What's a scientific fact that the layman should know?

John Locke

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I'll start. Don't laymen need to know this but it affects much that we do.

A fluid traveling through a constriction increases in velocity but decreases in pressure.
 
If scientists today followed the philosophy of Karl Popper(that a scientist must work his/her hardest to disprove their theorem), we’d be in a better place today.


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Turning your thermostat all the way down/turning your radiator all the way off at work for 2 weeks over winter break in an OH winter can lead to burst pipes just like it would at your house ZOMG!!!1!1!!
Also, leaving your windows open for those 2 weeks is counterproductive.
 
I've been studying up something known as the Younger Dryas Impact theory (and a bunch of other descriptions), the Cliff Notes version is that I'm now convinced that about 12,800 years ago there was some sort of massive explosion(s), likely centered over North America, probably caused by asteroid(s) that caused a very quick melting of the ice sheets that covered much of the continent and created a flood of such epic proportions that it staggers the mind. Imagine walls of water and debris hundreds of feet high racing at several hundred miles an hour destroying everything in it's path. Much of the planet was affected, but not equally, and the effects of all this was a devastation that changed forever, human and animal population, the landscape, the earth's climate and the history of human culture. The scientific evidence that such an event occurred is substantial, but mainstream science seems slow to accept it. Most lay people have never even heard of it, but it is probably the most important event in the history of this planet.
 
I've been studying up something known as the Younger Dryas Impact theory (and a bunch of other descriptions), the Cliff Notes version is that I'm now convinced that about 12,800 years ago there was some sort of massive explosion(s), likely centered over North America, probably caused by asteroid(s) that caused a very quick melting of the ice sheets that covered much of the continent and created a flood of such epic proportions that it staggers the mind. Imagine walls of water and debris hundreds of feet high racing at several hundred miles an hour destroying everything in it's path. Much of the planet was affected, but not equally, and the effects of all this was a devastation that changed forever, human and animal population, the landscape, the earth's climate and the history of human culture. The scientific evidence that such an event occurred is substantial, but mainstream science seems slow to accept it. Most lay people have never even heard of it, but it is probably the most important event in the history of this planet.
Thanks for sharing that, Hawg.

Ever since I read Larry Niven's Inconstant Moon short story, I have wondered what role solar flares have played in the Earth's climatological and evolutionary history. But a solar flare seems to be ruled out in this case by the physical evidence (e.g. nano-diamonds).

But the beauty of science is that alternative hypotheses can be evaluated against existing evidence, and even discarded hypotheses can be revived when new evidence emerges. Now that you've clued me into the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, I'll keep an eye out for articles that touch on it.

Getting back to the topic of this thread and scientific facts - it would be great if laymen knew the difference between a hypothesis and a theory. It gets tiresome to hear Darwin's work dismissed as "only a theory" - when I hear that, I know I'm listening to someone who has never read On The Origin Of Species, yet feels qualified to denigrate it.
 
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I've been studying up something known as the Younger Dryas Impact theory (and a bunch of other descriptions), the Cliff Notes version is that I'm now convinced that about 12,800 years ago there was some sort of massive explosion(s), likely centered over North America, probably caused by asteroid(s) that caused a very quick melting of the ice sheets that covered much of the continent and created a flood of such epic proportions that it staggers the mind. Imagine walls of water and debris hundreds of feet high racing at several hundred miles an hour destroying everything in it's path. Much of the planet was affected, but not equally, and the effects of all this was a devastation that changed forever, human and animal population, the landscape, the earth's climate and the history of human culture. The scientific evidence that such an event occurred is substantial, but mainstream science seems slow to accept it. Most lay people have never even heard of it, but it is probably the most important event in the history of this planet.

There's plenty of current controversy about the Younger Dryas hypothesis but it's clear something happened in Greenland that left a 19 mile wide crater in the ice sheet that changed the ocean's plumbing by providing enough melt water to stop the Gulfstream for a long period. The controversy is over the timing of the impact and the effect it had on life at the time. Dating the impact crater has proved difficult so far and until it's dated accurately the controversy will continue. Something caused the mammoths and Clovis people to disappear but paleontologists can't agree if it were a slow or fast disappearance. Most think the mammoths were already declining bc of the end of the ice age and then bc of hunting from these earliest Americans. Mammoths disappeared and simultaneously Clovis spear points disappeared - but...did the Clovis people also disappear? Some paleontologists believe they may have lived on but didn't make their famous spear points anymore since the mammoths were gone. What's clear, at least to me, is that this impact wasn't nearly as catastrophic as the Chicxulub impact which wiped out the dinosaurs.
 
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"Water's wet, the sky is blue......and old Satan Claus, Jimmy, he's out there, and he's just getting stronger.". Joe Hallenbeck
 
From HS physics
Newton's laws of motion
  1. Objects at rest will remain at rest, and objects in motion will remain in motion at the same velocity, unless the object is acted on by an external force.
  2. Force equals mass times acceleration (F=ma).
  3. When one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first.
Einstein's theories of general and special relativity
E = mc2 (energy and mass are interchangeable)
 
From HS physics
Newton's laws of motion
  1. Objects at rest will remain at rest, and objects in motion will remain in motion at the same velocity, unless the object is acted on by an external force.
  2. Force equals mass times acceleration (F=ma).
  3. When one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first.
Einstein's theories of general and special relativity
E = mc2 (energy and mass are interchangeable)
From HS physics
Newton's laws of motion
  1. Objects at rest will remain at rest, and objects in motion will remain in motion at the same velocity, unless the object is acted on by an external force.
  2. Force equals mass times acceleration (F=ma).
  3. When one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first.
Einstein's theories of general and special relativity
E = mc2 (energy and mass are interchangeable)
Carom Billiards. You're lost with out knowledge of this fact:

The angle of incidence equals the angle of refraction
 
I'll start. Don't laymen need to know this but it affects much that we do.

A fluid traveling through a constriction increases in velocity but decreases in pressure.
Can I just venturi a guess as to who thought that up?
 
Oh, damn!
Average layman? Just looking at that makes me want to throw up.

I was actually stoned late last night when I saw that. My idiot self-who understands not a lick of higher math actually tried to figure it out. :banghead: :beer: :high:
 
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I was actually stoned late last night when I saw that. My idiot self-who understands not a lick of higher math actually tried to figure it out. :banghead: :beer: :high:
I would venture to guess that there are few people walking the Earth who grasp that equation. Certainly I don't.

Sean Carroll has written a few paragraphs about its importance - this is one of his concluding sentences:

"It’s one of the proudest intellectual accomplishments we human beings can boast of."

What a layman should know is that people are working hard on advancing human understanding, and that we think we now understand one of the primal building blocks of the universe, Matter. That's a pretty big deal, to my way of thinking.

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If you're driving at 60mph, it takes 1 minute to go 1 mile.
 
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