Complex Numbers

Fact-Ory

I promise I have more articles in the queue from not-Cracked than from Cracked, but sometimes, the RNG likes to cluster things. I should probably mention that there are images in the article that may get you called in to HR at work, but that'll probably happen anyway, just from wasting your time reading this blog and a dick joke site.

    5 Simple Science Questions We Bet You’ll Get Wrong  
What is a day? What is the Earth made of? You don’t really know

Yeah, I get it. There's a lot I don't know. There's probably even some stuff I get wrong, though I try to fix that when I become aware.

Phrasing aside, though, as usual, the article has an interesting take on things.

Between time travel, fusion reactors and the brain transplants we hear are happening any day now, science can sound like an intimidating set of disciplines.

I don't know about brain transplants, but I did see something recently about a brain implant for thought-to-text.   No, not Muskmelon's crazy stunt; this one seems legit.

Of course, I immediately saw the potential to reverse this so that advertisers can pay to have their product beamed directly into our brains. And you know damn well that's going to happen, along with people using it for porn.

Today, however, let’s set aside the most complicated theories and applications.

Porn isn't that complicated, unless you're doing it in space.

5. How Many Minutes Does Earth Take to Rotate Once?

Oh, I know this trick question. A solar day is not the same as a sidereal day.

The Earth takes 1,436 minutes for each rotation. Or, it takes 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.

The article explains this in good-enough detail, but the simple explanation is: that's how long it takes for the same distant star (that is not the one we're orbiting) to reappear in the same place in the sky, relative to any point on the earth's surface.

But also, that sort of knowledge makes people like me fun at parties, but doesn't much matter for our 24-hour-everyday lives.

4. Would It Be Sexy to Have X-Ray Vision?

No.

3. What Color Is the Sun?

Another trick question, and also involving the accursed daystar.

The Sun is yellow, say most people with eyes.

Except when it's red or orange.

People who know more about space might offer a different answer. The Sun is actually white, they’d say.

Again, details in the article, but basically, white is what happens when you mix a full spectrum of light colors together. And of course the sun has a full spectrum, else we wouldn't sometimes see rainbows. (I may be mixing up cause and effect; our eyes evolved to see that range for reasons).

But to confuse us even further, physicists refer to the kind of photon emissions from the sun as "black-body radiation," for reasons I won't go into but you're free to look up. So maybe the sun is "actually" black.

2. What Is the World’s Most Common Substance?

Oh, that's easy: Stupidity.

What is the most abundant material on Earth — or rather, what is the most abundant material on or in Earth?

Um... advertisements?

Is it rock? Sure, but you’re going to have to be more specific than that. Anything can be considered rock.

Well, maybe not smooth jazz.

The most common substance in the world is in fact... bridgmanite. We’ll forgive you for never having heard that word before since scientists only got around to naming it within the last decade.

Yep, okay, you got me. Never heard of it before this. My knowledge continues to expand, thanks to a juvenile humor website.

1. Should You Shoot C-4 Explosives, for Fun?

I'm a big fan of doing lots of things for fun, so... yes?

On the other hand, if you answered “yes” because explosions are cool, we have bad news. The C-4 will not explode, so shooting it might be quite boring.

Awww.

Yeah, my understanding was the whole point of C-4 was to have a stable explosive. Which sounds weird, but you want it to blow up when you want it to blow up, not while you're transporting it to the thing you want to blow up. So it requires a detonator or whatever.

Shooting Tannerite,   now... yeehaw!