as opposed to science fiction, I come across weird / cool / unusual sciency things on a fairly regular basis. I find them useful for brainstorming / prompts / idea generators for my WIP (research) and thought experiments. I was curious if other people stumble across similarly curious things themselves, and would be interested in sharing them? Hence the thread. Real life, measurable, observable sciencey things that are unusual or different or of interest. I'll start off with the following: Sonoluminescenc
I think this thread belongs in the main lounge. But I shall leave that up to the mods. I think sprites are pretty interesting. This insect structure that was recently found: ... intricate structures that resemble white picket fences surrounding an Isengard-like spire. And the fact the Tardigrade can survive in space is pretty cool. Plus they look so weird.
Wasn't sure where to put it, hopefully a mod takes care of it Agreed, the Tardigrade is an absolutely amazing little critter.
The Faraday effect, as applied to light passing through a transparent liquid... where the magnetic field is in the direction that the light is traveling, it causes the polarisation of the light to rotate.
The theory of relativity continues to amaze me with how counterintuitive and yet internally consistent and empirically sound it is.
Now I wonder if these should have gone into the useless facts thread. But they are for me and my scientifically slanted fictional imagination prodding purposes, so I persevere. Probably. I have seen this a few times now, and whether it works or not, just having the concept to tap into makes for much quiveringness of excitement for my space ship propulsion plans... despite the fact I am wary of any heading that has the words, "independent", "expert" or "actually works" in it. Independent expert confirms that the "impossible" EM Drive actually works http://www.sciencealert.com/independent-scientists-confirm-that-the-impossible-em-drive-produces-thrust
This animation features actual satellite images of the far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, as it crosses between the DSCOVR spacecraft's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) and telescope, and the Earth - one million miles away. I thought NASA dealt in metric.
