Weirdest/things that blew your mind when you learned them

[s00mb]

Hi, I figured I'd make a thread about this. What really blew your mind when you learned it or what continues to blow your mind when you think about it? I like learning really obscure mind blowing things so I figured I'd ask others about this to get some new ideas. For me it was things like uncountable/different "sizes" of infinity in real analysis, time relativity (it still blows my mind knowing most people go their entire lives not knowing time is not absolute) and currently things like fractional calculus. I think finding out you can take any order derivatives "Abusing" gamma functions and using certain integrals was ingenious. What is yours?

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Quantum Mechanics.

 

[berkeman]

To do unit conversions reliably, multiply by "1".

 

[Klystron]

Studying fractional dimensions and associated theories of Mandelbrot, Huasdorff, von Koch, Klein and Kaluza among others; never ceases to "blow my mind".

 

[aheight]

How non-linear differential equations explain our world, Catastrophe Theory as a mechanism for change, Strange Attractors for morphogenesis, and Emergence for origins. Termites really don't know what they're building. Nevertheless a marvelous clay cathedral emerges from the mud:*
$$
\begin{align*}
\frac{\partial P}{\partial t}&=k_1 C-P\\
\frac{\partial H}{\partial t}&=k_2 P-k_4 H+D_h \nabla^2 H\\
\frac{\partial C}{\partial t}&=\phi-k_1P+D_c C+\gamma \frac{\partial}{\partial r}\left(C\frac{\partial H}{\partial r}\right)
\end{align*}
$$

* From "Signs of Life" by Sole and Goodwin

 

[DennisN]

What really blew your mind when you learned it or what continues to blow your mind when you think about it?

Quantum Mechanics.

Same here.
Also, whenever I try to think of the stupendously large size of the Universe it blows my mind.

 

[pinball1970]

So many things to mention, atomic theory (11 years old) Evolution, when I actually got a grip of it.
Disease, I remember walking out of a lecture wondering how mankind has survived considering all the things that can go wrong with human body. Infectious, metabolic and degenerative.
If I say quantum mechanics, cosmology or relativity, it suggests i Know and understand enough to have my mind blown and I don't.
I know enough to know that when I finally get a grip of the details (if I ever do) my mind will be blown.
My mind is blown by reading about the guys that contributed, their intellect. Gauss, Euler, Dirac, Einstein, Feynman and the like.
More recently Graham's number.
Good thread!

 

[phinds]

...it still blows my mind knowing most people go their entire lives not knowing time is not absolute...

Why? For all practical purposes (day to day life), time IS absolute. The only place I can think of that it applies to day to day life is the inner workings of the GPS and and 99.999% of the populace doesn't care HOW that works, just THAT it works.

 

[s00mb]

Why? For all practical purposes (day to day life), time IS absolute. The only place I can think of that it applies to day to day life is the inner workings of the GPS and and 99.999% of the populace doesn't care HOW that works, just THAT it works.

Mostly for my personal philosophy. To me such small differences in every day life matter. The fact that everything isn't perfectly synchronous in an absolute time. For example people see events happen at different times and don't realize it. Of course for all intents and purposes it may as well be absolute time. But it's not. I realized that even though it may as well be absolute, it truly is different. I want to fill my head with truths about reality, and in every day life reality is "fibbing" to you making you think time works one way when in fact it is different. That is why it blows my mind. You have to study thing like physics to learn the truth.

 

[Evo]

When I was 5, during a hurricane and the power went out, I learned toilets weren't electric. I was amazed, I thought EVERYTHING was powered by electricity.

 

[Evo]

For example people see events happen at different times and don't realize it.

Reference? I have no idea what you are talking about. When something happens, it happens. It doesn't "happen" now for me and then "happen" a moment later for you. If something is within eyesight of all parties, they will see it at the same time. Edit: from a human perspective.

 

[DennisN]

When I was 5, during a hurricane and the power went out, I learned toilets weren't electric.

That gave me the idea of a sneaky execution scheme:

1. Make a toilet seat of metal.
2. Make a toilet cap of metal (or whatever that thing is called you pull when to flush).
3. Connect the toilet to a nice, juicy power source.
4. Wait for target to need to go to toilet, and then enjoy the show.

Edit: On a second thought this probably should be modified, since people usually flush after they leave the seat... well, it was a nice idea anyway .

 

[Wrichik Basu]

When I was 5, during a hurricane and the power went out, I learned toilets weren't electric. I was amazed, I thought EVERYTHING was powered by electricity.

Just for your information, there are some toilets where you won't be able to flush if electricity is cut off. Thay have a host of other functions as well; you have to press buttons to activate the one you want.

 

[Ibix]

Reference?

Something like the so-called Andromeda paradox, I would guess. In relativity, different frames of reference can disagree about the timing and even the order of events when those events cannot have affected each other (i.e., when they are far enough apart that even light cannot cross the distance between the events in the time between the events).

The wikipedia article I linked philosophises more than I would, but it's a genuine part of relativity even if you are of the shut-up-and-calculate school of thought. The effect is completely negligible for every day distances and speeds, but understanding it is critically important for understanding special relativity.

 

[OCR]

I want to fill my head with truths about reality, and in every day life reality is "fibbing" to you making you think time works one way when in fact it is different.

Lol. . . here, fill your head with this post. . . #254 .

.

 

[sysprog]

I was bewildered when I first saw a fluorescent 'blaze' orange camouflage jumpsuit for sale. It seemed to me that it was self-antithetical. Later I learned that deer see such safety camouflage about as we would see grey-green-brown.

 

[Evo]

The effect is completely negligible for every day distances and speeds, but understanding it is critically important for understanding special relativity.

Exactly.
I was just wondering what he'd read that had him so upset, on a human scale of reference someone 5 feet or 5 yards away from an object, the difference in time the light from the object hit the two people would be of no consequence in them saying they saw it "at the same time".

 

[Keith_McClary]

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems

 

[s00mb]

How non-linear differential equations explain our world, Catastrophe Theory as a mechanism for change, Strange Attractors for morphogenesis, and Emergence for origins. Termites really don't know what they're building. Nevertheless a marvelous clay cathedral emerges from the mud:*
$$
\begin{align*}
\frac{\partial P}{\partial t}&=k_1 C-P\\
\frac{\partial H}{\partial t}&=k_2 P-k_4 H+D_h \nabla^2 H\\
\frac{\partial C}{\partial t}&=\phi-k_1P+D_c C+\gamma \frac{\partial}{\partial r}\left(C\frac{\partial H}{\partial r}\right)
\end{align*}
$$

* From "Signs of Life" by Sole and Goodwin

Is there a

Exactly.
I was just wondering what he'd read that had him so upset, on a human scale of reference someone 5 feet or 5 yards away from an object, the difference in time the light from the object hit the two people would be of no consequence in them saying they saw it "at the same time".

It's not that its no consequence its the fact that it IS different even if it is on an extremely small scale. What I'm talking about is that on our scale things seem one way as to make everyone naturally believe in things that they generalize to a global worldview of things that aren't necessarily true. It's not the fact that time is relative negligibly on small scales its the fact that it's possible FOR time to be relative and that I believe reality misleads you into thinking things like an absolute time that applies to everything. To me its like why didn't life make that clear from the beginning? Like I said it's more of philosophical issue to me. More of a qualitative aspect that effects my thinking than a quantitative one. It's the fact that some situations one person measures a time differently than from another persons perspective, even though the difference in time means nothing for every day life, there is a tiny "impurity" in it. Thats what I mean by qualitative instead of quantitative.

 

[Evo]

It's not that its no consequence its the fact that it IS different even if it is on an extremely small scale. What I'm talking about is that on our scale things seem one way as to make everyone naturally believe in things that they generalize to a global worldview of things that aren't necessarily true. It's not the fact that time is relative negligibly on small scales its the fact that it's possible FOR time to be relative and that I believe reality misleads you into thinking things like an absolute time that applies to everything. To me its like why didn't life make that clear from the beginning? Like I said it's more of philosophical issue to me. More of a qualitative aspect that effects my thinking than a quantitative one. It's the fact that some situations one person measures a time differently than from another persons perspective, even though the difference in time means nothing for every day life, there is a tiny "impurity" in it. Thats what I mean by qualitative instead of quantitative.

But it's something people don't worry about, like digital pictures are made of tiny squares, movies are just a series of still pictures, our brains allow us to see the seemless picture image, or the seemless moving images, even though that's not what we're "really seeing". Definitely not something to get upset about as it pertains to daily life. Don't let it affect your "daily life thinking", keep that level of thinking for the lab/class.

 

[pinball1970]

But it's something people don't worry about, like digital pictures are made of tiny squares, movies are just a series of still pictures, our brains allow us to see the seemless picture image, or the seemless moving images, even though that's not what we're "really seeing". Definitely not something to get upset about as it pertains to daily life. Don't let it affect your "daily life thinking", keep that level of thinking for the lab/class.

I remember hearing about time dilation relating to astronauts and thinking 'what the hell are they talking about?'
I had no idea what a scientific theory was as opposed to speculation or hypothesis.
Close Encounters of the third kind reiterated that when the crew of flight got off the space ship.
'Einstein was right, they haven't aged at all.'
I remember thinking 'what? This is an actual thing!?'
I cannot remember asking teachers about it but I always wanted to investigate it and get to the details.
A physics undergraduate explained that, BB theory and element formation in stars 89/90 ish.
I looked at some of the maths later on but was mind was blown at different points.

 

[RPinPA]

Big Bang theory ("Whoa! There was an actual beginning to the universe?"), and then learning about the COBE experiment observing and analyzing the tiny fluctuations in the cosmic background that I'd always learned was essentially uniform ("Whoa! We can actually see the FINGERPRINTS of the beginning of the universe?")

I think the story of the dinosaur-killer asteroid was pretty cool to live through as well. First there was a hypothesis that not too many people took seriously, but it had a clear prediction and falsification test (that there should be a layer of, if I recall correctly, iridium present in geological sediment of the same age around the world). And then the empirical evidence was found and the hypothesis went from dubious to accepted as common wisdom. And then the likely impact site was identified.

That moment when the hypothesis was confirmed, upending the existing theories of the death of the dinosaurs, was a very mind-blowing moment for me.

 

[s00mb]

But it's something people don't worry about, like digital pictures are made of tiny squares, movies are just a series of still pictures, our brains allow us to see the seemless picture image, or the seemless moving images, even though that's not what we're "really seeing". Definitely not something to get upset about as it pertains to daily life. Don't let it affect your "daily life thinking", keep that level of thinking for the lab/class.

I kindly disagree. I come from a heavy religous background and became agnostic. Think for example you take two different people and fix reference frames right behind there eyes. Depending on what they do in life their worlds are going to be different. Now to me I think "why would a perfect creator being perfect create a system where the worlds aren't perfectly synchronous". If you make a video game world for example you don't do this. What use could this possibly have? It's one of the reasons I became agnostic, because in a way everyone is kind of alone in their own unique world. They all look the same but qualitatively are not. I am not "upset" about this, but I find it intrigueing and take it into account when I think about reality.

 

[berkeman]

Now to me I think "why would a perfect creator being perfect create a system where the worlds aren't perfectly synchronous".

Does the word "woo" have any special meaning in your life so far? Just asking...

 

[phinds]

Big Bang theory ("Whoa! There was an actual beginning to the universe?")

No, not according to the Big Bang Theory there wasn't --- the BBT does not included a creation event; it starts a fraction of a second after the big bang singularity, which itself MIGHT be a creation event or might not be.

 

[phinds]

It's not the fact that time is relative negligibly on small scales its the fact that it's possible FOR time to be relative and that I believe reality misleads you into thinking things like an absolute time that applies to everything.

I agree that that's a good point.

To me its like why didn't life make that clear from the beginning?

Because it has ZERO benefit to survival. We evolved to learn what matters to survival.

 

[Nik_2213]

Quarks.
They make my wits boggle.
Fractional electric charges ? Well, d'uh...

With joint-runners up, solar neutrino detection (hard) plus have mass (harder), so morph A/B/C, so Sun isn't about to go out...

In fourth place, the bitterly disputed 'Channeled Scabland' mega-flood(s), analogous forms since found in Dover Straights, and Med post Messinian re-fills...
==
As a mid-teen, I was astonished when 'Plate Tectonics' was proven. It was an 'AHA !' moment, but the concept had been floating around for a while. Just needed those 'tree ring' stripes to sink the proposed land-bridges that linked assemblages now on opposite sides of oceans.

IIRC, our entire geography staff went out and got drunk. The young guys to celebrate, the old guys to mourn their demolished paradigm and many beloved, but now falsified textbooks...

 

[s00mb]

Does the word "woo" have any special meaning in your life so far? Just asking...

Not sure what you mean?

 

[Keith_McClary]

You are 90% nuclear waste.

 

[sysprog]

Not sure what you mean?

if you look it up, you'll find that 'woo' is pretty much a broad slang term that means pseudoscience, unjustified belief in the supernatural (especially when couched in false justifications), and suchlike.

Please trust that in using the 'woo' term in a question, as he did in his response to something you posted, @berkeman doesn't mean to deride you, but fully intends to oppose the complacent acceptance of nonsense.

The discipline of denouncing 'woo', though ;woo' has only recently ('90s?) been called by that name, goes back at least as far as the ontological argument (Anselm of Canterbury in 1078). Even the great Kurt Gödel was not immune to embracement of 'woo'. The formal part of his modal logic version of the ontological argument is briefly (without line-by-line commentary) recounted as follows:

$$
\begin{array}{rl}

\text{Ax. 1.} & \left(P(\varphi) \;\wedge\; \Box \; \forall x (\varphi(x) \Rightarrow \psi(x))\right) \;\Rightarrow\; P(\psi) \\

\text{Ax. 2.} & P(\neg \varphi) \;\Leftrightarrow\; \neg P(\varphi) \\

\text{Th. 1.} & P(\varphi) \;\Rightarrow\; \Diamond \; \exists x \; \varphi(x) \\

\text{Df. 1.} & G(x) \;\Leftrightarrow\; \forall \varphi (P(\varphi) \Rightarrow \varphi(x)) \\

\text{Ax. 3.} & P(G) \\

\text{Th. 2.} & \Diamond \; \exists x \; G(x) \\

\text{Df. 2.} & \varphi \text{ ess } x \;\Leftrightarrow\; \varphi(x) \wedge \forall \psi \left(\psi(x) \Rightarrow \Box \; \forall y (\varphi(y) \Rightarrow \psi(y))\right) \\

\text{Ax. 4.} & P(\varphi) \;\Rightarrow\; \Box \; P(\varphi) \\

\text{Th. 3.} & G(x) \;\Rightarrow\; G \text{ ess } x \\

\text{Df. 3.} & E(x) \;\Leftrightarrow\; \forall \varphi (\varphi \text{ ess } x \Rightarrow \Box \; \exists y \; \varphi(y)) \\

\text{Ax. 5.} & P(E) \\

\text{Th. 4.} & \Box \; \exists x \; G(x)

\end{array}
$$
The fact that Gödel includes no justification of his axioms or definitions, but only shows that his conclusions follow from them, to me means that as a proof of what Gödel purports it to prove, it is woefully lacking, and quite dismissible as 'woo', despite it being much more disciplined than most such stuff.

For a refutation of the proof as inconsistent, please see:

The Inconsistency in Gödel’s Ontological Argument: A Success Story for AI in Metaphysics
by
Christoph Benzmuller ¨ ⇤ Freie Universitat Berlin & Stanford University ¨ c.benzmueller@gmail.com Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo Australian National University bruno.wp@gmail.com

open access available at:
https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/16/Papers/137.pdf

 

[s00mb]

Oh well I disagree.

 

[Wes Tausend]

Time.

Many things have blown my mind. The first was probably a wind-up alarm clock my father gave me when I was about 6 or 7 years old. It began a fascination with time. I knew that wind-up toys go fast at first, then slow. So how could a wind-up clock possibly keep good time? My father gave it to me because it ran slower and slower and finally quit.

My father replaced it with a synchronous electric clock, something I never figured out until my teens. I immediately took the wind-up clock apart, I mean ALL apart, and cleaned it and oiled it. After I put the gears and springs back together, it worked perfectly... for a while. Meanwhile, I'd learned how the latch made it keep time by regulating the mainspring. And after finally looking at the back case, I discovered a slot with an F and S. I realized it provided access to adjust clock rate via the hair-spring. My father hadn't noticed it before and put up with inaccurate time for years. I was pretty proud of that discovery.

The latch mechanism on the wind-up allowed me to figure out how a pendulum clock regulated time in the school mimeograph room. The smell of the ink comes back to me when I remember.

The reason my free wind-up alarm clock quit was I had way over- oiled it and the open mechanism got full of dust- bunnies. I so loved the beautiful brass machinery that I'd left it open on my window sill by the bed. I took it back apart, put the parts in a small box, then went out to play. Some of the parts got lost before I got back to it. But by then I could afford a one dollar pocket watch from Ben Franklin. I could hear it tick under my pillow.

My next watch was a small water-proof Timex I got for Christmas when I was 10. I left it on while swimming just so I could tell concerned people it was water-proof and it never failed me. I had it until I accidently left it on the roof of my first car. Several reliable Timex's followed, barring misplacement.

I still have a cheap Casio left over from work. It has two time zones that I worked in and keeps military-style time to within a few seconds a month. For 20 some years I replaced various Casio's as the straps and/or batteries died. One kept time to less than a second lost per month. These cheap watches worked better than better looking quality watches I received as performance awards from work. I worked the last 20+ year's for a railroad that required accurate time.

Wes

 

[DennisN]

What really blew your mind when you learned it or what continues to blow your mind when you think about it?

Also, whenever I try to think of the stupendously large size of the Universe it blows my mind.

I'd also like to add a couple of more things about the Universe that blows my mind:

1. Some electromagnetic radiation that reaches Earth has taken billions of years to reach us, with the extreme being the CMBR. That is a loooong time. And the further out we look, the longer back in time we see, which is pretty cool.
2. The Universe is not only expanding. The expansion is accelerating!
3. Scientists have located the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy and also tracked stars orbiting it.
4. We have recently seen images of (the surroundings of) black holes.
5. Scientists can now detect gravitational waves due to cosmic events that have taken place very far away from us.
6. And last, but certainly not least: The Universe could be infinite in spatial extent. That is not easy to wrap my head around!

There are more mindblowing things about the Universe (e.g. various things regarding black holes and open questions about them). The six points above were just some things I came to think about a while ago.

 

[BillTre]

Some mind blowing (to me) biological things:

• That some of the most complex of biological nanomachines (ribosomes, electron transport chain and ATP synthase) were evolved before the two first evolutionary lines of life (bacteria and archaea) diverged, by DNA synthetic enzymes probably evolved later (they differ between bacteria and archaea). These are all very large proteins or complexes of proteins or proteins and RNA. The electron transport chain and ATP synthase generate energy for cells by pumping protons (H⁺) out of the cell while the APT synthase let's them flow back in through a turbine-like structure which spins and uses the mechanical energy to catalyze ATP formation. ATP is the major energy carrier of the cell. Ribosomes translate nucleic acid sequence into protein sequence in cells, central to the informational control of cells and life.
• The colinearity of Hox gene expression with their embryonic expression patterns and the body part identities they control in embryonic development, which is shared by most animals. The cluster and order of the genes seems to be the primitive condition which can be scrambled through evolution, although also expanded upon (such as in vertebrates).
• Not so recent (1979, >40 years ago) a surprise to me, but at the time it was figured out, a very large impact killed off the dinosaurs (except the birds).

 

[hutchphd]

The panoply of molecular machines associated with life processes that have been discovered over my lifetime. Watson and Crick did their DNA work about the time of my birth.
I remember sitting in high school biology (in 1967) and hearing about "active transport" of stuff in the cell body and thinking "what are the hell are they talking about, divine intervention?...elves? " .
As it turns out the microtubule motor proteins mechanisms are wonderful and mechanical and non-theological (by my reckoning). That is but one of many such wonders.
The Hubble deep space image works for me, too.

 

[BillTre]

Watson and Crick did their DNA work about the time of my birth

Hey, me too.
Born into The Age of Biology!

 

[hutchphd]

It still seemed unkempt to me ...hence my physics education!

 

[BillTre]

It still seemed unkempt to me ...hence my physics education!

The challenge is to make order of it.

 

[hutchphd]

Yes.. I never would have believed the the progress that has been made. And how fascinating it really is. Hope we can keep the slope positive for a while longer.

 

[phinds]

The challenge is to make order of it.

But it's all squishy !

 

[BillTre]

But it's all squishy !

Except for the shells, bones, spines, and hard plant things like wood.
(Squishies is a term often used for soft invertebrates like worms and slugs, as opposed to crunchies, like insects and crustaceans with hard exoskeletons.)

Anyway stars have no hard surfaces, and nebulae are nebulous.

 

[phinds]

Except for the shells, bones, spines, and hard plant things like wood.

I'll bet if you add up the weight of all the biomass on the planet, you'll find that easily 90%+ of it is squishy. Probably more like 99%.

Hm ... OK, maybe the forests will keep it down to only 90%+

 

[BillTre]

Well the essence of life is mushy cytoplasm for sure.

 

[DaveC426913]

Watson and Crick did their DNA work about the time of my birth.

First thing I thought of too.

It gives me great hope, reminding myself that we are still in our infancy of understanding the world. So much to discover still!

 

[DennisN]

The challenge is to make order of it.

But I've heard it can be dangerous!

 

[BillTre]

My alter-ego.

 

[DennisN]

Not so recent (1979, >40 years ago) a surprise to me, but at the time it was figured out, a very large impact killed off the dinosaurs (except the birds).

There is a very funny comic which I laugh at every time I think of it. I won't post the image here because it contains some foul words, but here's a link to it in a spoiler below:

Spoiler

http://explosm.net/comics/818/

 

[phinds]

Anyway stars have no hard surfaces, and nebulae are nebulous.

Yeah, but have you ever had to dissect one of those? Every stepped on one and gone YUCK !

 

[Ibix]

Every stepped on one and gone YUCK !

Yeah. I got slimy Betelgeuse all over my toes.

 

[BillTre]

Yeah, but have you ever had to dissect one of those?

Sounds like a lot of people wold like to dissect Betelgeuse to figure out what going on in there and how it works.
Poor astronomy, prevented from understanding the star's innards by queasiness about getting yucky.