Today I Learned

[pinball1970]

One of our ladies earned a shitstorm in Brazil for saying (in the Playboy):

It seems to be fair enough, they have not fully embraced the benefits of unsportswomanlike behaviour.
They are catching on though.

 

[jack action]

Spain beat us in the world cup final today 1-0 but she did save a penalty to keep us in it.

I don't know where all - us - PF members come from but apparently, it is not from Spain.

 

[pinball1970]

I don't know where all - us - PF members come from but apparently, it is not from Spain.

Yes, I expected at least some traffic on this.

 

[Charles Link]

Today I learned with a google that the chemical compound toluene, ($C_6 H_5 CH_3$), has the "l" before the "u". We were taught about it as sophomore high school students in a chemistry class ,(50 years ago), and I am unable to confirm it, but I do think the teacher pronounced it toulene and spelled it that way. It surprised me when I googled it, and it came up, do you mean toluene?

 

[hmmm27]

toluene (n.)

colorless liquid hydrocarbon, 1855, from German toluin (Berzelius, 1842), from Tolu, place in Colombia (now Santiago de Tolu) from which "balsam of Tolu" was obtained from the bark of certain trees, which were known in Europe by the name of the port. The chemical so called because it was first distilled (1841) from balsam of Tolu. The place name is of unknown origin.

 

[PeroK]

Never thought Id say it but I'm really getting into women's footie.

I watched the highlights of the recent women's cricket between England and Australia. The standard was much higher than anything I'd seen before.

 

[pinball1970]

I watched the highlights of the recent women's cricket between England and Australia. The standard was much higher than anything I'd seen before.

Beaumont was particularly impressive, every time she was at the crease she was just smashing it like Botham 1981. Loved it.
Work really gets in the way of me sitting in the pub watching live sports.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL there are different types of nuclear warning sirens, some start on a lower note before they slur up, most overlay with another staggered slur up, hit the same note then fall off leaving one note, join at the bottom then start over.

Youtubing them and comparing modern to WW2 sirens today.

Why? They tested something that sounded exactly like it yesterday afternoon, no warning.

Needless to say, for a couple seconds I thought that was it.

Then I remembered that the UK government had previously issued a test run of emergency warnings to all mobiles in case of an emergency.

No one had the warning so on this occasion, we were good to carry on.

EDIT: I could have googled this, sirens now mostly dismantled.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_warning#:~:text=Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.&text=The four-minute warning was,operated between 1953 and 1992.I did not want to waste a valuable 10 seconds googling!

 

[fresh_42]

I was wondering where the news about FAST is. We get pictures from JWST all the time, but little is heard about FAST. Shouldn't it at least be as interesting? So I read the Wiki article on it and found at least some results. And the disturbing information that they look for alien radio submissions. What a waste! What do they expect to find? An alien baseball broadcast? This rock was 45,000,000 units of time without any human-made EM emissions, and only 1 unit with. That is 0.000002% of the time! What a waste of observation time!

 

[DaveC426913]

What is this FAST thing? What can I Google to read up on it? Is it a telescope?

Googling "wiki FAST" asks me Did you mean Fast and Furious?

Oh, OK. Found it.

Saaay, that is big...

 

[kyphysics]

...people are drinking more...the reason is up for debate/discussion

 

[pinball1970]

...people are drinking more...the reason is up for debate/discussion

I would guess that is the same in the UK.

 

[sld]

Every day we learn new things. Sometimes it's just a small fact or realization. No matter how trivial or random, let's start recording our daily lessons.

Please start off with "Today I learned". Keep commentary to a minimum and just LIKE posts. I'll start!

Today I learned that you clean up a white hat by spraying some cleaner with bleach on it (rinse before putting it back on your head!)

Today I learned that there are ways to connect things and practical is real while theory is ideal.

 

[DaveC426913]

I would guess that is the same in the UK.

I would guess it is the same everywhere Covid hit (i.e. Earth)

Keep commentary to a minimum and just LIKE posts.

(Oops. Missed this. OK, I'll start now.)

 

[DaveC426913]

TIL an acronym I'd never heard of before.

Quantum tunneling of macroscopic objects is so improbable that FAPP I guess, we'll never observe it.

^{I ... don't think we should promote this acronym to common use.}

 

[vanhees71]

FAPP is a famous acronym coined by Bell. He means it in a very negative way ;-)). The problem, however, is that Bell with his idiosynchratic "new language" (like "beables") rather adds to the confusion than helps to overcome it. One should only read the sound and solid mathematical parts of his papers, if one doesn't like to be confused even more, but it's the fate of quantum theory to trigger philosophical nebulae even from some of the founding fathers (particularly Bohr and Heisenberg). There were also some antidotes against it early on (first of all Dirac but also Pauli, who amazingly could keep his very esoteric side (lived out by being a convinced Jungian) from his very solid no-nonsense science, and Sommerfeld).

 

[dextercioby]

 

[pinball1970]

TIL https://phys.org/news/2023-09-mathematical-proof-reveals-insights-typhoon.html

Euler in there!

Implications for predicting Weather patterns.

 

[pinball1970]

This too, remnants of a 2014 meteorite that was thought to be from outside the solar system.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15623

A little bit of controversy too.
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...eor-fragments-really-been-found-in-the-ocean/

@davenn may have a view?

 

[jack action]

TIL that Neil Armstrong had to go through US Customs after returning from the moon.

 

[Swamp Thing]

If I was a customs officer, I would prank him by planting some white powder and pretending to arrest him.

 

[DaveC426913]

If I was a customs officer, I would prank him by planting some white powder and pretending to arrest him.

Hey, at least that way he gets to stay on Earth. Imagine...

"I'm sorry sir. Your application has been rejected. You will have to return to your place of origin and wait to be seen. Current wait times are 1-2 years."

 

[pinball1970]

A new comet

https://www.planetary.org/articles/...Nishimura is green in,carry on toward the Sun.

 

[davenn]

A new comet

https://www.planetary.org/articles/how-to-see-newly-discovered-comet-nishimura#:~:text=The new comet to look for with the naked eye&text=Comet Nishimura is green in,carry on toward the Sun.

not in my part of the sky yet

 

[pinball1970]

not in my part of the sky yet

I hope you get a good view. Possibly some images?

 

[pinball1970]

TIL Another project CERN are involved in w.r.t Climate change study (link to a paper at the end)

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-trees-cloud-formation.html

A nice line, “Particularly the way in which cloud cover will develop in the future remains largely nebulous for the time being.”

I checked on the CERN site and there is an explanatory video showing the kit and techniques.

https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/cloud-experiment-sharpens-climate-predictions

 

[kyphysics]

Nearly all cars & trucks have a "black box" (like airplanes) that tracks a vehicle's movements. . . .I learned this from a 48 Hours episode (called, "Kassanndra's Secret"), in which the detective/investigator used one to see where a suspect may have dumped a body.

Didn't realize our cars have these things. Pretty cool!

 

[Borg]

Nearly all cars & trucks have a "black box" (like airplanes) that tracks a vehicle's movements. . . .I learned this from a 48 Hours episode (called, "Kassanndra's Secret"), in which the detective/investigator used one to see where a suspect may have dumped a body.

Didn't realize our cars have these things. Pretty cool!

AFAIK, the ones in cars only record a few seconds before a crash. It would be far easier to track the suspect's cell phone.

 

[gmax137]

It would be far easier to track the suspect's cell phone.

Do the telecoms really keep records of every cell phone location? They do "on TV" as well as time and duration of all the calls and texts. This seems like an overwhelming amount of data.

 

[DaveC426913]

Do the telecoms really keep records of every cell phone location? They do "on TV" as well as time and duration of all the calls and texts. This seems like an overwhelming amount of data.

Everytime a phone pings a tower or a tower pings a phone - which can be minutes or less apart - it is processed. Dont know how long that data is kept.

But its only a triangulation between towers so not too accurate positioning, and i assume it needs to be requested processing

 

[Borg]

Cell companies do maintain a record of which cell tower a phone contacts. This is often used in law enforcement to establish that someone was in the vicinity of a crime. Additionally, the police can request all phones that were in the area of several crimes which can resolve to just a few potential suspects.

 

[berkeman]

Google knows where I am (well, where my phone is) all the time, and is even nice enough to send me a report at the end of each month...

It does get a little confused about whether I'm running or biking or driving, depending on how fast I ride...

 

[gmax137]

Google knows

Yes, but you gave Google permission and they are open about using the data for their own purposes. Do the telcoms use the data they collect in ways not related to their business (simply, do they sell the data)?

 

[Borg]

Makes me wonder how many other police tools that people haven't heard of before.

My favorite is the Familial DNA Search. Even if law enforcement doesn't have a matching profile of DNA that they find at a crime scene, they can do a familial DNA search to find close or near relatives of the person. And where do they get that DNA? From sites like 23AndMe that happily store the DNA profiles in databases that are accessible by law enforcement. So, if a criminal's family member ever got curious about their DNA, the police will know that someone in their family left DNA at the scene. From what I remember, that includes relatives as distant as cousins, grandparents, etc. It does take a lot of time and resources so it's mainly used on high profile cases.

 

[gmax137]

Even if law enforcement doesn't have a matching profile of DNA that they find at a crime scene, they can do a familial DNA search

This is how they solved the Golden State Killer case in 2018, after at least13 murders and 51 rapes between 1974 and 1986.

The website identified ten to twenty people who had the same great-great-great grandparents as the Golden State Killer; a team of five investigators working with genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter used this list to construct a large family tree. From this tree, they established two suspects; one was ruled out by a relative's DNA test, leaving DeAngelo the main suspect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo

 

[kyphysics]

AFAIK, the ones in cars only record a few seconds before a crash. It would be far easier to track the suspect's cell phone.

At the 30:00 min. mark, they talk about the black box in the murderer's truck and how it ". . .records nearly every move a vehicle makes. . ." Not sure if all black boxes do the same.

With this killer's truck, you can see where he went and at what time/date.

 

[berkeman]

With this killer's truck, you can see where he went and at what time/date.

Sounds like that killer wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed...

 

[gmax137]

Sounds like that killer wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed...

Half a bubble off plumb?

 

[Borg]

At the 30:00 min. mark, they talk about the black box in the murderer's truck and how it ". . .records nearly every move a vehicle makes. . ." Not sure if all black boxes do the same.

With this killer's truck, you can see where he went and at what time/date.

You're forcing me to actually research this a bit.

According to wikipedia's article on Event Data Recorders, I don't see any mention of long-term storage or location tracking. There is some ambiguity between the implementations of different manufacturers but the main focus of the article talks about only tracking what the vehicle was doing (speeding, braking, seat belt use, etc.) in the seconds before a crash.

Similarly, the NHTSA article on Automotive Black Box Data Recovery Systems that mainly refers to late 90's era GM vehicles, states that the GM EDR only maintain the final five seconds before a crash. That's probably what I'm remembering in my earlier post.

EDIT: On reviewing what was said in the 48 hours link, it sounds like that vehicle has longer storage capability. Since it's probably a newer model, I guess that it had some sort of On-Star storage capability that would have location data available to it.

 

[BWV]

We are losing our leadership in UFOlogy to Mexico

 

[Ibix]

We are losing our leadership in UFOlogy to Mexico

Um... oh dear?

 

[berkeman]

We are losing our leadership in UFOlogy to Mexico

I read somewhere that it was due to a bicycle crash...

 

[fresh_42]

We are losing our leadership in UFOlogy to Mexico

View attachment 331902

And I thought you already lost this position to Belgium some 30 years ago!

 

[kyphysics]

You're forcing me to actually research this a bit.

EDIT: On reviewing what was said in the 48 hours link, it sounds like that vehicle has longer storage capability. Since it's probably a newer model, I guess that it had some sort of On-Star storage capability that would have location data available to it.

I'm going to Google this a bit too when I have more time. I feel like all the trouble of a black box to only have 5 sec. of recording time before a crash isn't worth it maybe, so it'd be good to know that newer models have more recording capability.

I'd be curious if there's this same ability on all newer cars from the cheapest to the more expensive types - or, if it's maybe just on nicer vehicles?

 

[kyphysics]

We are losing our leadership in UFOlogy to Mexico

View attachment 331902

Am I looking at the picture correctly that the head is very long (back depth-wise)? That would literally be like the stereotypical image of aliens you see depicted in fiction. . . .Of course, this thing looks like it's body is that of a small baby, but the head is intriguing (if I'm viewing it correctly)?

Or, is the head just rested on a rock (I think you all will see what I mean if you look closely) that is creating that elongated effect?

 

[berkeman]

Am I looking at the picture correctly that the head is very long (back depth-wise)? That would literally be like the stereotypical image of aliens you see depicted in fiction. . . .Of course, this thing looks like it's body is that of a small baby, but the head is intriguing (if I'm viewing it correctly)?

Or, is the head just rested on a rock (I think you all will see what I mean if you look closely) that is creating that elongated effect?

Seriously? Did your parents and older siblings never take you to the movies? Did you never have cable? Did you never feel like you were being lifted up into the air when you were riding your 1-speed bicycle?

 

[kyphysics]

Seriously? Did your parents and older siblings never take you to the movies? Did you never have cable? Did you never feel like you were being lifted up into the air when you were riding your 1-speed bicycle?

Wait, what are you saying? You think it's a fake? I'm not arguing it isn't, btw. Only curious if it's supposed to have an elongated head in the back or if that's just an erroneous visual effect I'm interpreting from the head resting on a rock or something.

I can't tell from the picture.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL NASA Made the awaited announcement regarding the UAP study.
Main take away, no evidence of ET but they do not know what they are. A new NASA director UAP has been appointed and work will continue. Results will be transparent.
That's as far as I got.

 

[Hornbein]

At the 1924 Paris Games, a Hungarian judge accused three Italian fencers of losing on purpose to teammate Oreste Puliti so he could more easily advance in the saber competition. Puliti threatened the official and was disqualified.

The irate fencer then challenged the judge to a duel with real swords. His challenge was accepted.

 

[DaveC426913]

TIL NASA Made the awaited announcement regarding the UAP study.
Main take away, no evidence of ET but they do not know what they are. A new NASA director UAP has been appointed and work will continue. Results will be transparent.
That's as far as I got.

Sauce:
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/...-anomalous-phenomena-independent-study-report