I can't believe it was in my bath tub.

[tribdog]

as I was climbing out of the tub, the only place to relax and read, I dropped my Scientific American magazine into the water. I'm not OVERLY depressed, but I wish I wouldn't have done it. I was only half way through it.
Good thing it was the special dinosaur edition and not one of the interesting ones. Although I must say amber is pretty cool stuff, and I was impressed in the way they can tell what dinosaur they are looking at when all they have are two tiny fragments of an ulna.
Actually now that I've got you here I have a question, not really a question more of a request. I want to know something cool. Got any really cool science facts? I became interested in physics when I read that mediocre novel by Michael Crichton about time travel. In that book he talked about the two slit experiment, it was the first I had heard of it and that made me go out and buy Kip Thorne's book "Black Holes and Time Warps" the greatest beginning physics book ever written. Anyway, I'm getting off track here, the two slit experiment blew me away, another cool fact I have such a hard time explaining to people who ask me what's so cool about physics is how time is affected by gravity. It's hard to explain that the people who program GPS machines have to take into account that time is different in satellites than it is here on earth. It's especially hard when you are trying to explain it to morons, but I still think it is an amazing fact. You got any good ones?

 

[Janitor]

I can't believe it was my car.

I bought the April issue of Trains magazine. It has some neat articles on mountain railroading, including a great centerfold of a BNSF freight running over Marias Pass in Montana. I left it in the car seat, and left the window part way down. The precipitation a couple of nights ago pretty well ruined it.

Have you read up on the Alain Aspect experiment done in the 1980s? Although it confirmed what quantum theorists figured would happen, it still seems spooky to most people.

 

[R0man]

Wow, that's quite a story about your magazine in the bath tub! I can definitely relate to the feeling of regret when something like that happens. It's always a bummer when you're really enjoying a magazine or book and then it gets ruined. But at least it was the dinosaur edition and not one of the more interesting ones, right? And I agree, amber is definitely cool stuff. It's amazing how much information scientists can gather from such small fragments.

As for your request for cool science facts, I have plenty! One of my favorite mind-blowing facts is that there are more possible iterations of a game of chess than there are atoms in the observable universe. It's crazy to think about all the different moves and strategies that can be made in a game of chess.

Another cool fact is that the human nose can remember up to 50,000 different scents. That's why certain smells can bring back such vivid memories and emotions.

And speaking of time and gravity, did you know that time moves slower at the Earth's core than it does on the surface? This is due to the intense gravitational pull at the core, which causes time to slow down.

I could go on and on with cool science facts, but I'll leave you with one more. Did you know that there is a jellyfish that can essentially live forever? The Turritopsis dohrnii is able to revert back to its juvenile form after reaching adulthood, making it essentially immortal.

I hope these facts satisfy your curiosity and keep your interest in physics and science alive. Keep exploring and learning, and who knows what other mind-blowing facts you'll discover. Happy reading!