Trivial Science facts.

[Angelod]

50 of them to be precise. Some of them I almosted doubted at first. But apparantly "10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment." who knew? *shrugs* *runs away before people figure out he steals from Digg all the time*

[Mayabird]

Umm, these aren't all technically correct. *puts on nitpicker hat of trivia from the top of my head*

2 – It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.

This is an average. Elliptical orbit and all. And most the rest of these are averages as well. Because I have on the nitpicker hat.

4 – The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.

I'm guessing that this number is the speed of Earth around the sun. If so, it neglects the orbit of the sun around the central black hole of the Milky Way and the speed of Earth as it's pulled along by the sun. I have no idea what that is. I could look it up, though. I'd rather not do the calculations at this moment.

10 – If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

I want this guy's definition of where space starts and how fast my car supposedly drives. The most I've gotten it to is 95, and that's a funny story of why it happened. So there I was, at band camp...

12 – The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.

Eh, the sun came first. Earth coalesced from the dust cloud around the young sun. The current theory of the origin of the Moon has a proto-moon/planet colliding with Earth and then ripping off a huge hunk of matter that coalesced into the Moon. Of course, you could then say that Earth wasn't truly "formed" until it got smacked hard and put itself back together. But the sun was already there for a while when it happened. A bit dimmer, but there.

25 – Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.

Correct spelling: Roentgen or Röntgen. Gotta have those dots over the o.

30 – The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.

I thought the mortality rate was more like 90%.

31 – In 5 billion years the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a Red Giant.

The sun's not actually going to "run out" of fuel. At the red giant stage, the sun will be fusing helium into carbon. Even then, most of the original hydrogen of the sun would not have been used. Fusion doesn't occur at the outer layers, so while the hydrogen at the core would be mostly fused into helium, the outer layers would still be helium. IIRC only 10% of the hydrogen in the sun will be fused over its lifetime.

48 – Somewhere in the flicker of a badly tuned TV set is the background radiation from the Big Bang.

As, cosmic background radiation. You produce 5-10% of the static I see. Something like that.

[LadyTevar]

9 – In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf.

Is this the same one that they said broke recently because of a large Artic storm that sent waves cross the Pacific from North to South?

13 – The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

And possibly before the Himalayias as well. All three are 'young' mountain ranges. On the other hand, the Appalachian range had already reached the current height of the Rockies, with the New River already carving the 800+ Gorge it's famed for.

26 – The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.

And when did they cut it down and what was it used for?

41 – Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.

That's because the maggots eat the dead flesh, cleaning it out so it doesn't rot and cause more problems. Healthy flesh is untouched, but the wound may leave huge scars because of the loss of flesh. *shudder*
I need to stop watching Discover Channel.

[Mayabird]

13 – The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

And possibly before the Himalayias as well. All three are 'young' mountain ranges. On the other hand, the Appalachian range had already reached the current height of the Rockies, with the New River already carving the 800+ Gorge it's famed for.

Yeah, the Himalayas only started forming when the Indian subcontinent started slamming into Asia about 30 million years ago or so. I'm remembering the number 10 million off the top of my head, which is probably the start of major mountain formation.

The Appalachians are over 300 million years old. Some parts started forming over 450 mya. Those mountains have seen some pretty crazy changes over the ages.

[LadyTevar]

The Appalachians are over 300 million years old. Some parts started forming over 450 mya. Those mountains have seen some pretty crazy changes over the ages.

And amusingly enough, the 'New River' is even older than the mountains it flows thru. How many dinosaurs once drank out of that river as it flowed north, or followed its path on their migrations? How many other major fauna have walked its banks, before mankind invaded?

It's just mindboggling to think of how old the river is, and how one map-maker turned the note "Found a New River" into the biggest mis-nomer in geography today.

[Mayabird]

The Appalachians are over 300 million years old. Some parts started forming over 450 mya. Those mountains have seen some pretty crazy changes over the ages.

And amusingly enough, the 'New River' is even older than the mountains it flows thru. How many dinosaurs once drank out of that river as it flowed north, or followed its path on their migrations? How many other major fauna have walked its banks, before mankind invaded?

Older than the mountains?

I'm finding that hard to believe. When the Appalachians rose, it would have caused a major divide between the two sides, with water flowing down one way or the other, unless that gorge (back before the bridge and the jumpers) was carved out as the mountains rose.

All I can find about the history of the New River is that it was once part of the Teays River before the Ice Age, but that's a bit more recent than the Appalachian's formation. Though possibly it may have been part of the theorized trans-continental river that flowed east to west across what's now North America, the Amazon River of its time.

[LadyTevar]

Older than the mountains?

I'm finding that hard to believe. When the Appalachians rose, it would have caused a major divide between the two sides, with water flowing down one way or the other, unless that gorge (back before the bridge and the jumpers) was carved out as the mountains rose.

All I can find about the history of the New River is that it was once part of the Teays River before the Ice Age, but that's a bit more recent than the Appalachian's formation. Though possibly it may have been part of the theorized trans-continental river that flowed east to west across what's now North America, the Amazon River of its time.

Correct, m'dear. The Gorge was dug as the mountains rose around it, before North America split from the British Isles (or didn't you know that the Appalachians and the Scottish Highlands are the same range?)

Unless there has been more research to invalidate this, the riverbed the New now runs in was that of the Teays River, which supposedly flowed up into Canada and poured into the North Atlantic.

When the Ice Age came, glaciers not only blocked that route, but dammed up the river for decades at a time before the ice would crack and let loose a massive flood. The flood waters went the only way they could, to the west, cutting a new channel that became the lower New and Kanawha Rivers. Thus, the waters in the New flow up one side of the Appalachians and down the other: North from the Carolinas into WV, West to join the Ohio, and then washing South as part of the great Mississippi.

[Mayabird]

Correct, m'dear. The Gorge was dug as the mountains rose around it, before North America split from the British Isles (or didn't you know that the Appalachians and the Scottish Highlands are the same range?)[/qupte]

COOL! Referring to the age of the gorge and the river, I mean. That's a freaking 300-something million year old gorge. I had been thinking that any proto-rivers would have been separated and split, but since they would just be growing by a few millimeters a year, it's not that hard to think of.

I knew the Appalachians geologically extend to the Scottish Highlands and then the mountains in Scandinavia. They must've been really impressive when they were young. And by extension, that gorge must have been awesome back when the mountains were the Himalayas.

When the Ice Age came, glaciers not only blocked that route, but dammed up the river for decades at a time before the ice would crack and let loose a massive flood. The flood waters went the only way they could, to the west, cutting a new channel that became the lower New and Kanawha Rivers. Thus, the waters in the New flow up one side of the Appalachians and down the other: North from the Carolinas into WV, West to join the Ohio, and then washing South as part of the great Mississippi.

Today was the first time I'd heard of that ice dam, but I'd read about others (mostly in the western U.S. or related to the Little Ice Age) before. That's neat.

Today's been fun! I've been able to learn about all sorts of geological stuff.

[Angelod]

I am not yet in your ladies leagues in geology and astrophysics. *tips his hat to the lovely and well read women of this thread*

[LadyTevar]

The only reason I know it, Angelod, is because I grew up the area of the New & Kanawha Rivers, and bugged my father about it. He was a forest ranger with the state, and knew the local state geologist, who was only too happy to answer a child's questions.

If you go to the New River Gorge, they have films and other displays showing how the river formed the gorge, which the geologist helped put together.