Interesting faxes thread

[MooMoo2]

This is your chance to post any interesting facts you know of. Here are some of mine:

- Maine is the closest U.S. state to Africa.
- The T. Rex lived closer to the modern broiler chicken than to the Stegosaurus.
- There is only one country separating Norway from North Korea.
- Someone earning $30 a second would need to wait ~2 seconds to buy a good meal, ~20 minutes to buy a new car, ~3 hours to buy a house, and ~9 hours to become a millionaire. But it would that person more than 105 years to become the richest person on Earth.

[Uncwilly]

• On average, over the course of a 1000 years, Mercury is the closest planet to all others.
• By modern definitions, New Zealand should be called a continent.
• Pluto is part of the double dwarf planet binary Pluto-Charon
• All major planets in the solar system have been used for gravity assists/ trajectory change..
• Earth's moon and Titan have also been used for gravity assists.

[tuckerkao]

Originally Posted by MooMoo2

- Someone earning $30 a second would need to wait ~2 seconds to buy a good meal, ~20 minutes to buy a new car, ~3 hours to buy a house, and ~9 hours to become a millionaire. But it would that person more than 105 years to become the richest person on Earth.

16,138.5 years to finish paying all the U.S. debts.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by MooMoo2

<snip>
- There is only one country separating Norway from North Korea.
<snip>

Is this in the same sense that there is only one country separating Norway from Pakistan?

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

• By modern definitions, New Zealand should be called a content.

I think you meant "continent."

This media release might be of interest:

New maps and website give fresh insights into NZ continent - 22/06/2020

Two maps and a website released by GNS Science this week give insights into the amazing forces that shaped Aotearoa New Zealand and the mostly submerged continent that lies beneath our feet.

The maps cover the bathymetry (shape of the ocean floor) and the tectonic origins of Earth’s eighth continent – the 5 million square kilometre Te Riu-a-Māui / Zealandia on which New Zealand sits.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The blue color and/or iridescence of many birds (indigo bunting, blue jay, bluebird, etc.) and insects (e.g. Morpho and other butterflies) are not due to pigmentation. These effects are achieved by what is called "structural coloring." The structures produce color effects through diffraction, rather than absorption and emission.

EDIT: Opals are another example of structural coloration.

[xilman]

If you were in orbit at 1 astronomical unit around a star undergoing a core-collapse supernova the neutrino emission would kill you even if you survived the thermal radiation.

Roughly 99% of the energy of a supernova comes out as neutrinos. Neutral-current interactions with the electrons and nuclei in your body dump something like 20Sv of radiation into you, far above the LD50 dose. Inverse beta decay transform nuclei in your body into isotopes which subsequently decay back again with the emission of energetic electrons and, sometimes, gammas.

[xilman]

Almost everyone has more than the average number of limbs.

Average defined here as the arithmetic mean, though it is also true for the geometric and harmonic means.

[xilman]

More people died at Chappaquidick than at Three Mile Island.

[xilman]

Only one out of nine elephants in Berlin Zoo survived allied bombing in WWII.

[chalsall]

Helium is a non-renewable resource, and yet we still use it for party balloons.