› added 12 years ago

101

TIL that we’re not just splitting atoms. In Switzerland they’re experimenting with splitting electrons too.

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QJZ0a Here it is Elon Musk's favorite job interview question: You're standing on the surface of Earth. You walk one mile south, one mile west, and one mile north. You end up exactly where you started. Where are you?
OowrR TIL the difference in inheritances from parents with college degrees vs those without is just $17k, and the difference between inheritances from black vs white parents is just $3k
p8Ym8 Imagine you spent your entire childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood stuck inside a small closet. One day, after much of your life, has passed you by, you realize that you can just open up the door, change into some more appropriate clothes, and hit the town! Free at last, what would you do first? Maybe sing a bit? Go on a few dates? By the way, you have two to four weeks to live. Yikes. This is not unlike the situation most cicadas face, as they spend almost their entire lives underground. For example, many of the cicadas emerging in 2016 have been underground for 17 years! To put that in perspective, the last Star Wars movie these insects saw was literally a menace. Imagine waking up in a world without Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray! Come to think of it, things are really looking up since 1999. A cicada’s ear-piercing call is intended to attract a gal pal. Considering that these little creatures’ time above ground is so fleeting, they need to lock down a date as soon as possible. This could be why most cicadas are louder than the average fraternity pledge. Adult males are the ones making such a racket, and some species can register sounds louder 100 decibels when calling for a potential mate. In this week’s Today I Learned, National Geographic Emerging Explorer and filmmaker Sandesh Kadur explains how cicadas sing such a loud song.
XEDEE TIL that San Diego Zoo maintains a so-called "frozen zoo", a facility in which they preserve DNA from rare and near-extinct species
QNLMM TIL Zyzzyx Road is the lowest grossing movie of all time: only six people bought tickets for a total box office of $30