• NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.org
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    16 days ago

    Also interesting: If you were to take your nerves out and lay them end on end you would die.

    Actually interesting fact

    Your height is closer to a light second than the size of an atom. And yet atoms seem more approachable in scale than light seconds. Fascinating stuff!

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    15 days ago
    • Number of hydrogen atoms in a single molecule of water (H2O): 2
    • Number of stars in our (ENTIRE) solar system: 1

    That’s the joke.

    • Etterra@discuss.online
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      15 days ago

      Thanks, I never would have been able to understand 2>1 if you hadn’t written up that amazing power point slide.

    • qarbone@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      I very slowly zoomed in on the actual words in the post.

      Started off processing “molecule” as “mole”, “solar system” as “galaxy”, and thinking “ha, don’t know if that’s true but it sounds both plausible and neat”.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Wasn’t thinking moles, not that technical, but it sounded plausible vs. the number of stars in the Milky Way.

        Wait…

      • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        There are definitely more hydrogen atoms in a mole of water than stars in the Milky Way.

        The Milky Way has somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars according to Wikipedia (1*10^11 to 4*10^11). A mole of water has 6.022*10^23 molecules in it, each of which has two hydrogen atoms in it for a total of 1.2044*10^24 hydrogen atoms.

        10^24 / 10^11 = 10^13 which is ten trillion. So, a mole of water has roughly ten trillion times as many hydrogen atoms as the Milky Way has stars.

        • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          It’s almost impossible to see the last two words because your brain is already reeling from the rest of the statement. It took me a few tries to finally parse it.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      16 days ago

      Not stupid. Our brain can just get tripped up sometimes and read what it expects to read instead of what’s really there. The sad part is that there are educated people in the US even today that would be surprised or even argue against you if you stated the other version (more atoms in a glass than in our galaxy). Our science education is woefully lacking now.

      What blew me away that I learned not too long ago is the notion that if the galaxy was the size of the US, our solar system would be the size of a fingerprint. Try to even visualize that. (reference is the Epic Spaceman YT channel)

      • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        16 days ago

        NGL our solar system being the size of a finger print is (somehow) bigger than I expected.

        Another fun size thing I heard recently was that if an atom were the size of a football stadium then the nucleus would be the size of a pea.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        We had a young, hippy science teacher through 70s grade school. Looking back, that woman made more impact on my life than any other teacher.

        Every year, every fucking year, she’d start with the difference in fact and opinion. “Yeah, I get it already. Can we move on?” Apparently not many others got that bit of education.

        She taught the scientific method and how it works, she taught how to experiment, how to measure. I still set a beaker down and wait for it to settle before moving on. And I’m not in science!

    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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      16 days ago

      The glass of water is a bit misleading. Your brain starts thinking about all the water molecules inside. That’s all.

  • mspencer712@programming.dev
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    16 days ago

    I couldn’t find the clip, but first thing that came to mind was the StarTalk Live with Buzz Aldrin and John Hodgman.

    Hodgman: “maybe they’ll find H 2 2 2 2 O!”

    • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      No need to feel foolish. You have introduced me to yet another John Hodgman project. And that’s all that matters in this world.

  • Hyphlosion@lemm.ee
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    16 days ago

    Remimds me of the time someone on Xitter said that there are more trees on Earth than there are stars in our Galaxy. They got ratio’d pretty damn hard for it. -_-

    • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
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      16 days ago

      Going by the top Duck duck go results for “how many stars in our galaxy” and “how many trees in the world”:
      “According to Jos de Bruijne, a scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA), the current estimate is between 100 to 400 billion stars.”
      and
      “There are an estimated 3.04 trillion trees in the world.”

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    16 days ago

    There are more memes estimating the size of the universe than there are stars in the galaxy.

          • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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            15 days ago

            And if you want more, check out what I said last time this meme was posted.

            As someone who worked as an astrophysicist for 9 years, I assure you that the question of “what is a planet?” is a nuanced discussion with a lot of diverse opinions and no clear answer that gets endlessly debated by students as they learn that these definitions aren’t as cut and dry as irresponsible science communicators made it seem during the disastrous and highly politically motivated demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet.

          • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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            15 days ago

            IAU is well known for coming up with shitty arbitrary classifications about nomenclature that many astronomers don’t agree with. They are wrong here because they don’t take into account post-Cassini/Juno understanding of gas giant morphology. The IAU definition is outdated and highly misleading.

            Copied from another reply I gave in this thread:

            I’ve seen 13 MJ argued as a boundary, but it’s selected somewhat arbitrarily and based around idealized models of Deuterium fusion, which has never been observed, and which is a process these brown dwarves would only undergo for a brief flash in their early life. Deuterium isn’t abundant enough for its fusion to significantly alter the stellar morphology that has already become established for objects larger than Saturn. Saturn is our solarsystem’s example of an object that does not fit cleanly into one side or the other of a mass-based binary classification scheme for determining a hard boundary between “planet” and “star”. To understand what is a planet vs what is a star, study Saturn.

              • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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                14 days ago

                The planet definition that excluded pluto was decided upon at the end of an IAU conference after most planetary scientists had left. As a result, only dynamicists are happy with it. Planetary geologists in particular HATE it and have always vocally pushed back.

        • Mortacus@sopuli.xyz
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          15 days ago

          I’d say Jupiter would need to be about 3 times massive to count as one. And more realistically around 10ish.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    16 days ago

    I have as many assholes as stars in our solar system, even though it seems like more to Lemmy.