Portal:Physics/Did you know/Suggest

Nominations

More "Did you know"s for Portal:Physics can be nominated here. General guidelines for nominations, loosely based on Wikipedia:Did you know include:

• Pick DYKs in articles that are interesting.
• Look for articles that are over 1,000 characters in size - no stubs.
• The "Did you know?" fact must be mentioned in the article.
• Try to select articles that cite their sources, particularly the item mentioned.

Suggestions should be added at the bottom of this page by using the following code:

=== <Example> ===
<Proposed fact>
* '''Support''' - <reason> ~~~~

To support or oppose a nomination, add a line below the most recent vote for the fact by using the following code:

* '''Support''' - <reason> ~~~~
* '''Oppose''' - <reason> ~~~~

Neutrino flux

Did you know that if you hold your palm towards the sun, day or night, more than a trillion solar neutrinos pass through it every second?

• Support - Because it's really cool! The article mentions the solar neutrino flux at the earth is 70 billion neutrinos/(cm*sec). Since the hand is around 50 cm^2, it's probably around 4 trillion, but I think "over a trillion" is safer, and just as impressive. Bmk 03:31, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
• Support - Because of the above and the phrase or night, that means that neutrinos cross the earth easily.--Alexcalamaro (talk) 10:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support- Because Neutrinos are a very unapreciated subset of physics, and are very fascinating123Mike456Winston789 (talk) 19:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - Based on the wording, just as many neutrinos pass through your hand, and all of you, and everything around you, at all times regardless of where your palm is facing. This Did You Know spreads incomplete misinformation, but could be valuable if corrected.
• Support - Actually your statement spreads misinformation. The original DYK was only giving a solid base for the purposes of visualisation. Also it would make a difference whether or not your hand is facing toward the sun of not, because if the thumb was facing toward the sun then there would be less area receiving neutrinos, assuming they travel in straight lines.

Light From The Sun

Did you know that photons from the core of the Sun takes up to 50 million years to reach the surface, but only 8.31 minutes to reach the Earth from the surface.

• Support - It's amazing that light takes millions of years to travel 1.392×10^9 m (diameter of the sun) but only 8 minutes to travel 1.496×10^11 m to the Earth. Aiyda 18:01, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

watery wonders

in a single drop of water there is more molecules than in every star you can see in the sky! There may be as much as 4,595 pounds of gold per cubic mile of a sea water but sadly it would be too expensive to try and extract it.

• Oppose - This is either mis-worded or blatantly false. One drop of water does not contain enough molecules to equate to a single star, or even a small portion of one, much less every star present in the sky.

• Support - In every square centimeter of sea there is only 13 billionths of a gram of gold.(And whoever opposes whoever wrote the fact at the top did not understand him properly).

energetic facts

In a single second the sun uses enough energy to power the earth for a million years! in a single second earths population uses as much energy as there is in 3,300 tons of oil! In a single second more than 750 barrels of oil are pumped out of the ground!

Hot stuff!

In the first trillionth of a second of its creation, the temperature of the Universe was ten billion trillion trillion degrees Celsius! Light can be defined as mass with no resistance.

Number of Lightnings

Across the earth, 100 lightnings strike every second, that's 8 million times a day!

• Support In addition to being a surprising fact, it's interesting to elaborate on how the lightning and its location is detected by the radio waves it emit. EverGreg 07:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The Jewel of Physics

Did you know that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is often called the jewel of physics because of its extremely accurate predictions of quantities such as the anomalous magnetic moment. The theoretical prediction agrees with the experimentally measured value to 10 significant figures, making it the most accurately verified prediction in the history of physics.

• Support - I think this is a good fact as strangers to physics won't know anything about quantum electrodynamics. Though we may know, this fact will increase interest in physics as people will read on quantum electrodynamics to find out what it is.

Power of the Solar Plasma

Did you know there is a surprisingly low rate of energy production in the Sun's core—about 0.3 W/m3 (watts per cubic meter). This is less power than generated by a candle!

• Support - Other than being an amazing fact, I think that this shows to people that we are not insignificant in the universe and that physics is very interesting and crazy.

Space made of Atoms?

Space is nothing continuous, but instead composed of a colossal number of discrete elementary entities, at the (very small) planck scale! User:The_Quantum_Guy

• Oppose - This is one of several theories on the subject that has not been experimentally verified, kindof like string theory. It's a theory, but we can't list it as knowledge. In any case EverGreg (talk) 19:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - I agree with EverGreg. Besides, at the planck scale space is made of quantum foam. Quantum foam is not a state of matter or if it is, it hasn't been verified.
• Oppose - Wait, I thought Quantum Foam was space itself on such a small scale that energy causes space-time to warp radically compared to viewing larger scales

Heim Theory

Did you know that Heim theory attempts to solve the problem of faster than light travel?

• Support - I think this proposal will draw popular interest to the Physics portal Novus Orator 08:05, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Temporal Mechanics

Did you know that the faster you go in a vehicle, the slower time passes. It is because of this that time travel into the future is possible. All we need to do is travel at extremely high speeds nearing the speed of light!(Pringl123)

• Support - Time Travel is a much fantasized and loved topic by many non physicists. To tell them that it may be possible may draw more people to the interest of physics.

• Oppose - This concept is a false misinterpretation of other principles of physics. A vehicle moving at 100mph will reach a location twice as fast as one moving 50mph, assuming other conditions are identical. The faster vehicle doesn't begin slowing down time and end up gaining more distance than its speed and driving time would indicate.

• Support - This concept is absolutely true. Actually the faster moving vehicle would not slow down, but time will slow down, inside the vehicle, and just around it (negligibly).

We can test it by putting two clocks in them.

• Support - I think this relates to general relativity, where time becomes more distorted the closer you are to the speed of light. The above comment is (I think) incorrect as everything travelling at that speed becomes distorted, including you and the clocks. The large hadron collider has enabled some protons to travel at 99.9999991% the speed of light(3.00×10^8), so we actually just need to reach the speed of light for time travel to be possible/go through a black hole without becoming grease-spots.

Quantum Mechanics

Did you know that Quantum Mechanics states that nothing is certain unless it is observed. This was first proved by Thomas Young when he conducted the double slit experiment and found that light was a wave. It was repeated many times with electrons and similar results were found. However when the electrons were observed they behaved like particles. This theory has also helped create a hypothetical model for a quantum computer, which, if created, would exceed the computational abilities of a conventional computer containing every atom in the universe.(Pringl123)

See your own back

Did you know that at a certain radius from a black hole you can see you own back (ahead of you)? The invisible sphere around the black hole with this radius is called the photon sphere. At this radius any light emitted tangential to the sphere goes around in a circle around the black hole, hence this effect.

• oppose- This is just a theory and has not been proved, therefore it is just an imaginary effect

Floating Saturn

If earth was much bigger than Saturn and had oceans equally big and somehow Saturn were to land on our oceans, it would float !!.

• support - Yes, it is absolutely true that Saturn can float on water because it has less density than water.

• support - True, as Saturn's density is only 687 kg/m^3 ,whereas water is 1000 kg/m^3.

Solar neutrinos detection

Did you know, that 1,000 tons of heavy water are used to detect solar neutrinos in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Sudbury, Ontario?