If this were true, the seasons would be the same all over the earth, since one part of the earth can’t be close to the sun while the other part is farther away. But the seasons are not the same all over the earth- when it’s summer in North America and Europe, it’s winter in Australia.
A few more astronomy ones:
The phases of the moon are caused by the Earth’s shadow on the moon. The only time the moon is in the Earth’s shadow is during a lunar eclipse. Those can only happen when the moon is full.
The black hole in the center of the Milky Way will go SKLOOORP and suck in the whole galaxy. Things will fall into a black hole if they get close enough, but things can also be in stable orbits around a black hole.
The direction that water swirls down in your sink or toilet has something to do with the Coriolis effect, and is determined by which hemisphere you’re in. The Coriolis effect does cause large systems (like hurricanes and other storms) to swirl in a particular direction in each hemisphere. But its effect on something as small as a sink or toilet is too small to make a difference.
The moon can’t be up in the daytime. There is a co-worker of mine, otherwise intelligent, who believes this. Yes, it can. You can see it, but it’s not as obvious as it is at night, so you have to have some idea where to look.
Polaris has always been the pole star, and always will be. Wrong. (People who write stories set in other periods of history often get this wrong.) There’s also the idea that there must be a south pole star (there isn’t, or at least there isn’t a very bright one, at least for now), and that Polaris is the brightest star in the sky. It isn’t.
Part of the problem is that the Galileo myth was perpetuated by the likes of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. Their writings have long been discredited by historians, but their teachings regarding the Galileo myth continue to be perpetuated.
I’ve seen this in action. I was playing softball at a company picnic. A guy from Australia hit the ball and tried running around the bases clockwise. We blamed it on the Coriolis effect.
Migraines are not just bad headaches, but headaches that come with a particular set of symptoms. It’s even possible to have all the other symptoms without the headache!
There is no benefit to forcing something in the mouth of someone having an epileptic seizure; in fact, you may hurt the person having the seizure or even yourself by trying.
It is possible to fire a teacher, lecturer, or professor with tenure.
In places that get “the Midnight Sun”, the Sun makes a complete circle in the sky over a 24-hour cycle.
The Moon rotates on its own axis. It just happens to do so at almost exactly the same rate that it orbits the Earth.
The moon can’t be up in the daytime. There is a co-worker of mine, otherwise intelligent, who believes this.
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Well, he just thinks it’s very, very stable and circular cloud.
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Random misconceptions: …
The Moon rotates on its own axis. It just happens to do so at almost exactly the same rate that it orbits the Earth.
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I’d say the main misconception people have is that the Moon has a “dark side” — as in a permanently dark side. (Blame Pink Floyd maybe.) They think the Moon keeps one side always facing the Sun, not the Earth.
Or they believe both are true, but don’t reason through how the various rotation and revolution rates make that impossible.
We can play this game of description/prescription all day; this is just the line, arbitrary or not, where it bugs me. Point taken. But it bears mentioning that the descriptive definition doesn’t support it as a synonym of “shy” either, in fact, the example usage sentence on dictionary.com is “He’s not antisocial, just shy.”
Also, I am not in the mental health field, nor do I read the DSM.
According to both the Enyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, there are crocodiles in Florida.
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Florida’s rich and distinctive tropical and subtropical habitats are inhabited by a vast and varied wildlife population; the rarer forms, such as the crocodile, manatee (sea cow), and puma (known locally as the Florida panther [Puma concolor coryi]), are protected. About 100 species of mammals are found in the state, including deer, pumas, bobcats, boars, black bears, armadillos, otters, mink, and gray foxes; smaller animals are also numerous. Manatees are found along the coast and in warm inland waters, and several species of porpoises and dolphins lend their distinctive character to the clear coastal waters.
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In our MOU, we get 2% per year of service, and they sometimes offer a % boost to encourage retirement during years with very tight budgets. It’s possible to retire at full, or above full pay, but you’d have to work here (or in some other job paying into PERS) for a long time, and you’d have to retire during a budget crunch.
This is not a coincidence. It’s called tidal locking, and is what eventually happens to most things orbiting another body (“eventually”, to an astronomer, can mean “in billions of years, or more”). A moon that is tidally locked has its orbital and rotation period the same.
The fact that the sun and moon appear almost exactly the same size in the sky (and, therefore, we can get total solar eclipses) is a coincidence, and isn’t always going to be the case. The moon is moving away from the Earth, and eventually (in a few hundred million years, IIRC) will not be able to totally eclipse the sun any more.
I’m not sure that counts as rotating. If the Moon always kept on face to the Sun, so that we saw all sides of it, is it then not rotating?
(Shamelessly stolen from Persig) A bunch of philosophy professors are having a picnic. They see a squirrel on the trunk of a tree. One professor gets up and tries to catch the squirrel. But no matter what he does, the squirrel always positions itself so that the trunk is between it and the professor. The professor was to the north of the squirrel, and to the east, south, and west of it.
Did the professor go around the squirrel? The professor says yes. The squirrel says no.
Does the Moon rotate? The Earth says no. The Sun says yes.
Using “antisocial” to mean “opposed to sociality” isn’t even a colloquialism, that’s the formal definition of the word and it has been used in this sense for over 200 years.
Obviously not, as mental health professionals use the term “antisocial personality disorder” when that is what they mean.
Red, yellow, and blue are NOT the primary pigment colors!
Once at a trivia night at a local restaurant and the question was “What are the primary colors?” Our team didn’t know if they meant additive or subtractive, so we assumed additive and put down red, green, and blue. The hostess who was running the trivia night insulted us that we were stupid and that every kindergartener knows that it is red, yellow, and blue. We appealed to no avail.
Additive Primary Colors:
Red, green, blue
Subtractive Primary Colors:
Cyan, magenta, and yellow
How is this untrue? Above the arctic circle at the solstice, the sun touches the horizon to the north at midnight, then circles around to the east getting higher, then at noon the sun is overhead but towards the south, then it circles around to the west getting lower, and finally scoots across the horizon to the north at midnight again.
