to be "unwell" in order to gain an authentic reaction.

And in the dating scene of The Jerk, Bernadette Peters was told that Steve Martin was going to kiss her so that she would make an authentically shocked/disgusted reaction when he did something else

In Die Hard, when Bruce Willis drops Alan Rickman off the Nakatomi building, Rickman was told he'd be dropped at the count of three. They dropped him on two, hence the look of shock and surprise.

[Antony Moxey]

horza said:

Remember the Russian sub Kursk?

It sank in water shallower than the boat was long.

Is that the one where all the crew drowned? If it was that shallow couldn’t they somehow open the hatches and swim to the surface, or was the sub 1000ft long or something?

[Antony Moxey]

Halmyre said:

boyse7en said:

Crossflow Kid said:

And in the opening of the chest-burst scene the crew were unaware John Hurt was about to be "unwell" in order to gain an authentic reaction.

And in the dating scene of The Jerk, Bernadette Peters was told that Steve Martin was going to kiss her so that she would make an authentically shocked/disgusted reaction when he did something else

In Die Hard, when Bruce Willis drops Alan Rickman off the Nakatomi building, Rickman was told he'd be dropped at the count of three. They dropped him on two, hence the look of shock and surprise.

I’m not sure I believe any of those. They asked Tom Hanks about the beach scene in SPR and asked if he knew about all the explosions or whether they didn’t tell him to get a true reaction. He said of course they knew, they all knew, and that they were actors so it’d be a pretty poor show if they couldn’t act shocked/stunned/scared when the explosions went off.

[Scabutz]

Halmyre said:

boyse7en said:

Crossflow Kid said:

And in the opening of the chest-burst scene the crew were unaware John Hurt was about to be "unwell" in order to gain an authentic reaction.

And in the dating scene of The Jerk, Bernadette Peters was told that Steve Martin was going to kiss her so that she would make an authentically shocked/disgusted reaction when he did something else

In Die Hard, when Bruce Willis drops Alan Rickman off the Nakatomi building, Rickman was told he'd be dropped at the count of three. They dropped him on two, hence the look of shock and surprise.

In the same vein. In Bad Boys 2 when they give the guy dating his daughter st on the day of filming Will Smith was purposefully off with the kids and they didn't do any of the usual stuff showing him that the gun is empty etc. He looks like he is stting himself because he is.

[horza]

Antony Moxey said:

horza said:

Remember the Russian sub Kursk?

It sank in water shallower than the boat was long.

Is that the one where all the crew drowned? If it was that shallow couldn’t they somehow open the hatches and swim to the surface, or was the sub 1000ft long or something?

Most of the crew died in the initial explosions but there were survivors alive at the rear of the boat for a time.

If I knew I was in 300 feet of water I’d be tempted to go for the swim rather than await my fate inside. Probably a silly idea though. What if you surfaced at three in the freezing morning with not a surface ship in sight?

[glazbagun]

Antony Moxey said:

horza said:

Remember the Russian sub Kursk?

It sank in water shallower than the boat was long.

Is that the one where all the crew drowned? If it was that shallow couldn’t they somehow open the hatches and swim to the surface, or was the sub 1000ft long or something?

Only about 100Mdeep IIRC. A torpedo exploded in the tube causing a fire which ignited other torpedoes and the secondary explosion destroyed most of the bow. 23 guys survived in the aft of the ship but died when the carbon dioxide-scrubber came into contact with waist-high water and ignited, burning all of the remaining oxygen/crew.

Although there's not many submarine accidents that end well.

There was a British one HMS Thetis which sank with it's tail still above the water, but only four crew survived after someone panicked in the escape tube and drowned leaving the hatch open to the sea and no one else able to escape.

Edited by glazbagun on Friday 19th January 20:31

[V8LM]

gregs656 said:

StevieBee said:

At a cellular level, nobody is more than 9 years old.

If you are 9 years old or more, there is no part of your body that existed when you born.

That's incorrect. Some cells can last a life time.

The cells which form the lens of your eye were made before you were born, are enucleated and hence make no new proteins. You are born with the proteins in the cells of the lens and they have to survive as long as you do. There are certain proteins in the lens which act as a 'sponge' to soak up any partially unfolded other proteins. The lens gets harder as more and more of these sponges soak up partially unfolded proteins, and eventually leads to presbyopia and the need for reading glasses. Once all the 'sponges' are full, they can't accommodate any more unfolded protein, so any more denaturation leads to aggregation of the proteins, which are opaque. These are cataracts.

A plot of the amount of free alpha-crystallin (sponge) versus age shows a linear decrease until 43.5 years.



This is the age at which one probably first needs to have reading glasses, and the age at which cataracts start to appear:





Carry on.

Edited by V8LM on Friday 19th January 20:07

[V8LM]

A human sperm contains 3 234 830 000 base pairs. The average ejaculate contains 300 000 000 sperm, making one ejaculation equivalent to a 1.9 exabit (or 237 petabyte) data transfer. Not bad in 30 seconds.

[V8LM]

The average number of amino acids in human proteins is 400. There are 20 different amino acids. If you were to make one of each possible sequence of 400-residue long proteins, the test tube that contained them would weight 4x10^444 times more than the observable universe.

[V8LM]

...and to a very crude approximation there are 3^399 possible shapes that a 400-residue-long protein could fold into.

If you were to fold the protein into its most favourable shape as quickly as is possible i.e. taking one femtosecond (0.000000000000001 seconds) to try each one, it would take you on average 10^166 years to do; over 1-with-156 zeros times longer than the age of the universe.

Nature can fold proteins in milliseconds. And normally folds them into the same stucture each and every time.

[Chebble]

generationx said:

I'm sure at one point one of these "facts" will astonish me. Up till now it's just "oh".

Have you got any “facts” to add?

[glazbagun]

V8LM said:

...and to a very crude approximation there are 3^399 possible shapes that a 400-residue-long protein could fold into.

If you were to fold the protein into its most favourable shape as quickly as is possible i.e. taking one femtosecond (0.000000000000001 seconds) to try each one, it would take you on average 10^166 years to do; over 1-with-156 zeros times longer than the age of the universe.

Nature can fold proteins in milliseconds. And normally folds them into the same stucture each and every time.

It is amazing stuff.

The BBC did a documentary called the secret life of the cell about cells and how they react to viruses and the way they evolved in tandem with each other over a hundred-million-year cold war.

What I found peculiar about it was that, whilst it is clear that these are simply proteins which are simply behaving in the only way that they can, it was impossible not to look at it as a "good" side defending against a "bad" side and cheering if your side won. Amazing how we project meaning onto everything.

[Halmyre]

Antony Moxey said:

horza said:

Remember the Russian sub Kursk?

It sank in water shallower than the boat was long.

Is that the one where all the crew drowned? If it was that shallow couldn’t they somehow open the hatches and swim to the surface, or was the sub 1000ft long or something?

Kursk was ~500 feet long. That's the bugger about water - 500 feet is about 20 times atmospheric pressure.

[V8LM]

glazbagun said:

V8LM said:

...and to a very crude approximation there are 3^399 possible shapes that a 400-residue-long protein could fold into.

If you were to fold the protein into its most favourable shape as quickly as is possible i.e. taking one femtosecond (0.000000000000001 seconds) to try each one, it would take you on average 10^166 years to do; over 1-with-156 zeros times longer than the age of the universe.

Nature can fold proteins in milliseconds. And normally folds them into the same stucture each and every time.

It is amazing stuff.

The BBC did a documentary called the secret life of the cell about cells and how they react to viruses and the way they evolved in tandem with each other over a hundred-million-year cold war.

What I found peculiar about it was that, whilst it is clear that these are simply proteins which are simply behaving in the only way that they can, it was impossible not to look at it as a "good" side defending against a "bad" side and cheering if your side won. Amazing how we project meaning onto everything.

Between 5% and 8% of the DNA in our genome is of viral origin (human endogenous retroviral dna).

The placenta forms the link between foetus and mother and allows nutrients to pass from mother to baby and waste products to pass from baby to mother. The foetus, however, contains proteins that are paternal in origin so the placenta has to make sure that these nutrients and waste products can pass without the mother's antibodies raising an immune response against the father's proteins of the baby. The barrier between the foetal blood and maternal blood that does this crucial function is made of a fusion of two proteins - one comes from the baby, the other from the mother. These proteins, call syncytins, are of viral origin.

It it wasn't for an egg-laying mammal in our past having its naughty-bits infected by a virus then placental birth may never have evolved.

[tumble dryer]

It’s a car forum, and we have opinions.

4 pots, turbocharged, with de-cat and (think it’s VAG) in a forest stage, going for it. Best sound ever. Fact.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMGqJAWAGon/

[VEX]

Pub quiz answer that I have never forgotten (i got it right btw)

In computer terms a byte is 8 bits

And 4 bits is a nibble!

V.

[The Dangerous Elk]

VEX said:

Pub quiz answer that I have never forgotten (i got it right btw)

In computer terms a byte is 8 bits

And 4 bits is a nibble!

V.

how many nibbles in a lick ?

[h0b0]

Even though it accounts for over 1/5 of the worlds river water, The amazon river has no bridges anywhere along it.

[NoddyonNitrous]

boyse7en said:

Crossflow Kid said:

And in the opening of the chest-burst scene the crew were unaware John Hurt was about to be "unwell" in order to gain an authentic reaction.

And in the dating scene of The Jerk, Bernadette Peters was told that Steve Martin was going to kiss her so that she would make an authentically shocked/disgusted reaction when he did something else

Same story with Mr.Creosote exploding in the Monty Python film The Meaning of Life - other cast members had not been told they would be sprayed with offal and goo.

[V8LM]

VEX said:

Pub quiz answer that I have never forgotten (i got it right btw)

In computer terms a byte is 8 bits

And 4 bits is a nibble!

V.

And 48 bits is a gobble.