Fun Facts

[Ivan Seeking]

A thread for fun facts.

Lucille Ball is generally credited for the survival, and in part the success of Star Trek

After a failed pilot, Lucille Ball not only advocated for a second pilot but circumvented the board of her production company, putting up her own money to ensure that the show had another chance.
https://www.celestis.com/blog/women-and-space/#:~:text=Did you know that Star,the show had another chance.

 

[Hornbein]

Lucille got in big trouble for being a member of the Communist Party. Being the most popular TV star of the day was no protection. Charlie Chaplin was exiled. She said she had done it to please an uncle and had never gone to a meeting so she pulled every string she could and got off.

Lucy said things were worse under Truman than they were when Joe McCarthy made the scene, so McCarthyism is a misnomer.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Global Solar Deployment

• About 560 gigawatts direct current (GWdc) of photovoltaic (PV) installations are projected for 2024, up about a third from 2023.
• The five leading solar markets in 2023 kept pace or increased PV installation capacity in the first half of 2024, with China installing more than 100 GWdc and India installing more solar in the first half of 2024 than it did for all of 2023.
• At the end of 2023, global concentrating solar-thermal power capacity reached approximately 7 gigawatts alternating current (GWac), with the completion of the Noor Energy 1 project in the United Arab Emirates.

U.S. PV Deployment

• The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that the United States installed 15.6 GWac of solar capacity in in the first quarter (Q1)/second quarter (Q2) of 2024 (the Solar Energy Industries Association reported 21.4 GWdc)—a 55% increase from the record achieved in Q1/Q2 2023.
  • The residential PV market shrank significantly in the first half of 2024, hurt by California’s Net Energy Metering transition and high interest rates across the country.
• Analysts expect about 42 GWdc of U.S. PV installations for 2024, up about a quarter from 2023.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/q...atts direct current,about a quarter from 2023.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There Are 10,000 Active Satellites In Orbit. Most (~60%) Belong To Elon Musk​

...According to McDowell’s figures, about 60% of the active satellites now in orbit are Starlink, and the service plans to increase the constellation size to over 12,000 metal birds in flight, with the potential to eventually expand to over 40,000 in total.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericma...satellites-in-orbit-most-belong-to-elon-musk/

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Maxwell’s demons realized in electronic circuits
a b s t r a c t
Article history:Available online 21 August 2016Keywords: Maxwell’s demon InformationMots-clés :Démon de Maxwell Information
We review recent progress in making the former gedanken experiments of Maxwell’s demon [1] into real experiments in a lab. In particular, we focus on realizations based on single-electron tunneling in electronic circuits. We first present how stochastic thermodynamics can be investigated in these circuits. Next we review recent experiments on an electron-based Szilard engine. Finally, we report on experiments on single-electron tunneling-based cooling, overviewing the recent realization of a Coulomb gap refrigerator, as well as an autonomous Maxwell’s demon
https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/physique/item/10.1016/j.crhy.2016.08.011.pdf

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The mass-energy-information equivalence principle​

https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/articl...mass-energy-information-equivalence-principle

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Marylin Monroe once worked in the first US, UAV factory.

Working 10 hours a day for $20 a week in a World War II defense plant 70 years ago was 18-year-old Norma Jeane Dougherty, wife of a young United States merchant seaman assigned overseas. Her company, called Radioplane, in Burbank, Calif., founded by the British character actor Reginald Denny, made small remote-controlled pilotless aircraft, intended to help United States Army and Navy anti-aircraft gunners refine their targeting skills.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/upshot/marilyn-monroes-world-war-ii-drone-program.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The Hollywood Sign used to say Hollywoodland.

By Unknown - hollywoodsign.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=137844482

 

[PeroK]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericma...satellites-in-orbit-most-belong-to-elon-musk/

If only we could find a way to send him into orbit!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If only we could find a way to send him into orbit!

A couple of years ago I was dating a young lady whose father was buddies with Musk. She had met him a few times and didn't have anything nice to say.

 

[PeroK]

A couple of years ago I was dating a young lady whose father was buddies with Musk. She had met him a few times and didn't have anything nice to say.

I'm a bit mad today, because I've been taking a break from physics and maths and trying to write a screenplay, where a crazy POTUS, among other things, annexes Canada. The four things were:

Annexes Canada
Arms Russia to fight Europe
Repeals the 13th Amendment
Declares himself, with support of the Surpreme Court, President for life.

I guess I can keep working on the remaining fictional plot lines!

 

[PeroK]

A couple of years ago I was dating a young lady whose father was buddies with Musk. She had met him a few times and didn't have anything nice to say.

I just read that Musk has run a poll on his propaganda platform asking whether the US should liberate (I guess he means invade) Britain! Does that count as a fun fact?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally Posted by motai Poetry is mightier than the sword/spear/halberd/lance/pistol/assault rifle/club/etc. As your assailant comes down upon you, instead of resisting with force, you confuse them by reciting ambiguous poetry such as Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman, and while they are scratching their heads and trying to figure out the general theme and underlying morals of the poem, you'd make your getaway . Though that is rather unlikely.

This is quite a well established fact. It's the very reason that the war-cry was invented. The first mention of a war cry was by Homer, in his Illiad. As the greeks charged the Trojan lines, the Trojan war poets began to recite their verses, but unexpectedly, all the greeks let loose with a collective cry of "Λα Λα Λα δεν μπορεί να σας ακούσει!", which translates roughly as "La la la, can't hear you!" The poets were slaughtered, and the Trojans forced to retreat behind the city walls.

From my reserve of PF quotes going back 20 years

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Haha, found it, 2005
https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...moil-the-fight-for-victory.97295/#post-806039