Somewhat Useful Facts Thread

[1DeadlySAMURAI]

[Senator]

What can I say. Just imagine that these guys have as a God a guy who effectively did to the Tower of Babel, what the Terrorists did to the WTC in 9/11.

Anyways


That, is apparently "ground level erosion" from wind.

[Kirk]

:shock: Stay away from that house, far away.

[Nebula]

wow thats just wow

[Senator]

Fact: Norway has the second longest coastline in the world. Thats longer that, say, Russia, which gets to count all of Siberia in.

If you look at a map you will understand why.
(hint: curves and zig zags increase lenght)

[Aeries]

(hint: curves and zig zags increase lenght)

Well, yeah. Like, the shortest path is always a straight line, is it not? The more 'zig-zags', the less direct the rout is. ZOMG I sounded PARTIALLY intelligent! O_O;

[Senator]

http://www.google.com/sky/#latitude=-6.008056&longitude=-91.591668&zoom=10&Spitzer=0.00&ChandraXO=0.00&Galex=0.00&IRAS=0.00&WMAP=0.00&Cassini=0.00&slide=1&mI=-1&oI=-1

[Senator]

And: http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/921/1210266816691wd9.jpg

[Aeries]

WHOA!!! WTF IS THAT!? O_O

[Nebula]

I want to say thats ash from a volcano....

[Senator]

Looks like an awesome long exposure photograph of a lighting storm. (although now that you mention it, there seems to be a some kind of smoke plume in there)

That or a gateway to another dimension.

[limey BSc.]

My initial thought was a forest fire and a lightning storm at the same time.

[captain_obvious]

actually, that's a volcano AND a lightning storm at the same time.  t'was in the paper the other day ;)

[1DeadlySAMURAI]

more on the volcanic thunder
http://www.ohgizmo.com/2008/05/08/eye-candy-chilean-volcanic-thunderstorm/

[Armondikov]

Fact: Norway has the second longest coastline in the world. Thats longer that, say, Russia, which gets to count all of Siberia in.

If you look at a map you will understand why.
(hint: curves and zig zags increase lenght)

Coastlines, like most fractal outlines could in fact be infinite. As when you're measuring these, it's always an underestimate as you measure the distance between two points and between these two points, the actual line will deviate somewhat. To get a finer measurement, you need to put the points closer together. Again, the real line between these two points will deviate and you need to increase resolution. Carry this down to infinite levels and you can in (fractal) theory have an infinite length.

[Nebula]

    It's often said that the Earth rotates once in 24 hours. What is really meant is that in a mean period of about 24 hours, the Earth rotates once on its axis relative to the Sun. One 360-degree rotation of Earth happens in 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds. But during this rotational period, the Earth has orbited nearly one degree in its journey around the sun. So the Earth has to rotate another degree or so (for a total of about 361 degrees), before it can rotate once in reference to the sun. The Earth takes about 4 minutes more to rotate this extra degree, so the mean time period from solar noon to solar noon represents 24 hours (23 hours 56 minutes + 4 minutes = 24 hours).

[Armondikov]

    It's often said that the Earth rotates once in 24 hours. What is really meant is that in a mean period of about 24 hours, the Earth rotates once on its axis relative to the Sun. One 360-degree rotation of Earth happens in 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds. But during this rotational period, the Earth has orbited nearly one degree in its journey around the sun. So the Earth has to rotate another degree or so (for a total of about 361 degrees), before it can rotate once in reference to the sun. The Earth takes about 4 minutes more to rotate this extra degree, so the mean time period from solar noon to solar noon represents 24 hours (23 hours 56 minutes + 4 minutes = 24 hours).

20 points to Nebula. Spot on. A solar day consists of 24 hours between the sun reaching it's highest point and the Earth rotating until the sun reaches it's highest point again. This is slightly more than 360^O (just short of 361^O, if you think of 365 days in a year, but the Earth's speed through it's orbit varies over time) because the Earth has moved through its orbit since the start of the solar day. If you take the Earth's position in a more absolute framework (relative to the stars, rather than the sun), you get a sidereal day of 23 Hours 56 mins.

This is a very important fact to remember when it comes to launching satellites. As the satellite's orbit can be set to precess about the Earth in line with solar time (using a slightly retrograde, 97^O inclination) so that it rises at the same local time on each of its orbits. This is useful for manning of ground stations as it means not employing constant shift work to cover the scattered times that other satellites in LEO will pass overhead. Often, in order to take advantage of the sun to power solar cells, satellites will "ride the terminator" or have their orbital track near-perfectly follow the line between day and night, appearing overhead at dusk and sunset wherever it passes.

[Senator]

In order to understand how much of a big pile of steaming bullshit conservopedia is. (Which is of cource very welcome, since it forever connects the word conservative with big piles of bullshit, and its not even me doing it, they are doing it themselves) just look at this page: http://www.conservapedia.com/Mutation

I am amazed that they can carry a section called "Gain-of-function mutations"

And immidiatelly under it, (in the section "Mutation and the Theory of Evolution") write:
"However, mutations that create new genetic information have never been observed"

Well, you know what, I doubt that never, because I read somewhere, very recently, that some mutations lead to a new genetic code which carries all its old functions, plus new ones, like, 5 lines above. Which is also very kind to give examples that have been "observed".

P.S. Never, ever put something like this in your References:
"7.0 7.1 7.2 Quoted on Veritas Forum"

[Nebula]

may 13 1981

Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Agca as he drove through a crowd in St. Peter's Square, Rome.

[Armondikov]

In order to understand how much of a big pile of steaming bullshit conservopedia is. (Which is of cource very welcome, since it forever connects the word conservative with big piles of bullshit, and its not even me doing it, they are doing it themselves) just look at this page: http://www.conservapedia.com/Mutation

I am amazed that they can carry a section called "Gain-of-function mutations"

And immidiatelly under it, (in the section "Mutation and the Theory of Evolution") write:
"However, mutations that create new genetic information have never been observed"

Well, you know what, I doubt that never, because I read somewhere, very recently, that some mutations lead to a new genetic code which carries all its old functions, plus new ones, like, 5 lines above. Which is also very kind to give examples that have been "observed".

P.S. Never, ever put something like this in your References:
"7.0 7.1 7.2 Quoted on Veritas Forum"

You're not a RationalWiki sysop are you?  :?

Anyway, there is a long winded response from Richard Dawkins regarding infomation increase in the genome. The lay audience often think that this means a mutation that adds more nucleotides to the gene and therefore increases it's length. This of course, it bollocks. When you talk about information, you need to think of infomation theory and bits, a bit is what you need to reduce your uncertainty of what the outcome will be by half. Take binary for example, the sequence 1001110 has seven figures, each figure can be 1 or 0 which leads to 2^7 combinations (128). Each time a bit is revealled to you as 1 or 0, the possible combinations that the number can take is halfed, therefore each number is called a bit. Adding more information is essentially about adding more bits, and with DNA, this can be done without adding more nucleotides. Random mutations decrease the amount of infomation because they are random and not clearly predictable, Natural Selction, however, narrows these down to the useful ones, as they are useful they have meaning and alter the bits contained within DNA, therefore increasing information. While random mutations can't (by themeselves) add information, Natural Selection does.

Of course, Dawkin's explains this better and I really should look the essay up. It's essentially a response to his "11 second pause" that apparently stumped him (he was really, apparently, pondering whether to throw the interviewers out because the question "give me an example of a mutation that increases information in the genome" is only a question that creationists wanting to trick a biologist would use. Because the true answer would be, "there's none").