Mildly interesting

[George K]

That's disturbing. What is the carbon footprint of Sol?

[Copper]

And there are some people who don't think the sun is involved in climate change.

[George K]

From a few years ago, but still interesting:

Putting Time In Perspective

Humans are good at a lot of things, but putting time in perspective is not one of them. It’s not our fault—the spans of time in human history, and even more so in natural history, are so vast compared to the span of our life and recent history that it’s almost impossible to get a handle on it. If the Earth formed at midnight and the present moment is the next midnight, 24 hours later, modern humans have been around since 11:59:59pm—1 second. And if human history itself spans 24 hours from one midnight to the next, 14 minutes represents the time since Christ.

To try to grasp some perspective, I mapped out the history of time as a series of growing timelines—each timeline contains all the previous timelines (colors will help you see which timelines are which). All timeline lengths are exactly accurate to the amount of time they’re expressing.

Interesting graphs, like this one:

And this one:

And this one:

Cleopatra lived closer to the founding of Pizza Hut than to the building of the great pyramids.

[Catseye3]

Love stuff like this. Love me perspective stuff.

My favorite factoid of the Cleo/Pizza Hut (!) sort pertains to American history. When WWI began, Thomas Jefferson had been dead for 100 years, or less than.

[George K]

Here you go, @Catseye3. Something to brighten your morning:

[LuFins Dad]

@George-K said in Mildly interesting:

Here you go, @Catseye3. Something to brighten your morning:

Thanks for giving me a reason to have a breakfast beer!

[Copper]

That last one assumes that we don't control everything in the universe down to each individual atom.

[taiwan_girl]

@Catseye3 said in Mildly interesting:

Love stuff like this. Love me perspective stuff.

My favorite factoid of the Cleo/Pizza Hut (!) sort pertains to American history. When WWI began, Thomas Jefferson had been dead for 100 years, or less than.

I agree. Cool stuff

[Catseye3]

True?

Are dogs in the US Army one rank above their handlers?
For the USMC all dogs are given a rank that is at least 1 rank above their handler. The idea behind this is that if the handler is ever found guilty of abusing their dog, in addition to normal animal abuse charges, they also get all the charges for assaulting a superior.

(Don't know why the answer is for the USMC when the Q was about the Army.)

[mark]

Our solar system relative to a supermassive, black hole, then in relation to the largest one discovered yet...

[George K]

@mark impossible to comprehend, isn't it?

[jon-nyc]

I wonder how long it would take light to cross that black hole.

Oh wait...

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Mildly interesting:

I wonder how long it would take light to cross that black hole.

Oh wait...

Why did the light cross the black hole?

Because it was a science denier.

[Klaus]

TON 618 must be the stone God created when He was asked to create a stone He cannot lift.

[jon-nyc]

[George K]

@jon-nyc FLO smiled.

[mark]

Solar Cycle 25 is approaching solar maximum already, with far more sunspots than the model curve predicted by this point. Look at the sun today, and on this day last year

[Copper]

One order of fried Space Station, coming right up.

[taiwan_girl]

@mark said in Mildly interesting:

Solar Cycle 25 is approaching solar maximum already, with far more sunspots than the model curve predicted by this point. Look at the sun today, and on this day last year

Maybe the picture on the left was taken at night?

[George K]