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