I bet you didnt know that

Capt'n Midnight

^^^^
Atually it's more like 102.5 meters.

And neither the Moon nor the Earth are that flat anyway.

Either way it's about how far the moon receeds from us every thousand years.


And the Moon's orbit isn't circular and there's the effect of the Sun too.

Peregrine

MurmanskRun wrote: »

Pi. The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. 3.14 or 22/7 if you're looking for a ballpark, right? But, imagine you're NASA and you're calculating a trip to Mars in our worderfully elliptical galaxy. 22/7 probably isn't going to cut it.

22/7 never cuts it! Physics lecturers will boot you out the door and tell you to enroll in engineering if you ever use 22/7. :P

Fourier

Tying in with the artefact thread, the core of the old Testament was created in the mid 450s BC by Ezra the Scribe, a descendant of the Last High Priest of Israel before the Babylonian invasion. He had been released from Babylonian captivity and returned to Israel after the Persian invasion of Babylon by the Persian court. The Persian emperor Cyrus had ordered him to produce a standard form of the Israelite religion, which he did by combining texts from two different Priestly families with older oral religious traditions.

One of the families texts are today in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the other family's are in Leviticus and Numbers mostly, with bits and pieces in Genesis and Exodus.

The Oral religious traditions form the bulk of Genesis and Exodus.

Ezra, or scribes working for him, then redacted these three sources into one cohesive work, so that the combination of the three sources "flowed" correctly as one work. This created a standard religious history for the Hebrew people, from creation until the Babylonian invasion.

Eventually, probably after Ezra's death, the collected sayings and prophecies of figures like Jeremiah, Ezekial and Hosea were collected, edited and appended to this collection, because they were felt to have been right about the reason for Israel's downfall in the Babylonian invasions and hence should be part of the histories.

Even later, between 300 BC - 100 BC, books of popular sayings, stories and songs were added if they were felt to have an important moral lesson, e.g. Esther (which was probably just a novel that doesn't feature God), Proverbs, Job, Psalms. These were added even if they directly disagree (e.g. Job and Proverbs fundamentally disagree on morality), from Rabbinical commentaries we think this was most likely to present both sides on a moral or theological issue.

With these final popular books of saying and stories added, we have the Tanakh, basically what we call the Old Testament of today.

A few decades after Jesus's death, there were communities that had been searching for more details about his life. So people within these communities began producing histories. The earliest one was what we now call the Gospel of Mark in the 60s AD, produced by a community that hadn't yet accepted Jesus as divine. At about the same time in the 80s AD, two other communities wrote their own histories using Mark as a basis, combined with their own legends and a book of sayings now lost (called simply Q for Quelle, German for source). The work of one community is what we today call Luke and Acts of the Apostles, originally one long work, but split into a part dealing purely with the life of Jesus, so as to constitute a gospel, and a part that doesn't. The other community produced Matthew. Both these communities most likely existed in Jerusalem and disagree on how important Jewish tradition is (Luke = not very, Jesus replaces the law, Matthew = very, Jesus explained the law). Both see Jesus as a mortal raised into divinity by God.
A final history was written by a community in a Greek speaking area and is highly influenced by Greek philosophy, this being the Gospel of John. Here Jesus is fully divine.

Eventually the collected works of Paul (including forgeries by people pretending to be Paul to be taken more seriously) and a very popular apocalyptic prophecy (Revelations) were added to these histories, making the New Testament.

The Tanakh (Old Testament) was then translated into Greek and the New Testament added to it, producing the Bible of today.

EDIT: It is Job and Proverbs that disagree, corrected above

MurmanskRun

Peregrine wrote: »

22/7 never cuts it! Physics lecturers will boot you out the door and tell you to enroll in engineering if you ever use 22/7. :P

Ha! Showing my age, I guess, but let's just say my primary education pre-dates calculators. And beyond not being able to sleep, I'm pretty sure I've never used pi for anything since.

I'm damn good at dividing by seven though!

(Slinks away to practice dividing by 113.)

Yours,
MurmanskRun B.Sc M.Eng

New Home

Today is World Emoji Day. In case someone asks, or something.

Professor Moriarty

The word 'Emoji' comes from the Japanese words for 'picture' (e) and 'character' (moji). Nothing whatsoever to do with 'emotion' and 'emoticon'.

Realt Dearg Sec

New Home wrote: »

Today is World Emoji Day. In case someone asks, or something.

At least they have saved the tradition of dedicating days to particular things for major and important issues and causes, and haven't gone down the road of declaring days for things that are completely trivial and meaningless.

New Home

You may thank me after you can answer the question at your next pub quiz.

New Home

I found this shocking.

Air pollution caused 3.2 million new cases of diabetes worldwide in 2016, according to a new estimate. The new estimate, reported in July in The Lancet Planetary Health, holds air pollution responsible for about 14 percent of new cases of diabetes worldwide. Factors such as genetics, weight, activity level and diet also influence the risk of the disease, which is on the rise globally. (The World Health Organization estimates that 422 million people now live with type 2 diabetes — up from 108 million in 1980.)

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/air-pollution-triggering-diabetes-in-millions-each-year?tgt=nr

New Home

The word "soccer" comes from "association football", much like "rugger" comes from "rugby".

Association Football --> Assoc + er --> Soccer.

The first recorded American football game was between the colleges of Rutgers and Princeton in 1869 and used unique rules derived from those in both association and rugby football. Though this new, evolving game would just be called football in the U.S., elsewhere it would become known as gridiron football or American football, much in the way Gaelic football and Australian football have their own distinctions. Eventually in England, rugby football was shortened to just rugby, while association football simply became known as football. Which meant that now there were two footballs, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and neither side would budge. And Americans would begin referring to England's football by the previous nickname, soccer.

Despite the confusion nowadays, soccer was still a colloquial term used in England well into the 20th century—it rose in popularity following World War II before falling out of favor in the 1970s and ‘80s, according to Szymanski. In more recent years, it’s mostly been used in England in a strictly American context, like when publications and the media refer to U.S. leagues like Major League Soccer (MLS). Currently, soccer is mostly used in countries that have their own competing version of football—including the United States, Canada, and Australia.

While it boils the blood of certain traditionalists, soccer is by no means an Americanism—like the sport itself, this is purely an English export.

http://ns.umich.edu/Releases/2014/June14/Its-football-not-soccer.pdf

Ipso

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

It's not the speed that kills.

It's the sudden stop.

Doesn't more speed + more distance = suddener stop

Ted_YNWA

Ipso wrote: »

Doesn't more speed + more distance = suddener stop

We have our own Ipso Facto.

Baggly

Ted_YNWA wrote:

We have our own Ipso Facto.

It's been done.

New Home

I knew that.

Ted_YNWA

I bet you didnt know that ....


... I didn't.

RiderOnTheStorm

Ipso wrote:

Doesn't more speed + more distance = suddener stop

Well, thats why its called terminal velocity. More distance does not mean more speed. The speed stops going up (reaches its "terminal", ie end) because air resistance is huge at high speeds.

IIRC 120 mph is about right if you deliberately flatten yourself. If you point your head down, keep arms flat to your sides, you can get up to 200 mph as you are more aerodynamic and air resistance is less this way.

New Home

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

I bet you didnt know that ....

... I didn't.

Pter wrote: »

Ipso facto.

See?

Ten of Swords

In the 1970's the coastal town of Varosha in Cyprus was one of the most popular resort towns in the world for the rich and famous. After the Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus in 1974 the town was subjected to heavy shelling and subsequently abandoned. Although it is in the Turkish sector, between the city of Famagusta to the north and the UN Buffer Zone to the south, it was never occupied by the Turkish army who instead chose to fence the town off from the outside world and patrol the perimeter. Nobody is allowed in, not even Turkish military personnel, and the town has remained frozen in time since 1974.

cdeb

Not the only place like that. There's Pripyat in Ukraine (the city next to Chernobyl) and Agdam in Azerbaijan (abandoned during the Nagorno-Karabakh wars). Like Varosha, they had a population of about 40,000-50,000 when abandoned.

Agdam -


Pripyat -


Eerie places.

cdeb

Actually, on a similar note, this is Canfranc train station in northern Spain, near the French border -



Once the second biggest train station in Europe. Certainly one of the most beautiful. And now completely abandoned.

It was so big because it was a border crossing between Spain and France - so a lot of mickey swinging I would say. The town itself had a population of 500, but it was where the cross-border trains stopped to get their bogeys changed (Spanish trains have different wheelbases to French ones) and continue on.

A year after it opened, the Great Depression hit, which caused ripples in the Spanish economy too. Then there was the Spanish Civil War. Then there was the Second World War. All of these hit traffic.

And finally there was a bridge collapse on the French side, which the French never bothered fixing. So the station has been closed since 1970.

You can go on a tour though, and trains are actually back running again to the still-abandoned station.

Ten of Swords

Hashima Island in Japan is another one. It was also abandoned in 1974 as the mines on the island were closed and all 5,000 inhabitants were relocated

The Americans nicknamed it 'Battleship Island' as a submarine mistook the island for a battleship and actually fired several torpedoes at it during WW2. To be fair it's side profile really does look like the battleships of the time!

Skylinehead

That one featured in Skyfall IIRC.

As for the battleship bit, I love my battleships so I did a (square) area comparison:



It's really not a big place, the battleship Yamato roughly fits in the square. It was huge in fairness. Aircraft carriers are bigger again.

Capt'n Midnight

Ipso wrote: »

Doesn't more speed + more distance = suddener stop

Taken to it's logical conclusion the stopping distance depends only on the relative densities of the things impacting and length of the impactor.

Capt'n Midnight

Jupiter has 67 79 moons.

Nine of which orbit in the wrong direction.

BaZmO*

Ten of Swords wrote: »

In the 1970's the coastal town of Varosha in Cyprus was one of the most popular resort towns in the world for the rich and famous. After the Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus in 1974 the town was subjected to heavy shelling and subsequently abandoned. Although it is in the Turkish sector, between the city of Famagusta to the north and the UN Buffer Zone to the south, it was never occupied by the Turkish army who instead chose to fence the town off from the outside world and patrol the perimeter. Nobody is allowed in, not even Turkish military personnel, and the town has remained frozen in time since 1974.

A bit like Cavan so.

New Home

'spesh'ly for Capt'n Midnite

maroon (n.)
"very dark reddish-brown color," 1791, from French couleur marron, the color of a marron "chestnut," the large sweet chestnut of southern Europe (maroon in that sense was used in English from 1590s), from dialect of Lyons, ultimately from a word in a pre-Roman language, perhaps Ligurian; or from Greek maraon "sweet chestnut

https://www.etymonline.com/word/maroon

RIGOLO

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Jupiter has 67  79 moons.

Nine of which orbit in the wrong direction.

Why is it that 9 orbit in the wrong direction ?
Why isnt it 70 ?

Shpud2

Loving all these frozen in time places.

sbsquarepants

Peregrine wrote: »

22/7 never cuts it! Physics lecturers will boot you out the door and tell you to enroll in engineering if you ever use 22/7. :P

OK - showing my ignorance here (and not for the first (or last) time I might add:D)

I actually thought that 22/7 was pi - not just an approximation of it. So the following question springs to mind.

Is the actual value known (or is it even knowable). I do appreciate that a gazillion decimal places is "reasonably" accurate but it's not absolute.

I had always thought that 22/7 was the actual number but it just didn't lend itself to being expressed decimally.

sbsquarepants

sbsquarepants wrote: »

OK - showing my ignorance here (and not for the first (or last) time I might add:D)

I actually thought that 22/7 was pi - not just an approximation of it. So the following question springs to mind.

Is the actual value known (or is it even knowable). I do appreciate that a gazillion decimal places is "reasonably" accurate but it's not absolute.

I had always thought that 22/7 was the actual number but it just didn't lend itself to being expressed decimally.

22/7 will repeat indefinitely if written as a decimal, 3.1428571428571428.... Pi is irrational so has no end and won't end up repeating digits.