The Random Facts and Trivia Thread

[Usseewa ✾ She♡Her ✾]

Just now, GG0z said:

Didn’t we discuss this exact thread in the Nightmare Bagel thread a few days ago?

The what?

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

If a new star entered the solar system and starting orbiting the sun, it would technically be considered a planet

Mercury is technically not a planet

At the same time, you could say Mercury is the only planet

Edited Monday at 01:26 AM by KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren

[Factor She/Her]

1 minute ago, GG0z said:

Didn’t we discuss this exact thread in the Nightmare Bagel thread a few days ago?

Yeah, we were talking about the reasons it must have died and how that explains what threads are popular.

Guess we were wrong…

1 minute ago, Usseewa said:

The what?

GG0z started a vaguely RP-like thread about fighting a nightmare battle. For a couple days it was a pretty cool Battle of the Sandwich-type thing, but it “deteriorated” (felt like the right word but it has a somewhat negative connotation, pretend that’s positive) into another Last Post Loses.

[GG0z He/Him]

5 minutes ago, Usseewa said:

The what?

1 minute ago, Factor said:

GG0z started a vaguely RP-like thread about fighting a nightmare battle. For a couple days it was a pretty cool Battle of the Sandwich-type thing, but it “deteriorated” (felt like the right word but it has a somewhat negative connotation, pretend that’s positive) into another Last Post Loses.

It can be both. I think. I know! It’s Schrödinger’s thread! Maybe. It’s both a Battle of the Sandwich and TLPL until Conure or Star or Factor decide what will happen today. Maybe.

The moon is lemon shaped

[Usseewa ✾ She♡Her ✾]

16 minutes ago, GG0z said:

The moon is lemon shaped

Uhhh

The Earth is an oblong sphere?

or...

an "oblate spheroid?"

 

kinda lame, everyone probably assumed/knew that already heh.

 

[GG0z He/Him]

I wanted to say something about relativity and time, but I assume you already know all the cool bits

[Usseewa ✾ She♡Her ✾]

29 minutes ago, GG0z said:

I wanted to say something about relativity and time, but I assume you already know all the cool bits

who, me?

idk, depends

someone can sound science-y but be a stupid cremling

not meant to be an insult to anyone here except maybe me, in certain circumstances

 

edit: wait that sounds so rude oops

uhh

anyway fun fact: infinity is not a number 

Edited Monday at 02:20 AM by Usseewa

[GG0z He/Him]

59 minutes ago, Usseewa said:

who, me?

idk, depends

someone can sound science-y but be a stupid cremling

not meant to be an insult to anyone here except maybe me, in certain circumstances

 

edit: wait that sounds so rude oops

uhh

anyway fun fact: infinity is not a number 

Honestly, I just expect everyone to know all of the facts that I know, because insecurity

[Aeoryi she/her]

Fun fact: The only pokémon who is officially recognized as purple is Venonat, for some reason. All the other purple pokémon are frauds (using the pokémon official colors)

 

Additional Fun Fact:

1 hour ago, Usseewa said:

anyway fun fact: infinity is not a number 

There’s more than one kind of infinity, and one infinity is larger than the other. A set has countably infinite elements if you could list out each element in an infinitely long list, and a set has uncountably infinite elements of you can’t list out each element. So countably infinite is smaller than incountably infinite.

 

Additional fun fact:

Trancendental numbers are numbers that can’t be written as a root of a polynomial with rational (AKA fractions) coefficients. Pi and e have been proven to be trancendental, but it’s actually an open question whether e + pi, e - pi, or pi^pi are trancendental

 

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

A guy named Ludolph van Ceulen has 35 digits of π inscribed on his tombstone, because he spent much of his life computing them.

[Aeoryi she/her]

The current world record for furthest throw of an Xbox 360 controller is 40.93m.

The first person to surf a wave whilest on fire is Jamie O'Brien, doing so on 22 July 2015.

[Through The Living Ketek He/Him/His]

Hard cheese could technically be counted as a mineral

[Cephandrious Maxtori Fae/Faer]

8 hours ago, KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren said:

Mercury is technically not a planet

8 hours ago, KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren said:

At the same time, you could say Mercury is the only planet

Can you please elaborate on both of these?

If you take a single layer of graphite, that is, one layer of carbon atoms arranged in a two dimensional hexagonal lattice, you get graphene, which is hundreds of times stronger than steel, very light, super flexible, and conductive.

 

[Aeoryi she/her]

In 1989, the Calgary Flames won the Stanley Cup beating the Boston Bruins in the finale. 

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

30 minutes ago, Cephandrious Maxtori said:

Can you please elaborate on both of these?

Here is the official IAU definition of a planet

1b means that planets require sufficient gravity to make themselves into an oblate spheroid

Mercury does not actually meet this; it's only round because it used to be larger, but now, if something were to smash into it without changing its mass too much, it wouldn't have the gravity to get its shape back. This is because it's made mostly of metal and rock, which is far harder to shape than ice, which is why a lot of smaller objects are in hydrostatic equilibrium, but that's a whole other thing.

As for 1c - one could debate endlessly over what counts as a clear orbit, but if you take that to mean no other objects in its orbit apart from moons, then all other planets are disqualified because they have trojan asteroids orbiting at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Mercury doesn't have any such Trojans, because very few asteroids cross its orbit so close to the Sun and its weak gravity can't pull the ones that do into Lagrange points, therefore making it the only one that clear this interpretation of this criterion in the planet definition.

[Aeoryi she/her]

16 minutes ago, KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren said:

As for 1c - one could debate endlessly over what counts as a clear orbit, but if you take that to mean no other objects in its orbit apart from moons, then all other planets are disqualified because they have trojan asteroids orbiting at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Mercury doesn't have any such Trojans, because very few asteroids cross its orbit so close to the Sun and its weak gravity can't pull the ones that do into Lagrange points, therefore making it the only one that clear this interpretation of this criterion in the planet definition.

Spoiler

I think that it typically is used to make it so you can't call a big asteroid in the keiper belt a planet- in general the no neighbors thing is for dwarf planets. 

And more importantly, what's with the footnote next to the word planet? 

Spoiler

Spoiler

because basically what you're saying is that by your interpretation of the rules, Mercury is the only planet. 

 

 

Additional fun fact:

Steroids are commonly thought to be similar to anabolic steroids (the ones that make you buff), although it actually refers to a class of lipids with a four fused-ring structure (and more rules, I'm sure, but in general the fused ring structure). This means that the average person's view on steroids is only partially correct- most people could distinguish testosterone as a steroid, but less would be likely to consider estradiol (the bioequivalent form of estrogen found in the human body) a steroid because it is (somewhat rightfully) associated with femininity. 

Edited Monday at 10:48 AM by Aeoryi

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

55 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

  Hide contents

I think that it typically is used to make it so you can't call a big asteroid in the keiper belt a planet- in general the no neighbors thing is for dwarf planets. 

And more importantly, what's with the footnote next to the word planet? 

  Hide contents

  Hide contents

because basically what you're saying is that by your interpretation of the rules, Mercury is the only planet. 

 

Yeah that's what the rule is meant to do

And to be clear, this isn't my interpretation, just a interpretation

My opinion is that the rules need to be completely rewritten

Here's the resolution: https://iauarchive.eso.org/static/resolutions/Resolution_GA26-5-6.pdf

[Deception He/Him]

Did you know,

The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start."

 

P.S. You just lost The Game.

[Aeoryi she/her]

36 minutes ago, Deception said:

The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start."

colloquially known as a beep test.

To kick a soccer ball between the legs of another person in a game of soccer is colloquially called a "nutmeg" (meg for short). The word nutmeg refers to a plant found in tropical rainforests. It is unclear what the connection is.

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

42 minutes ago, Deception said:

The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start."

3 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

colloquially known as a beep test.

The beep test... and the most hated thing in PE on this side of the world

Carboniferous arthropods reaching insanely large sizes was not actually caused by the high oxygen levels of the time; it was the lack of vertebrate competition in terrestrial niches. They never grew so large after the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse and the Amniote rise to power, even when atmospheric O2 levels spiked at certain points.

[Aeoryi she/her]

Calcium ions must be extracted via centrifuge when doing DNA testing using PCR. I do not know why.