A strange world full of odd facts

[Beardie]

Not sure if this is true or not and the article says it hasn't been peer reviewed as yet but, apparently researchers at Tel Aviv university have found that plants (the article states Tomato and Tobacco plants were tested) emit ultrasound screams when cut or deprived of water and previous research has found that some plants even send out ultrasonic 'warning signals' when brushed up against or 'worried' in some way.

 

I wonder if we will eventually discover that consciousness of some sort is a feature of all matter, possibly even rooted in the atom. You never know, maybe we can even get blood out of a stone after all.

[Bullbasket]

Good grief! Don't let the great unwashed get hold of this or mankind will really be in trouble. So far we've been told that we have to take meat off of the table, as well as fish, and dairy products. If they jump on this one too, then there'll be nothing left to eat. We'll have to start eating ourselves (Stop sniggering at the back!)

 

John.

[Kallisti]

It is my standard answer to veggies who go on about animal cruelty, how much pain does an onion feel when you pickle it in acid?

[Beardie]

One that got me was not vegetables but Fungi. I was told years ago by a chap who was into his Fungi (I don't half meet some weirdo's in my day to day life) who told me that Fungi are more closely akin to animals than plants. Nature, red in tooth and claw!

[JosephLalor]

17 hours ago, Beardie said:

You never know, maybe we can even get blood out of a stone after all.

The Guinness Book of Records used to have an entry for the most blood from a stone. A Mr Norman Stone IIRC.

[qn30jEkPz7]

15 hours ago, Beardie said:

One that got me was not vegetables but Fungi. I was told years ago by a chap who was into his Fungi (I don't half meet some weirdo's in my day to day life) who told me that Fungi are more closely akin to animals than plants. Nature, red in tooth and claw!

Much much closer on the phylogenetic tree than plants. Interestingly about 4/5ths of the tree below is archea or extremophiles which we often don’t think about. These organisms live in what we’d consider harsh environments with high or low levels of temperature, salinity, pH, no oxygen etc. When the release of oxygen by photosynthetic cyanobacteria created the biosphere we all know and love it caused a mass extinction, made the Earth’s surface largely inhospitable to the bulk of the family tree of life and consigned them to the dark, deep and weird corners of the world. It is thought that there is a vast biomass deep beneath our feet of life clinging on wherever it can.  

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by LostCosmonauts

[Beardie]

Here is a heartwarming collection of facts to make the chest of any Scotsman puff out with pride:

 

In the world of transport it is Scots who were credited with the first pneumatic tyre, macadamised roads (tarmac), the first pedal bicycle, revolutionary improvements to the steam engine, the first screw propeller, the overhead valve engine and the first passenger steamboat Man we scots are a canny lot!

 

Oh, then we have the Telly, Telephone, important improvements to Radar, penicillin, the steamhammer, tubular steel, roller printing, the auto teller and PIN numbers and many many more!

[Gorby]

31 minutes ago, Beardie said:

Here is a heartwarming collection of facts to make the chest of any Scotsman puff out with pride:

The model I've just completed was a Scottish innovation in it's time. The Robey Road Steamer designed by Robert William Thomson (of the pneumatic tyre). From what I can tell, the steamer had solid rubber tyres, but it was a significant improvement as it didn't damage road surfaces and gave it much more traction than other competing steamers, allowing it to pull up to 30 tons.

[Mick4350]

1 hour ago, Beardie said:

we scots are a canny lot!

 

Oh, then we have the Telly, Telephone, important improvements to Radar, penicillin, the steamhammer, tubular steel, roller printing, the auto teller and PIN numbers and many many more!

 

 

Billy Connolly

[Lightningboy2000]

On 10/8/2019 at 1:03 PM, Mike said:

Inside a coloured balloon the light is a funny colour.

Never been inside a balloon so I wouldn't know to confirm that!

[Bullbasket]

19 hours ago, Beardie said:

Oh, then we have the Telly, Telephone, important improvements to Radar, penicillin, the steamhammer, tubular steel, roller printing, the auto teller and PIN numbers and many many more!

...and William Smellie.

[Mike]

1 hour ago, Bullbasket said:

...and William Smellie.

I'm sure William speaks very highly of you

[Bullbasket]

1 hour ago, Mike said:

I'm sure William speaks very highly of you

D'ye no ken Stinky Wully? Jings!

[Mike]

2 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

D'ye no ken Stinky Wully? Jings!

Oor Wully is the only one I know.

[593jones]

17 hours ago, Lightningboy2000 said:

Never been inside a balloon so I wouldn't know to confirm that!

I'm not sure if it's related, but many years ago I was visiting my local air show and looked in at E D Models stand.  Now, this stand had blue polythene sheets around it for protection against the elements, and I noticed that, after being inside for a good while, when I left everything outside looked as though it was being viewed through a pink filter.  It went away after a short while, but it was very odd whilst it lasted. 

[Beardie]

Here is a beautiful, and beautifully simple one. Gravity - pretty strong right? I mean after all if we drop from a height we land with a crash thanks to it's attraction. Well actually it is really a pretty weak force. If you think about it, the crash we puny humans land with is due to the pull of this entire planet Earth on our puny bodies. If you take a modest little magnet with not much magnetism it will, most likely, be able to pick up an iron nail. That means that that puny little magnet has more attractive force on that nail than the mass of the entire planet Earth! 

[Kallisti]

Yup Gravity is the weakest of the forces recognised in Physics, but it also has the longest range, ie near infinite.

However looking at it as a particular force between two objects is oversimplifying it - General Relativity showed us that Gravity is actually the manifestation of mass distorting the underlying space-time continuum. We now even have proof of this theory since we have detected gravitation waves using the LIGO experiment from events where two black holes merge.

[Eric Mc]

On 08/10/2019 at 19:17, noelh said:

But my obscure fact is that Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) is buried locally. I've visited his grave recently. I have to say I shook my head at this serial traitor. He betrayed Ireland, his adopted country, England and was well on his way to betraying Germany when he was caught and executed. 

I had no idea he was was so close by. 

Where is he actually buried?

[Eric Mc]

13 hours ago, Beardie said:

Here is a beautiful, and beautifully simple one. Gravity - pretty strong right? I mean after all if we drop from a height we land with a crash thanks to it's attraction. Well actually it is really a pretty weak force. If you think about it, the crash we puny humans land with is due to the pull of this entire planet Earth on our puny bodies. If you take a modest little magnet with not much magnetism it will, most likely, be able to pick up an iron nail. That means that that puny little magnet has more attractive force on that nail than the mass of the entire planet Earth! 

It's weak but effectively infinite.

 

A magnet's attractive power drops off significantly only a few feet away from even the strongest magnet. Gravity can hold onto something billions of miles across - such as the contents of an entire galaxy.

A basic rule in physics is that the stronger a physical force is, the shorter its range.

Edited December 15, 2019 by Eric Mc

[noelh]

2 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

Where is he actually buried?

The New Cemetery, Bohermore in Galway City. If you happen to visit it's to the left of the path as you come in the gate, just behind the mass grave for the victims of a KLM Superconstellation which crashed into the Atlantic during the fifties.

[Mick4350]

3 hours ago, Kallisti said:

Yup Gravity is the weakest of the forces recognised in Physics,

Was made into a good 3d movie through.

[Eric Mc]

44 minutes ago, noelh said:

The New Cemetery, Bohermore in Galway City. If you happen to visit it's to the left of the path as you come in the gate, just behind the mass grave for the victims of a KLM Superconstellation which crashed into the Atlantic during the fifties.

Thanks. It had never crossed my mind as to where he ended up.

I always get the impression he was rather mental.

[Eric Mc]

14 minutes ago, Mick4350 said:

Was made into a good 3d movie through.

I might beg to differ on that assessment of the film - although the sight of Sandra Bullock in her water cooled EVA undergarments did make up for some of the silliness..

[bhouse]

4 hours ago, Kallisti said:

the underlying space-time continuum

Is someone playing Back To The Future bingo?

[Beardie]

Granted there is much more to gravity than the parlour trick I refer to, I just thought it was a neat little way of demonstrating that the gravity we rely on to keep us, ahem, grounded on a daily basis is actually much weaker (in local terms) than magnetism which we don't tend to think of as being all that strong.