For me it is the fact that our blood contains iron. I earlier used to believe the word stood for some ‘organic element’ since I couldn’t accept we had metal flowing through our supposed carbon-based bodies, till I realized that is where the taste and smell of blood comes from.
Time relativity always boggles my brain, I accept the fact but I find crazy that if I strap my twin and his atomic clock to a rocket and send them out to the stratosphere at the speed of light, when they return he’ll be younger than me and his clock will be running behind mine. Crazy
Also the idea that light is both a particle and a wave always messed with my head because I wanted to know why does it decide to change and when? And the answer is that light is always a particle and always a wave at the exact same time.
It is a wave particle.
And it is possible from light alone to build both an electron and a positron as demonstrated in a 1999 laser science experiment in New York.
I usually interpret this as behaviour: photons are not “particles” or “waves”, photons are photons. They just behave as waves and as particles, depending on how you’re looking at them.
Note that even things with a resting mass (like you or me) are like this, too. It’s just that, as the mass increases, the wave behaviour becomes negligible.
The crazy thing is there are actually two double slit experiments, and that light can tell whether or not you are actively observing it or not, and decides whether or not to actually exist as a wave or particle.
The part that I understand in the intellectual sense, because I know or at least used to know how it follows from the math, but which just doesn’t feel like it should be the case, is the whole “relativity of simultaneity” aspect of it. That there isn’t an objectively true order in which events happen in, if the events in question aren’t linked by cause and effect. That is to say, it is possible for one person to see an event A happen before another event B, a second person to see the two happen at exactly the same time, and a third to see event B happen first and then event A, and for all three of them to be equally right. It just feels like, on some level, there ought to be one objectively true order to time, a single valid timeline that all events can be placed in relative to eachother, and for time not to work that way feels so absurd as to not even be able to articulate why the idea feels wrong.
Here’s something I just ran into looking stuff up for my comment: GN-z11 is one of the farthest galaxies we’ve ever seen. Thanks to the expansion of the universe, at a distance of over 30 billion light-years, it has to be moving away from us at over twice the speed of light.
What the fuck does that mean, temporally? Like, forget the speed of light, time dilation has to do with space and relative speeds. If I’m moving at near the speed of light relative to you, then my clock will physically tick more slowly. What happens if I’m moving over twice the speed of light? Is the real life GN-z11 in our reference frame moving backwards in time at over twice the rate we’re moving forward?
I can’t find any reference that says it’s moving away from us at twice the speed of light, which would violate Relativity. The fact that it is further away from us in light years than the age of the universe in years, is due to the fact that the space itself is expanding.
The thing is, it’s moving that fast because of the expansion of space. ≈30 billion light-years over ≈14 billion years equates to over twice the speed of light. Does that mean there’s no crazy relativistic time dilation, and time is moving normally for them in our frame of reference, since they aren’t physically moving, it’s space that’s expanding? That’s just as wild to my brain
It’s even crazier because you don’t need to reach the speed of light. It’ll happen in a smaller degree for any speed. Even in mundane conditions.
For example, if your twin spent four days in a 300km/h bullet train, for you it would be four days plus a second.
Usually this difference is negligible, but for satellites (that run at rather high speeds, for a lot of time, and require precision), if you don’t take time dilation into account they misbehave.
(For anyone wanting to mess with the maths, the formula is Δt’ = Δt / √[1 - v²/c²]. Δt = variation of time for the observer (you), Δt’ = variation of time for the moving entity (your twin), v = the moving entity’s speed, c = speed of light. Just make sure that “v” and “c” use the same units.)
Yes I knew about that and I’m glad that doesn’t make it crazier for me, instead it makes it easier to accept. If it were something that happened only after hitting some arbitrary speed value I’d be a lot more mentally damaged
I wonder how long it would have taken for us to figure out time dilation in Einstein hadn’t predicted it. I wonder if it would have taken until we observed it with satellites.
Without Einstein, I think that the discovery of time dilation would be delayed by only a few years. There were a lot of people working in theoretical physics already back then; someone else would inevitably dig through Lorentz’ and Poincaré’s papers, connect the dots, and say “waitaminute time might be relative”. From that, time dilation is a consequence.
In special I wouldn’t doubt that Max Planck would discover it.
I’m saying that because, in both science and engineering, often you see almost concurrent discoveries or developments of the same thing, because the “spirit of a time” makes people look at that aspect of reality or that challenge and work with it. The discovery of helium and the development of aeroplanes are examples of that.
I wish we could test this out with only simple apparatus. Unfortunately the common people do not have access to satellites or nonstop bullet trains.
From what I understand, you are always travelling at the speed of light through space/time, but when you move at high speeds through space that shifts the proportion of your speed out of the time dimension. And a photon travels only through space, experiencing no time between the time it was emitted and the time it was absorbed. What I just can’t wrap my head around is the concept of travelling at some speed without involving the time dimension at all.
Probably one of the most memorable and pivotal moments in my life was when my college professor showed us the origins of relativity and how Einstein came to the conclusion that E = mc^2
It’s a proof that only took about 10 minutes to explain, and the mathematics really aren’t that difficult to understand by most people. The geniuses in the fact that Einstein started by explaining how calculating relative motion meant that time had to be a variable that could be different depending on who the observer was. This in itself is an incredible observation, but you can take this to the extent to literally prove that mass and energy are directly related to each other. It’s absolutely wild and one of the most sublime equations ever made.
there’s people that don’t like music.
Can you tolerate it at least, or you get annoyed if it’s playing at an event/Uber/supermarket etc?
I thought my significant other was one of these to a certain extent. It does weird things to me as a DJ. Turns out that she just likes the limited music that she likes and cannot stand most everything else.
that just makes it easier to make a playlist with all their favorite songs.
I used to be like this, but with movies. When I first met my wife, she was utterly baffled at the concept of somebody not enjoying movies, and she made it her mission to make me enjoy them.
Come to think of it, she actually doesn’t like music much. I’ve failed to change her opinion on that though because my taste in music is shit (and I’m proud of it.)
I am still like this with movies and TV.
It just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve seen a handful of movies/shows that I’d call “not boring as shit” ever, and even then, its not something I’d choose to do myself, but is fine if I’m, like, chillin and chatting with people or whatever.
Might be my neurodivergence, might also just be how much of a reader I am. Movies are just so slow compared to reading.
That’s basically how I was. Honestly, the reason I enjoy movies nowadays isn’t really because it’s my thing, but because my wife is always so excited to show me the movies she likes, and I can’t help but enjoy myself when it’s making her happy.
I rarely watch movies on my own, or with other people besides her, but when I do, it’s usually because I think it’d be fun to tell her all about it, and maybe watch it with her too.
I’m also bigger on reading, but I have really severe, unmedicated ADHD, so I can’t sit down with an actual book for longer than a few minutes. Gotta have pretty pictures, like a manga or graphic novel or something (and even then it’s hard.)
Good movies demand attention.
Good audio books I can listen to while I play my favorite video game.
For me it’s not like I don’t like music, but there are large stretches of time, where I do not care so much for it. I would guess that I haven’t actively choosen to hear music for weaks, possibly months, now. Obviously excluding the music you can’t avoid, like background music in movies and video games etc.
Similar metal in the human body one, Vitamin B12 has cobalt in it. Absolutely wild. I guess that’s not really commonly known but it’s still worth mentioning
May I ask what is special about cobalt in B12 specifically? I’ve come to realize there are numerous inorganic substances inside my body like copper, gold etc. so cobalt by itself doesn’t really stand out anymore.
I think your idea of what is organic or inorganic is a little off. Organic things can and do involve metals and gases in various forms. According to wikipedia, “About 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.” These are elements that also appear in minerals and other rocks, but that doesn’t mean the same elements can’t be in organic compounds. Everything is made of all the same stuff on the periodic table, organic or inorganic.
huh, thank you for leading me to find out about organocobalt compounds, and complicate my understanding of organic/inorganic chemistry. I still that fits the simple definition of “organic” = “contains carbon” that most chemists would use, though.
If you get 23 people in a room the odds of two of them sharing a birthday are 50%
The birthday paradox is a veridical paradox: it seems wrong at first glance but is, in fact, true. While it may seem surprising that only 23 individuals are required to reach a 50% probability of a shared birthday, this result is made more intuitive by considering that the birthday comparisons will be made between every possible pair of individuals. With 23 individuals, there are (23 × 22)/2 = 253 pairs to consider, far more than half the number of days in a year.
The concept of a room is malleable. Go to a 22 person tf2 server and ask birthdays.
it’s not part of the paradox, but there are also days when people tend to have more sex
like new years, valentines, christmas etc. (in the west at least)
so you tend to get more people born 9 months after those days
Blows my mind how this by its bare bones is just simple statistics and combinations but is a totally different story when described in English. I’m sure there are similar facts like this that are mathematically logical but to a layman is confusing and inconceivable.
So not really then. I’ve always heard this but not seen it explained. But what you’re saying is that with every interaction the likely hood of finding a match goes up. But realistically, probabilities like that are just fun quirks of math, not representations of reality. Probabilities are doing the math on events, but these are events discussing concrete and unchanging dates. Every person paired up isn’t given a random date in every interaction. They have a set date from the outset, you just don’t know it. There’s not a random number generator picking a number from a set every time. Unless you’re in a simulation and none of this is real and birthdays don’t exist and the computer you’re plugged into has to make up a random birthday every time you interact.
Sorry, but I honestly have no idea what you’re trying to say. If you have questions you can click on the Wikipedia link!
Ah. Sorry, I assumed you knew what you were talking about about and not just copy/pasting a thing you found. My bad.
The hell that giving birth can be.
A lot of women endure having a baby…and holy. shit. No.
Their bodies produce chemicals that cause them to forget how bad childbirth was.
Exactly. I was there and saw my wife having the worst pain of her life. Really without exaggeration. It was incredibly hard and painful.
Then, 10 minutes after it’s all over, she looks at me and says “Well, that wasn’t so bad”.
I suppose it is for the best, but nonetheless I find it uncomfortable how our bodies have the ability to manipulate our brains’ memories and our consciousness residing in the same place cannot do anything about it
Every time that comes up, I think to myself “Something I’ve gone through must be more painful, right? I’ve gone through some pretty hellish things, and you’re trying to tell me something MORE painful exists? Not just a little more, but dramatically more? For my own sanity, I’m gonna have to live in denial of that.”
Huh. I’m guessing the pain of kidney stones comes in varying levels, because the one time I had them I wouldn’t have called it the most painful thing in the world.
Then again, I could also have inherited my mom’s pain tolerance, who gave birth multiple times without any kind of pain relief and without flinching.
