Post * WMPX — Curious Curator

› added 11 years ago

246

TIL Patrick Stewart left his bags unpacked for the first six weeks of filming Star Trek: TNG because he thought the show would fail.

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X0DbP TIL John Von Neumann proposed an idea of self replicating spacecraft. Robert Freitas calcd they could colonize the milky way in 500k years. That we see no evidence of them implies we are alone. Carl Sagan argued rate of replication would consume so much mass no intelligent species would build them

nRlB TIL that in Deep Blue’s first game against Garry Kasparov, the computer made a move that puzzled the grandmaster so much, it made him believe the machine had superior intelligence. It threw Garry off his game, and ultimately cost him the match. The move was the result of a bug in Deep Blue’s code.

LkoLp TIL that The Big Beat, a 1980 song by Billy Squier, has been sampled in more than 260 recordings including Jay-Z's “99 Problems”, Alicia Keys' “Girl on Fire” and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Higher Ground". The original song never charted.

mx4O TIL that there is a satellite called LAGEOS that will return to earth in 8.4 million years. Inscribed on it is a picture of what scientists think the continents will look like at that time.

awXdo TIL The Tollund Man, who lived during the 4th Century BC, was so well preserved on discovery that that he was mistaken for a recent murder victim. His internal organs were intact; it was concluded that his last meal was porridge consisting of 40 kinds of seeds, eaten 12 to 24 hours before his death.