› added 8 years ago

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TIL a billionaire is plotting to propel thousands of miniature satellites at 20% the speed of light by aiming minutes-long 100-gigawatt laser pulses at light sails as early as the 2040s, to arrive at Proxima B (the nearest Earthlike planet in the Goldilocks Zone of Alpha Centauri) by the 2060s

x68w5 TIL Mozart's middle name is not Amadeus. It's a latinized version of his real middle name Theophilus and probably facetious.
P5Vg TIL in 1940, 2 Australian air force planes collided and locked together midair during a training exercise yet pilot L. Fuller landed the entangled planes after traveling 5 miles, after all other crews ejected. Fuller was commemorated & promoted, but died in 1944 when his bicycle collided with a bus.
Wk8nB TIL: The human brain is extremely efficient at consuming energy. It only requires the energy needed to light a very dim lightbulb for it to function properly. Supercomputer have to consume far much power to calculate connection in the way the human brain does.
XA0X TIL in 2012 Donald Trump ordered a boycott against Glenfiddich scotch, since the whiskey company financially backs the Top Scot award, given that year to Michael Forbes, who was chosen for refusing to vacate his land to make way for Trump’s planned golf course.
woxKo TIL that Austria, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, and Switzerland were technically "third world countries", because they were not officially aligned with NATO (first world) or the Warsaw Pact (second world) during the Cold War. The term does not actually have anything to do with quality of life.