› added 10 years ago

157

TIL that relativistic effects only become truly severe at very close to light speed: even someone travelling at 0.9 times the speed of light will only perceive time passing 2.29 times faster than it would be perceived from a stationary point of reference.

Read more fourmilab.ch

via reddit.com

Z8DoG TIL Marines called live customer support for their Barrett M-107 rifle while engaged in a firefight.
xvgg TIL that American car seats are illegal to use in most of the rest of the world due to the addition of the chest clip
Bg0Ye TIL about the Wallace Line, a geographical boundary that separates Asian mammals from marsupials of the Indo-Australian Archipelago. West of this line, no marsupials exist, but they thrive on the east side. At its smallest, there is a 22 mile gap between islands, separating the two mammal groups.
VMkLG TIL that when a whale farts, the resulting bubble is so big that a full-grown horse could fit inside
ANo7w TIL about Aaron Swartz, one of the architects of Creative Commons, creator of Internet Archives’ Open Library and founder of Watchdog.net