No matter how educated you might be, no matter how many books you’ve read, it’s impossible to know everything that there is to know about the world. Naturally, you’ll end up with quite a few knowledge gaps. Gaps that you might not even be aware of! However, if you keep an open mind and are humble enough to admit that you don’t know everything, the internet can be a fantastic place to learn new things.
That’s where the ‘Today I Learned’ Twitter account, @til_feed, comes in. It’s a page with 33.6k followers that has been collecting and sharing interesting facts about the world, from science and psychology to history and nature, since late 2020. We’ve chosen the most intriguing facts to pique your interest, Pandas, so put on your thinking hats as you scroll down.
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It might feel embarrassing to realize that you don’t know as much about the world as you thought you did, but there’s nothing wrong with that! Human beings are limited, and there are tons of other things to do throughout the day than read thick encyclopedias and memorize trivia. Things like work, meeting up with the people we care about, exercise, long walks on the beach, doing pesky chores, sharing cat memes, and much, much more.
They also made a movie about it, called Hidden Figures! Everybody should watch it, it’s so good!
In other words, we all have a finite amount of time. We can’t spend every minute of it for the sake of storing knowledge in our noggins. However, if we accidentally become aware of massive knowledge gaps that we’d like to somehow fill, then it’s an opportunity for growth! We don’t know what your experience was like at school or college, but we remember how excited we were when we started delving into a topic that we knew very little about but felt passion for.
Learning can be a ton of fun, especially if you believe that the knowledge you’re gaining is going to improve your life somehow or that information is likely to have a very practical use. For example, learning a random language might be fun, and good exercise for your mind, but if you’ll need the language for your job or an upcoming trip, then you have that added little bit of motivation to keep you going when things get tough. The same goes for all subjects, whether it’s history, psychology, management, or anything else, really.
At the same time, if a specific subject doesn’t interest you at all or you might not think that it’ll prove to be much useful to you in the future, feel free to ignore it. We all have limited free time, so learning about biology or chemistry just to flex to your friends by dropping random fact bombs on them during dinner isn’t worth it. At the end of the day, you have to embrace the fact that you won’t know, well, everything.
Geoff Gourley, writing on Medium, suggests bridging your knowledge gaps by considering taking web courses on a specific subject. According to him, it’s important to use the knowledge you gain proactively, with hands-on activities if possible. Teaching someone else, once you’ve built up a decent knowledge base, can also help cement the information in your mind.
Meanwhile, there are tons of free resources out there on the internet, all it takes is some patience to find them and filter out the best from the fluff.
You are correct. We also live at the only time where this is true. The Moon is slowly moving away from the Earth, so in a million years a full solar eclipse won't be possible anymore.
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TIL - people don’t fact check anything and likely wouldn’t understand the facts anyway. The Sun is unequivocally not 400 times the “size” of the Moon and neither is it 1/400th the distance from Earth”. What the post means to say is : the diameter of the Moon is approximately 1/400th the diameter of the Sun. Coincidentally, the distance from the Earth to the Moon is approximately 1/400th the distance from the Earth to the Sun. When you consider the 3 objects in 3D the volume of the Sun is approximately 1.3 million times that of Earth and the Earth’s volume is approximately 50 times that of the Moon. This would make the Sun 65,000,000 times the volume of the Moon. That’s doesn’t mean 65 million Moons would fit in the Sun, nor would 1.3 million Earths fit into the Sun (as is often quoted). The actual number of Earths that would fit in the Sun is closer to 930,000 because small spheres put in larger spheres leave about 30% negative space.
You said "unequivocally" while you equivocated on an ambiguous word, "size", in order to make yourself look smart.
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I am not certain those figures are correct. The sun is about a million times more massive than the earth
Size in this context refers to the diameter, not the mass.
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In the far future (~1billion years) total solar eclipses will cease. We will be left with lunar transits.
Because the moon increases it's distance to us by 4cm per year IIRC
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Then we would be Pluto and get demoted by the crazy earthlings.
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There are some more facts about the coincidences about the moon, like it's traslation being the same as our rotation. That's why some people say it's an artificial satelite in reality. Idk, I just like cheese so that's why I like the moon.
Tidal locking is a fairly common thing that has gravity reasons for happening. Many of the moons in the solar system rotate like that, for example both moons of Mars, All the big ones of Jupiter and Saturn and Pluto's Charon.
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This is quite an interesting fact, I enjoy it when the two combine themselves and create an eclipse, those are so cool to see xD I had great pictures of the one in 2012 and some pictures that weren’t as good of the one in 2017. Our most recent eclipse occurred at night and that was awesome 👌🏼 So glad I got to see each and every one 😁 I’m lucky I didn’t damage my eyes from the one in 2017 though, I looked right up at it without any sunglasses or anything to protect my eyes and they were specifically calling on people to NOT do that… 😅
And they're both visually much smaller in the sky than most people realize. You would have to hold a BB pellet, which is 4.4 mm wide, 19 inches away from your eye to make it look the same size as the Sun and Moon.
Heresy! The Sun and Moon are the same size and rotate around the World - which is flat.
This is also temporary as the moon is receding from the earth at at about 2.5 per year
I'm totally floored by the notion that the moon is really 1/400 the size (by radius) of the sun. Somehow I thought it was way smaller than that. That the Earth was, really.
That's also why there are some wacky conspiracy theories about the moon, like, it was constructed by aliens and placed in that exact orbit. And it's hollow. Google "when the moon rang like a bell" and you can begin to find yourself wondering.
That's also why there are some conspiracy theories about the moon. It was constructed by aliens and placed in that exact orbit. Crazy stuff.
We have a very large moon compared to the other moons in the solar system. The earth/moon is more of a dual planet.
Perhaps it was put there for a reason by something smarter than us.
Perhaps something as unthinking as gravity is smarter than some of us.
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This is just random chance based on the time we live. The moon's orbit isn't stable. It is slowly drifting further away, and in a few hundred million years? No more complete Solar eclipses.
One might note that outside our own system (mere 8 planets) data on planet-moon-sun combinations and on moons in particular is hazy at best, so "any other known" is a very small research pool. (And "size" in this case means "diameter". In volume the sun is more than 50 million times bigger than the moon, unless I miscalculated)
And the moon is made of cheese, but its far enough away from the sun that it doesn't melt.
It must be very dry and sturdy cheese, considering the temperature on the side facing the sun.
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and at no other time in history (speaking in the millions of years kind of hstory)
I got to see a solar eclipse in totality a few years ago. The sun's white corona was fascinating to see, but it was the moon that caught my attention. It just seem to hang there like an anvil. I kept expecting it to drop.
Yes, it is a coincidence, and since the moon is slowly moving away from us it won't cover the sun in an eclipse in the far future. So this is just the perspective of what we see in one particular era of time.
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I learned from reading an unrelated book that Marie Curie’s documents are also said to be radioactive as well.
If you’re ever in a situation where someone publicly points out that you’re wrong about something, the first step is to try and stay calm. Don’t panic! Embrace the fact that everyone makes mistakes. You could, for instance, thank the person for correcting you. And if you show some signs of mild embarrassment, it can make you seem more down-to-earth and likable as a result. The important thing here is not to make a mountain out of a molehill: your mistake definitely wasn’t as big as you thought, and you shouldn’t let that embarrassment turn into shame.
The way that people consume news and information has changed very much with the spread of the internet and the rise of social media.
"People consume news from a much broader variety of sources, on a much wider set of platforms. We are awash in information and we are used to seeing it in small chunks," Lisa McLendon, Ph.D., the William Allen White Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, previously explained to Bored Panda.
I live in Los Angeles. Traffic is terrible. Can't imagine what it would be like if it were 16% worse.
I remember living in Hanna Wyoming was it was -40F. Walking home from the bus stop after school, it started to get dark and we had double scarves wrapped around our mouths. Breathing in that ice cold air really hurts your lungs. I can’t imagine what -83F is like ! But I did read Coldfoot, Alaska got that cold before ! Forget that c**p…I’m going back to Las Cruces New Mexico next summer lol
As a result the format of the news changes, as audiences begin to appreciate brevity more. As a result, some outlets might prioritize engagement over in-depth reporting.
"News outlets know this and have adapted headlines to catch people’s eyes and presentation to keep the audiences engaged. For example, if you look at how news is presented on a platform like Instagram, it’s presented visually in a short video or series of images so people can quickly get the main point. Most of these changes have happened to optimize speed and engagement, not depth," the professor told us via email earlier.
But on the bright side, you planted more trees and helped the environment!
“Depth is crucial for certain types of news stories, ones that aren’t easily summarized in a quick-hit format but nonetheless have great impact on people’s lives. Questions and creativity can help journalists stay motivated to delve deeper on a longer, more time-consuming story," the communications expert told Bored Panda.
She stressed that how the information or news is presented can drastically affect how engaged the audience is. "Usually this is not one big, long block of text—it may include photos, videos, maps, graphics, even interactive elements like a quiz,” she said that reporters are challenged to find more and more creative ways to present their stories.
I grew up calling them Lego bricks and Lego parts. The US plural use as a noun sounds weird and strangely childish to me. I've never corrected it though. It seems like it's engrained in the US psyche.
Had a Danish exchange student here in US. They burn most garbage(some kind of stack cleaning tech to reduce pollutants), and use the heat to power steam boilers for home heat.
Kinda old news this one. It's very well known the national grid vary productivity around TV viewing habits, especially sport. It used to be the soap operas as well until online streaming meant you can catch up whenever.
So did they start this after the movie Airplane came out or before?
So what did I’m you think their official title is? Space Olfactory Specialist . Come on give us your ideas.
I was reading about this, it's amazing how potent the smell is, they put very little in there and it still smells strong.
They made a short film in 2013 using atoms as well https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0
No, no no! Canada saved the hostages, our US embassy workers. The CIA had very little to do with it. The movie Argo assigns all the heroics done by Canada to Americans. It's wrong.
Well now I just found a prospective place to live… I’ll wave at y’all from my cruise ship
I don’t wanna say that you should steal $71.6 million but that plan was so ingenious and they pulled it off so I kinda say they deserve all the money. (Not literally tho.)
I can't imagine how lonely and awesome that would be, if they had a conscious.
Now go google Apple's "sueme" sound. Soothing and a funny story
A sugar cube of a neutron star weighs a few trillion kilograms less than Mount Everest
So the green Atlantic Ocean water is thicker than the blue Pacific Ocean water?
Seriously? It took them that long to figure out that flying things can go away when the weather is bad?
People probably underestimate Africa’s size because of the most common map design(I forgot what it was called) that has unevenly sized continents due to the equator not being in the center. An accurate map appears to be slightly distorted, so the inaccurate one is more appealing to the eye.
Slightly off topic, but still regarding Mir; my daughter in law, grand daughter and I went down to the beach near us and saw Mir as its last orbit, low in the sky, took it towards the Pacific. That was sad; I remember it but they have probably forgotten it by now.
More aren't necessary as there are only 25 blimps around the world with only half of them in active service
Try and discern cold coffee being poured in a cup from hot coffe being poured in a cup by the sound it produces. If your hearing isn't compromised, you most likely can.
I live in wA state, and I believe the leaking waste is criminal. Humans are so destructive, it's pathetic 😢
This statement is a little misleading it makes it sound as if they spent it all on one plane. This probably typical of designing something that will be mass produced and needed to be reliable
They're all true, I read them on the internet. [ /s because it's needed too often ]
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They're all true, I read them on the internet. [ /s because it's needed too often ]
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