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J.J. Thomson won the Nobel in Physics in 1906 when he showed electrons were particles. His son G. P. Thomson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1937 for showing that electrons are waves.
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“Cheerios effect” is an interesting fluid dynamics phenomenon that happens in cereal bowls. When there are just a few bits of cereal left floating on top of the milk, they tend to cluster together in the middle or around the edges of the bowl, rather than dispersing across the surface.
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Scientists usually assume that if they ever get famous it will be for doing something right – but in the case of the Michelson-Morley experiment, those involved are forever going to be remembered for conducting the worst (best?) failed experiment in history.
Then again, if you end up changing literally everything in your field, was your experiment really a failure at all?
Here’s what happened.
At the beginning of the 19th century, scientists weren’t sure whether light was a wave or a particle. In 1801, Thomas Young (thought he) settled the debate with his double-slit experiment, in which he shined a light through two slits cut into a notecard aimed at a wall. Since he produced a pattern of dark and light bars as opposed to just two slit-shaped patterns, he concluded that light could not be a simple particle.
That said, no one could figure out what medium the wave was traveling through – the substance that made up the universe. Some physicists called it “ether” – matter that could be found everywhere but that wouldn’t interact with its physical counterpart at all.
In 1887, physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley set out to prove that “ether” only existed to carry light waves.
Let’s start here – with ether “wind.”
Just like when you’re driving a car and stick your hand out the window, the “ether” should be flowing over the planet’s surface at rate similar to the speed of Earth traveling through space.
Michelson and Morley built a device called an interferometer, which uses what amounts to a one-way mirror to split a beam of light, reflecting half of it at a 90-degree angle down one tunnel and allowing the other half to pass through down another tunnel.
Then, both light beams are reflected against mirrors again, placed at the end of each tunnel, and at the end, the beams are measured by a detector.
Fun fact: advanced versions of their devices were used to detect gravitational waves for the first time back in 2015.
If Michelson and Morley were correct about ether, then they would have traveled at slightly different rates, striking the detector at slightly different times. In reality, though, they arrived together.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the experiment failed because there is no ether – and that light is both a wave and a particle that always travels at the same speed no matter the direction.
In their failure, Michelson and Morley laid the groundwork for basically all of the 20th century’s most influential scientific thinkers. Their failure to detect ether presented a new and exciting problem for physicists and other scientists to tackle – and solve – in the years to come.
So the next time something doesn’t work out the way you thought, take heart – this is solid proof that we can always learn at least as much from our failures as our successes.
The post Learn About the Most (In)Famous Failed Scientific Experiment in History appeared first on UberFacts.
The simple definition of a paradox is this: a statement that contradicts itself or a situation which seems to defy logic.
These are all around us every day, and range from something mundane like saying “I always lie” and the complexities surrounding the idea of time travel.
If you’re into reading things that really bend your brain, I present these 12 paradoxes, designed to do just that.
The Ship of Theseus always kind of fucked me. So, there’s this Greek dude called Theseus, and he’s on a very long boat trip home. His ship needs repair, they stop, replace a few rotten boards, and continue. Due to the particularily strenuous nature of this very long trip, several more of these stops for repairs are made, until, by the very end, not a single board from the original vessel remains.
Is this still the same vessel? If not, when did it cease to be?
Pinocchio says “My nose will grow after I finish this sentence”
Does it?
Braess’ paradox.
From wiki “the observation that adding one or more roads to a road network can end up impeding overall traffic flow through it. The paradox was postulated in 1968 by German mathematician Dietrich Braess, who noticed that adding a road to a particular congested road traffic network would increase overall journey time.”
That “this page is intentionally left blank” page.
The page isn’t even blank anymore!
The UK ‘triple lock’ that people moving to the UK experience:
Need proof of address and photographic ID to open a bank account
Need a bank account and photographic ID to rent a place
Need a bank account and an address to get sent your photographic ID
What about the song of storms from the legend of Zelda?
In the legend of Zelda ocarina of Time, you travel though time between child and adult by using the master sword, and doing so you can come back to certain areas to get different items from both times.
Well one song the you learn is called the song of storms and you learn it by going to the adult time and talk to a guy in a windmill. He tells you about a kid that came in 7 years ago and played a strange song and messed up the windmill and teaches it to you. After learning the song you can now go back to being a child and go to the guy in the windmill and play the song to him, despite not knowing it before as a child.
So questions are where did the song come from and who taught who the song? Did the windmill guy teach it to link or did link teach it to the windmill guy?
Jim is my enemy.
But it turns out that Jim is also his own worst enemy.
And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So, Jim is actually my friend.
But…because he is his own worst enemy, the enemy of my friend is my enemy.
So, actually Jim is my enemy.
But…
So i know this is just a silly thing but…..
At my old work, my department was food service. In our prep room, you had to always wear an apron. Always, no exceptions.
When leaving the preproom, you had to take your apron off to prevent cross contamination.
The bosses were trying to figure out where to put the hooks. Inside in the back of the door, or outside on the wall.
The Banach Tarski paradox is one hell of a mind fuck.
Its basically taking something, and rearranging it to form another exact copy of itself while still having the complete original. Like taking a sphere, which has infinite points on it and drawing line from every “point” on its surface to the center, or the core of the sphere. Then you seperate the lines from the sphere, but because there is infinite points you now have an exact copy of the original sphere.
Its kind of hard to explain here so just watch the Vsauce video on it for a more in depth explanation.
The coastline paradox.
The more accurately you measure a coastline, the longer it gets… to infinity.
One of my favorites is Xeno’s Paradox.
In order to leave my apartment, just for example, I have to walk half way to my front door. Then I have to walk half the remaining distance. Then half that distance, ad infinitum. In theory, I should never be able to reach the door.
Now I love this paradox, because we’ve actually solved it. It was a lively, well-discussed debate for millennia. At least a few early thinkers were convinced that motion was an illusion because of it!
It was so persuasive an argument that people doubted their senses!
Then Leibniz (and/or Newton) developed calculus and we realized that infinite sums can have finite solutions.
Paradox resolved.
It makes me wonder what “calculus” we are missing to resolve some of these others.
EDIT: A lot more people have strong opinions about Zeno’s Paradox than I thought. To address common comments:
1.) Yes, it’s Zeno, not ‘Xeno’. Blame autocorrect and my own fraught relationship with homophones.
2.) Yes there are three of them.
3.) If you’re getting hung up on the walking example, think of an arrow being shot at a fleeing target. First the arrow has to get to where the target was. But at that point, the target has moved. So the arrow has to cover that new distance. But by then, the target has moved again, etc. So the arrow gets infinitesimally closer to the target, but doesn’t ever reach it.
4.) Okay, you think you could have solved it if you were living in ancient Greece. I profoundly regret that you weren’t born back then to catapult our understanding two millenia into the future.
5.) Yes, I agree Diogenes was a badass.
I hope this covers everything.
Newcomb’s Paradox:
There are two boxes, A and B. A contains either $1,000 or $0 and B contains $100. Box A is opaque, so you can’t see inside, Box B is clear, so you can see for sure that there is $100 in it.
Your options is to choose both boxes, or to choose only Box A.
There is an entity called “The Predictor”, which determines whether or not the $1,000 will be in Box A. How he chooses this is by predicting whether or not you will choose both boxes, or just Box A. If the Predictor predicts that you will “two box”, he will leave Box A empty. If he predicts that you will “one box”, he will put the $1,000 in Box A. He is accurate “an overwhelming amount of the time”, but not 100%. At the time of your decision, the contents of Box A (i.e. whether or not there is anything in it) are fixed, and nothing you do at that point will change whether or not there is anything in the box.
It is a paradox of decision theory that rests on two principles of rational choice. According to the principle of strategic dominance:
There are only two possibilities, and you don’t know which one holds:
Box A is empty: Therefore you should choose both boxes, to get $100 as opposed to $0.
Box A is full: Therefore you should choose both boxes, to get $1,100 as opposed to just $1,000.
Therefore, you should always choose both boxes, since under every possible scenario, this results in more money.
BUT:
According to the principle of expected value:
Choosing one box is superior because you have a statistically higher chance of getting more money. Most of the people who have gone before you who have chosen one box have gotten $1,000, and most that have chosen both boxes have gotten only $100. Therefore, if you analyze the problem statistically, or in terms of which decision has the higher probability of resulting in a higher outcome, you should choose only one box. Imagine one billion people going before you, and you actually seeing so many of them have this outcome. Any outliers became insignificant.
In terms of strategic dominance, two-boxing is always superior to one-boxing because no matter what is in Box A, two-boxing results in more money. One-boxing, on the other hand, has a demonstrably higher probability of resulting in a larger amount of money. Both of these choices represent fundamental principles of rational choice. There are two rival theories, Causal Decision Theory (which supports strategic dominance) and Evidential Decision Theory (which supports expected utility). It is pretty arcane but one of the most difficult paradoxes in contemporary philosophy.
Robert Nozick summed it up well: “To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly.”
EDIT: I made some edits…to make it clearer.
EDIT: There are also an offshoot of Newcomb’s Paradoxes called medical Newcomb’s Problems. I’ve been in a situation like this before, I’ll describe it:
I went on an antidepressant, and there’s a history of manic depression in my family. My psychiatrist told me that for some people, antidepressants bring out their manic phase, and they find out they have manic depression. They already did have manic depression, so it doesn’t cause it, it just reveals it. She told me to watch out for any impulsive decisions I making, as that can be a sign of a manic phase.
I was in line at a convenience store and thought: should I buy a black and mild? I don’t really smoke, but for some reason it seemed appealing. Then I realized, that seems like an impulsive decision. But, if it is an impulsive decision, and I go through with it, and do indeed have manic depression, then I should just do it anyways. After all, it’s not making me have manic depression, it’s simply revealing something to me that I already had. On the other hand, if I don’t do it, then I have no evidence that I have manic depression, meaning that there truly is less evidence, and therefore I have no reason to believe that I have manic depression.
Expected utility = don’t buy the black & mild Strategic dominance = buy the black & mild
These situations aren’t quite as easy to see, but they’re interesting anyways.
I’m doing quite well now and all indication is that I do not have manic depression.
I’m off to take a nap to recover.
Do you have a favorite paradox? If it’s not here, please leave it in the comments!
Yes, we’re asking you to mess with our head once again. Because that’s how we roll.
The post 12 Mindbenders That Might Just Mess With Your Sense of Reality appeared first on UberFacts.
This is kinda crazy…
Some magnets are so weak they can barely keep a photo on the refrigerator. Meanwhile, there are magnetars: the strongest known magnets in the universe. Sadly, you can’t buy these at your local grocery store.
A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an unbelievably powerful magnetic field. Though they have the strongest magnetic pull of any known object in the universe, they are surprisingly small. They’re also very mysterious.
So, where do magnetars come from? Curiosity explains: When a star dies, it explodes into a supernova, collapsing in on itself in a giant extravagant display of light before fading away. If the star was large enough, it will then create a neutron star in its place. A neutron star is so small that it’s often just the size of a small city (for a star, that’s tiny!). However, it’s also incredibly dense. Just one teaspoon weighs at least one billion tons. All this matter spins around hundreds of times per second, creating a magnetic field that is a trillion times stronger than the Earth’s own.
And then there are magnetars. Magnetars are an especially magnetic type of neutron star. Nobody really knows why they’re so magnetic, but they are. They’re roughly 1000 trillion times more magnetic than Earth.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This magnetic field is so strong that just coming within 600 miles of it would destroy your nervous system and even change your molecular structure. If you came closer, the gravitational force would destroy you at the atomic level. These stars can also wreak havoc on planets like the Earth.
Thankfully, the closest magnetar to us is much too far to do such damage, and they’re also incredibly rare. Scientists have been on the lookout for magnetars since 1979, but while they’ve found over 2000 neutron stars, fewer than 25 have been confirmed as magnetars.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Still, it’s fascinating to know that they’re out there somewhere!
The post Magnetars: A Magnet so Strong, They Could Tear Your Body Apart appeared first on UberFacts.
A lot of people believe that toilets swirl in the opposite direction in opposite hemispheres. But is it actually true?
The story holds that, in the Northern Hemisphere, toilets spin counterclockwise. In the Southern Hemisphere, they spin clockwise. This is supposedly due to something called the Coriolis effect, an acceleration caused by the rotation of the Earth of the axis.
But if you’ve ever actually used a toilet on the opposite side of the planet, you’d know that these “facts” aren’t actually true at all. Toilets flush in the same direction regardless of where they are located. The only factor that affects the direction of the water’s flow is the way that the toilet is manufactured (i.e., the shape of the bowl, and whether the flush jets point to the left or the right).
Photo Credit: Pixabay
However, that doesn’t mean that the Coriolis effect isn’t real. It does exist, and it affects the spin direction of every body of water, including the water in the toilet. But it’s only observable on very large scales. The amount of water in the toilet is so small that the impact of the Coriolis effect isn’t major enough to be visible.
Hurricanes, on the other hand? Their diameters are a hundred miles wide, and the Coriolis effect makes a noticeable impact on them. Hurricanes absolutely do spin in opposite directions on opposite sides of the Earth. They spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Toilets, on the other hand? That’s just a myth.
The post Do Toilets Flush in Other Directions in Opposite Hemispheres? appeared first on UberFacts.
Look closely at the engines on the planes at the gates next time you’re at the airport. All of them will have an unpainted band near the front edge. As sleek as this kind of paint job may look, the reasons behind the styling goes beyond just looking trendy.
Photo Credit: Needpix
YouTuber Mentour Pilot, who runs a channel about everything to do with being an airline pilot, created a video explaining why the front edge of the engine is never painted when the rest of the aircraft is.
It’s something I’d never have thought about in a million years, but someone clearly did.
The first explanation is because of the heat the engines generate. Ice can form quickly on engines and wings when flying through clouds, creating a real safety hazard. Planes use the heat already coming from their engines to keep dangerous ice from accumulating.
Small holes in the unpainted ring of the engine, as well as on the wings, help the ice melt. If this part of the engine is left naked, then the metal heats best for minimized ice formation. Paint would only protect the ice from heat by creating an intermediate layer.
Not safe.
Another reason is that eventually the paint on the intake would begin to degrade, and chips of paint could get sucked into the engine. As this happened, the uneven coats of paint would affect how air flows into the engine, creating mini vortices and disrupting overall efficiency.
Photo Credit: YouTube
He also touches on why most planes are painted white or predominantly white. This one’s a little easier to guess: white paint reflects heat. If a plane is painted white, the air-conditioning system doesn’t have to work as hard to keep the interior cooled – thus better engine efficiency.
Painting an aircraft white is also faster and cheaper, and airlines can place and replace branding as needed without repainting.
If this is interesting, deifnitely check out more of Mentour Pilot’s channel – aside from his cool airplane knowledge, he wears his uniform, has a great accent and an adorable apricot poodle-ish dog, and generally makes you feel good about who is at the controls of these high flying tubes.
The post This Is Why Airplane Engines Are Never Painted on the Front Edges appeared first on UberFacts.
At the subatomic level, space is never truly empty. It is filled with a writhing, active population of “Virtual Particles” that pop in and out of existence. Physicists call this “quantum foam”. Physicists theorize fluctuations from this field of energy may have given rise to the Universe.
Even Isaac Newton couldn’t crack this case — but Rafael G. González-Acuña did.
A physicist in Mexico just solved a problem that has plagued scientists for over 2,000 years.
For centuries, lenses have faced a problem: the corners and edges are always a little soft and out of focus. It’s called “spherical aberration,” and it’s caused by differences in light refraction across the lens, along with imperfections in its shape and materials.
Photo Credit: iStock
Spherical aberration was presumed to be an unsolvable issue. Lens designers have developed workarounds to counteract and correct the effect, resulting in a uniformly clear image. However, these adaptive techniques can get incredibly pricey — which is part of why high-quality photography gear costs so much money.
Enter Rafael.
Rafael is a doctoral student at Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey. After months of work, he came up with an equation to design a lens that eliminates spherical aberration completely. This equation works for a lens of any size, material or purpose.
Photo Credit: Tecnológico de Monterrey
This development is not only exciting on a scientific level, but it will also provide practical benefits to many different types of people. Cameras of all kinds, including smartphone cameras, will be easier and cheaper to design. Photographers will no longer have to deal with focus issues with their high-end equipment. Sharper lenses will also be able to be used for other optical devices, like telescopes and microscopes.
All in all, Rafael’s breakthrough is evidence that no problem is too old to solve.
The post A Mexican Physicist Solved a 2,000-Year-Old Lens Problem with One Wild Equation appeared first on UberFacts.
Timeless physics is the controversial view that time, as we perceive it, does not exist as anything other than an illusion. Arguably we have no evidence of the past other than our memory of it, and no evidence of the future other than our belief in it.
・・・ The #DoubleSlitExperiment is an experiment in #QuantumPhysics in which the effects were shown by #ThomasYoung way back in 1803, but since has been proven even more strange by many others. It's power truly reveals a mind-altering view of the world and how we affect it. To explain this experiment, we first must truly grasp the difference between a #particle and a #wave. A particle is what we perceive as #matter of some sort – something with mass. A wave is a disturbance in some type of substance – like ripples through water. Ok, that's easy enough. Now, what if I told you that a subatomic particle isn't a particle until a consciousness observes it. What is it then? Its a wave. Huh? For some unknown reason that haunts scientists, everything we perceive as having mass is just a wave of information (or possibilities) until we observe it in some way. I'm not talking in the philosophical way like if a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound. The Double Slit Experiment seems to answer that question as you'll see. Until we observe the soon to be particle, its a wave that's actually doing every possibility it could do at the same time. Huh?!?! It doesn't make any sense, yet this is one experiment that appears to somewhat prove this. The Double Slit Experiment shows us that we create reality just by observing it. WHOA, create reality?! Yes we do. Your consciousness collapses wave functions into digitized bits of matter that we then perceive as reality. You are not creating reality, but you are creating your own #RealityTunnel and most people aren't aware of it. #4biddenknowledge reporting live from #TheMatrix. Clip above of from the famous documentary named: #WhatTheBleepDoWeKnow #YouCreateYourOwnReality 
