Facts that shocked you

[Skeptisk]

A few.

The Holocaust. I was probably around eleven and off school sick watching daytime TV. I am not sure if it was a program for schools or perhaps an episode of The World at War. It was about the liberation of the death camps. There was footage of dead bodies piled up and the survivors in rags (just skin and bone). I knew the Germans were the “bad” guys but had had no idea of the evil they had perpetrated. I think my faith in humanity took a fatal hit that day and has never really recovered.

That light can be both a wave and a particle and that the same applies to other particles like electrons. The double slit single electron interference pattern still blows mind.

Special and general relativity and how time isn’t constant for all observers.

That the observable universe is only a (most likely) tiny part of the whole universe and that every day the observable universe gets “smaller” as the accelerating expansion of the universe means that light from the furthest stars and galaxies will never reach us.

The unimaginable scale of the universe. Even the bit we can see.

That there were an estimated 50 million to 100 million native Americans before the Europeans arrived (about a quarter to half the population of Europe at that time).

That you are not just you. In terms of number of cells we contain more “non” human cells (eg bacteria but also parasites) than human cells. We even have cells from our mothers.

[Skeptisk]

Super Sonic said:

Every prime above 6 is a multiple of 6, plus or minus 1
look.

That sounded more impressive on first reading it until I realised it was obvious. A multiple of six plus or minus 2 or 4 is even so can’t be prime. A multiple or six is also divisible by three so adding or subtracting 3 will also be divisible by 3 so not prime. Which only leaves plus or minus 1 or 5. But minus five is the same as the previous number divisible by six plus one. So effectively you can shorten it to just plus or minus one.

[Skeptisk]

Pitre said:

Pitre said:

Skeptisk said:

.... A multiple of six plus or minus 2 or 4 is even so can’t be prime. A multiple or six is also divisible by three so adding or subtracting 3 will also be divisible by 3 so not prime. Which only leaves plus or minus 1 or 5. But minus five is the same as the previous number divisible by six plus one. So effectively you can shorten it to just plus or minus one.

It's shocked me that you can write that before 7am. Hats off sir.

Just seen that you are in NZ. As you were.

NZ so last year. Now in Denmark.

[Skeptisk]

GroundEffect said:

Countdown said:

DodgyGeezer said:

I remember being told as a child that the whole of the world's population could fit on the Isle of Wight - which would then sink due to the weight (whether both parts were untrue, neither or just the one I have no idea)

I’m not sure why it would sink? It’s not floating…

All land is floating. On the mantle. Whether or not the Isle of Wight would sink is another matter.

Having done some calculations. If you give each person an area of 0.15 m2 (cross section of the average coffin end up) then for the current 8 billion people you would need 1200 km2. The Isle of Wight has an area of 384 km2 so you would need four of them.

What this shows is the shocking fact of how much the human population has grown over our lifetime as I suspect then when this snippet was first stated the population of the earth was small enough to fit onto the Isle of Wight but in less than a century it is not.

[Skeptisk]

OzzyR1 said:

98elise said:

Fusion777 said:

OzzyR1 said:

Leads to moaning about the NHS being underfunded when the current annual budget is around £160 billion - a staggering amount if thought about.

True. Then think that there are individuals with even more wealth than that.

That wealth though is mainly the capital value of businesses, not a pile of cash. Its a value that will have accrued over a number of years, and may well have lots of "jam tomorrow" baked in. It may also never be fully crystalised and could in fact end up worth zero (Elon Musk is a good example)

The NHS consumes160bn of actual cash every year!

Yep, as I said above £300K/minute = £18million per hour = £438million/day.

£438million per day, every day of the year.


It is a colossal amount of money. On an individual level, people dream of the huge rollover lottery jackpot of £100million. The winner would be amongst the richest 300 in the UK.

That £100million fortune would run the NHS for 5 hours then that cash runs out.


I'm a fan of the NHS, but we can't keep puting more and more into it due to claims of underfunding & hope it will all be OK. What would be enough? £500million/day, £600million?

Insanity, needs an overhaul but no Govt will be brave enough to do it as they will be accused of "destroying the NHS".

Edited by OzzyR1 on Saturday 22 July 21:36

Edited by OzzyR1 on Saturday 22 July 21:37

There are over 60 million people in the UK. Per person that is £2700 a year. I think I was paying close to that for health insurance in Switzerland (it was a while ago so my memory not so certain). Health care is expensive and getting more expensive as they discover new therapies and drugs. On top of that we have an ageing population who need more healthcare. It certainly isn’t as simple as you are making out.

[Skeptisk]

GroundEffect said:

No two decks of 52 cards (the order of the cards) have ever been the same. Or ever will be the same.

The chances of that are for all intents and purposes infinitely less likely than you choosing the correct grain of sand (that someone has pre-earmarked) out of all the grains on earth.

Based on the maths, probably true. However I wonder whether it is true in practice. On many occasions people start with a pack of cards that are in order eg is someone has been playing patience. Then the cards are shuffled.

I wonder how many shuffles are required to mix them completely. If you only did one shuffle then there might not be that many different combinations so the chance of someone else having the same combination might be low enough for it to happen.

Not sure if my ramblings are comprehensible. Any experts in probability on here?

[Skeptisk]

98elise said:

Girls are born with every egg they will ever produce.

This means that when a woman is pregnant with a daughter, she is also carrying the eggs that will one day be her grandchildren.

Some material crosses the umbilical cord so you can find DNA from the mother in their children.

[Skeptisk]

pocketspring said:

DodgyGeezer said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

GroundEffect said:

Maths is taught very wrong to people.

English is taught wrongly too.

your both correct

There both what?

I sea what you did their!

[Skeptisk]

One I heard recently: new music (in the west) is dominated by solo artists. If you look No 1s in the 80s and 90s of those decades around 300 weeks (so three fifths of the time) there was a band at number one. The comparable number for the current decade? Just 3!

[Skeptisk]

ben5575 said:

ajprice said:

Simone Biles is 4ft 8in.

Apologies for quoting myself:

ben5575 said:

I was reading that when she does her floor routine she somehow manages to get 7 ft in the air so she would clear Shaq’s head!

[Skeptisk]

sanguinary said:

cherryowen said:

This tune is now 27 years old:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE

27

FFS

Getting old. I find it fascinating that music like this is now older than the ‘old music’ my dad subjected me to when I was growing up in the early eighties.

• old music was The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks etc

What gets me is realising that 1984 is closer to WW2 than we are to 1984…

[Skeptisk]

nismocat said:

I have often heard the saying "There are more stars and planets in the universe than grains of sand on earth" and thought it was bks. Apparently it is true!

WTF!

That is in the visible universe, which is a sphere with a diameter of around 90 billion light years. We have no idea how big the actual universe is, although it is thought that the bit we can see is a small piece of the whole. Due to the accelerated expansion of the universe, more of it is becoming invisible all the time.

[Skeptisk]

mickythefish said:

username_checksout said:

Elton John is gay?

Lavender marriage and all that... my surprise was hearing here that JD is/was/ gay; I haven't heard it even touched on anywhere else, not that it matters.

He thought he was gay. A guy came out and said he went on a date with when he was younger. There is a history of closet gay people being extremely anti gay, when they are gay themselves. That was the "joke irony", I was making. I'm pretty sure you can't ungay yourself.

Probably about as easy to "unstraight" yourself as to "ungay" yourself. Although he could be bi and just repressing one side of himself.

[Skeptisk]

Pistom said:

Skeptisk said:

Probably about as easy to "unstraight" yourself as to "ungay" yourself. Although he could be bi and just repressing one side of himself.

It's not about unstraighting or ungaying. It's more about society confusing kids at an influential time in their life.

I've known several people with kids over the last 20-30 years whose kids believed they were gay but realised later in life they weren't but were influenced by others around them getting themselves into gay relationships.

That is only bad if you believe (which by the sounds of it you do) that there is something inherently wrong with gay relationships. Children (and adults) should be free to explore their sexuality. I don't see any harm in that. Better than someone who thinks they might be gay try it and find they are not, than have them bow to societal pressure, marry someone of the opposite sex and then be miserable (and probably at some point make their spouse miserable too).

[Skeptisk]

Monkeylegend said:

Skeptisk said:

nismocat said:

I have often heard the saying "There are more stars and planets in the universe than grains of sand on earth" and thought it was bks. Apparently it is true!

WTF!

That is in the visible universe, which is a sphere with a diameter of around 90 billion light years. We have no idea how big the actual universe is, although it is thought that the bit we can see is a small piece of the whole. Due to the accelerated expansion of the universe, more of it is becoming invisible all the time.

And I am pretty sure we don't know how many grains of sand there are on earth.

Of course we don’t. Just as we don’t know the exact number of stars. But we can estimate. The amounts won’t be correct but as the estimate of the number of stars is so much higher then it is pretty safe to conclude that there are more stars (even without taking into account that there are expected to be a much larger number of stars that we can’t see but expect to exist).

[Skeptisk]

Monkeylegend said:

Skeptisk said:

Monkeylegend said:

Skeptisk said:

nismocat said:

I have often heard the saying "There are more stars and planets in the universe than grains of sand on earth" and thought it was bks. Apparently it is true!

WTF!

That is in the visible universe, which is a sphere with a diameter of around 90 billion light years. We have no idea how big the actual universe is, although it is thought that the bit we can see is a small piece of the whole. Due to the accelerated expansion of the universe, more of it is becoming invisible all the time.

And I am pretty sure we don't know how many grains of sand there are on earth.

Of course we don’t. Just as we don’t know the exact number of stars. But we can estimate. The amounts won’t be correct but as the estimate of the number of stars is so much higher then it is pretty safe to conclude that there are more stars (even without taking into account that there are expected to be a much larger number of stars that we can’t see but expect to exist).

You titled this thread "Facts that shock you"

Estimations or expectations are not facts.

We seem to have introduced a bit of thread drift

It is a fact that there are more stars than grains of sand.

Every measurement is an estimation as there is always a margin of error. My house is roughly 20m high. The Eiffel Tower is perhaps 150m. That margin of error of those two estimates is much smaller than the difference in size so it is correct to say that the Eiffel Tower is bigger.

[Skeptisk]

Monkeylegend said:

Skeptisk said:

It is a fact that there are more stars than grains of sand.

Every measurement is an estimation as there is always a margin of error. My house is roughly 20m high. The Eiffel Tower is perhaps 150m. That margin of error of those two estimates is much smaller than the difference in size so it is correct to say that the Eiffel Tower is bigger.

The fact is that nobody actually knows, we are all guessing and coming up with the answer that suits us.

Guessing is not the same as estimating. We know the average size of a grain of sand so we can estimate the total number of grains in a cubic meter. We have mapped our planet so know the length of beaches. From that you can estimate the cubic metres of sand on all the beaches and so the total volume of sand and from that the number of grains.

The universe appears uniform i.e. there is no specific distribution of galaxies when we look upwards. You can (and we have) looked in details in one direction and counted the number of galaxies. You can extrapolate that to the number of galaxies in the total visible universe. There are various methods of estimating the number of stars in the average galaxy. Multiply the two to get total stars. In practice there will be more involved but I expect that is the basic method.

Doing those estimates give roughly 1 x 10^19 grains of sand and 1 x 10^23 stars. Add in that we know that the actual universal is larger than the observable universe then you can be fairly sure that the number of stars is higher. You could work out the probability of that being incorrect. Nothing is 100% certain in science. Even particles we have "proved" to exist come with some very small probability that our experiments didn't show that they do.

[Skeptisk]

Sway said:

Super Sonic said:

Lotusgone said:

Something I heard Nigel Farage say, that I have yet to hear disproved.

No democratic country has ever invaded another democratic country.

By this, I guess we are talking truly democratic and not those who say they are, so that rules out Russia.

Any examples to prove him wrong?

"List of wars between democracies - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_betwe...
I wouldn't believe everything Garage says.
Or should that be 'anything'?

Reading that list, I don't think any actually show an invasion by a democratic country into another democratic country?

Closest would appear to be WW1, but there's a bit of contention about how democratic Germany really was then. Or Pakistan/India, again I wouldn't necessarily call either a 'true' democracy at the time (or now!).

Are you reading the same link? It says that it depends on how you define a democracy (unsurprisingly). If you are very restrictive then there have never been any democracies nevertheless invasions.

Taking a reasonable view of democracies then the German government pre WW2 (which was supported by the majority of the population) invaded lots of countries.

The US has invaded numerous countries or used covert operations to undermine democratic regimes.

Farage is good at sound bites for his followers but I wouldn’t trust a word he says.

[Skeptisk]

RizzoTheRat said:

Prompted by the US school shooting thread...

According to Wikipedia, the US has 1.2 guns per person. That's a similar to the scale of bikes in the Netherlands (1.4 per person) and bikes are absolutely everywhere here to the point of being a nuisance as pavements are blocked with parked bikes and you can't find anywhere to leave your bike as every available thing you could lock it to already has several bikes attached to it. The council even goes around putting tags on bikes and removing ones that still have the tags on sometime later to try and get rid of the abandoned ones.

That comparison really visualized the scale of gun ownership in the US for me.

Average (mean) gun ownership probably a bit misleading. Apparently only 32% of American adults own a gun. It seems that those that do own guns, own more than one.

[Skeptisk]

mickythefish said:

Andre Agassi mullet was a wig. That shocked me tbh

Really? He bought something to make him look so bad?

Another Agassi fact. He played Boris Becker quite a few times. He noticed that when BB was going to serve out wide the tip of his tongue was in one part of his mouth. If he was going to serve down the centre it was in another. That allowed Agassi to anticipate where he was going to serve - and so beat him. Years later, when they had stopped playing, he told BB, who said he used to tell his wife (at the time) that it was like Agassi could read his mind.