# Post facts that opened your eye. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 11, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262 "2008-11-11T23:20:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/81 "2008-11-12T19:24:14Z")
> [@BaneSidhe](#): > > I’m not really sure! There’s a fellow who works in the office that’s responsible for blasting permits, training and so on, and I saw it on a t-shirt he had on one day. I’ve also heard a couple of my friends who’re engineers say it too. “There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives” - US Army Demolitions School It was one of the quotes used in Call of Duty 4 when you died. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/82 "2008-11-12T19:31:55Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > This one may need verifying: there is far less than a google _things_. Anywhere. Not a google bits of sand on Earth, not a google stars in the universe. Not a google bits of sand on all planets _plus_ all stars … there isn’t even a google helium atoms. Not sure how it opened my eyes per se, but it did change my perspective. The word you’re looking for is “googol.” “Google” is a search engine. “Googol” is 10 to the power of 100. I wonder whether there are some things that there might be at least a googol of. How about the number of electrons in the universe? (If that doesn’t work out, pick a subatomic particle.) The number of living cells in the history of the Earth, including single- and multi-cellular organisms? [QUOTE=RandMcNally] “There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives” [/QUOTE] I suppose the only question is whether the solution from said application is a _good_ one. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/83 "2008-11-12T19:34:56Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > The word you’re looking for is “googol.” > > “Google” is a search engine. “Googol” is 10 to the power of 100. > > I wonder whether there are some things that there might be at least a googol of. How about the number of electrons in the universe? (If that doesn’t work out, pick a subatomic particle.) The number of living cells in the history of the Earth, including single- and multi-cellular organisms? I genuinely read that post and thought he/she was refering to the lack of an equivalent of Google Earth™ I did think it would be a bit too ambitious to catalogue and make available on the internet each grain of sand… ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/84 "2008-11-12T19:44:11Z")
That fusion reactors are a much less feasible proposition than I’d always presumed, thanks to the following simple fact: the total energy output of deuterium-tritium fusion is 17.6 MeV. However, 80% of the energy, or 14.1 MeV, is in the motion of the neutron which, having no electric charge can escape the plasma without leaving its energy behind to help sustain the reaction. And much of the remaining energy leaks away in the form of x-rays that the plasma is too “optically transparent” to retain. Then, even if you can keep the fusion reaction going, the only practical way to generate electricity from it is by capturing the neutrons and x-rays in a surrounding themal blanket. So you’re using a millions-of-degrees plasma to create high-energy radiation, to **boil steam**. And on top of that, those high-energy neutrons would be perfect for inducing fission in Uranium-238, whose lower energy neutrons would then be captured to produce plutonium. So fusion reactors add to nuclear proliferation, not eliminate it. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/85 "2008-11-12T19:58:11Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > I wonder whether there are some things that there might be at least a googol of. Sure. There’s at least a googol integers. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/86 "2008-11-12T20:05:37Z")
> [@Q.E.D](#): > > Sure. There’s at least a googol integers. 😉 Heh. Is there a googol’s worth of bits of data if you include every piece of digitally stored information that has ever existed on Earth? ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/87 "2008-11-12T21:19:24Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > Heh. > > Is there a googol’s worth of bits of data if you include every piece of digitally stored information that has ever existed on Earth? Not even close. For a quick and absurdly huge upper bound estimate, let’s assume that there have been six billion people living on Earth at any given time for the last one hundred years, and that every _second_ of every single day of that period, every one of those people produced and stored one exabyte of digital information. (An exabyte is 2^60 bytes, or a little over a billion gigabytes.) So that’s a total of: 100 years \* 6 billion \* (1 exabyte / second) in bits [Tossing this expression into Google](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=100+years+*+6+billion+*+(1+exabyte+%2F+second)+in+bits&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=100+years+*+6+billion+*+(1+exabyte+%2F+second)+in+bit) (what else? :D) yields an answer of about 1.75 \* 10^38 bits, which falls short of a googol by about 62 orders of magnitude. You can crank up the figures in the estimate to a hundred trillion people each producing a hundred yottabytes of information every nanosecond for a million years, and it still doesn’t even come close. It does come a lot closer, though, at around [3\*10^63 bits](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=1+million+years+*+100+trillion+*+(100+yottabytes+%2F+nanosecond)+in+bits&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=). Still off by a 37 orders of magnitude, or a rough factor of ten million quadrillion quadrillions, or about a billion quadrillion times the U.S. national debt… One googol is a huge number. It doesn’t even do to _think_ about one _googolplex_; there’s not even enough matter in the known universe to write down all the zeroes! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/88 "2008-11-12T21:21:59Z")
So… what you’re saying is, a googol is quite big then? Is it bigger than a house? ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/89 "2008-11-12T21:31:43Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > Well it opened my eye to the fact itself - That I started out female! Kinda puts us Males down a peg or two - to know that we are just modified females! > > And I guess it’s not hugely meaningful, just an interesting fact that I never knew until I found out. If it’s just an interesting fact, then I can go along with that. It’s that “puts males down a peg or two” implication that I’ve often heard, but never understood. Don’t get me wrong, my assessment of it is pretty much “so?”, but if I _WERE_ going to read something into it, I would read that women are just men who didn’t develop completely. Right? Everyone starts out a woman, but some of us actually finish developing. Men - the fetuses that _didn’t_ give up when growing sex organs got difficult. Again, I don’t really think that, but it seems at least as reasonable an interpretation as any other, but I’ve never heard it. PS I don’t mean to pick on your eye opening fact - it’s something I’ve read often and never had the chance to comment on. ---
**Author:** ![maladroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f475e1/32.png) [@maladroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maladroit)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/90 "2008-11-12T21:47:30Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > Another one was the realization that cells are living organisms, and I am composed entirely of cells. This means that my whole existence is really just a swarm of living organisms working together to create this body, this mind, in the best interest of the whole. I am not a being, but rather _billions of beings all put together_. > > I am still amazed by this. take that one step further and that’s how I view the universe, that we’re small living components of something larger and possibly self-aware - could happen (I’m god, you’re god, we’re all god, god is everywhere. Wonder if our cells have religions of their own) ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/91 "2008-11-12T21:48:02Z")
No problem 🙂 I guess I saw it the pro-female way. I never really thought of it the way you describe (Women are incomplete humans) If I (an atheist) am to make a simplistic child-view religious analogy - It’s like God made women, and then stuck some spare bits of skin on to make men (So women are the masterpiece, men are the afterthought) Edit: Women are the queen ant. Men are the worker ants and the soldier ants. ---
**Author:** ![WormTheRed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/bbe5ce/32.png) [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/92 "2008-11-12T21:51:09Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > So… what you’re saying is, a googol is quite big then? > > Is it bigger than a house? Depends on the house 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/93 "2008-11-12T22:03:10Z")
> [@Natty\_Bumppo](#): > > The fact that the last Civil War widow [is still alive](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E3DB1E30F935A25755C0A9629C8B63) open my eyes to how young our country is. One way to look at the age of the United States is younger than three lifetimes. When the Civil War ended in April 1865 there were still veterans of the Revolutionary War alive and drawing pensions. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon there were still people who were born as slaves alive. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/94 "2008-11-12T22:20:09Z")
Half the people you meet are dumber than average. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/95 "2008-11-12T22:21:17Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > When the Civil War ended in April 1865 there were still veterans of the Revolutionary War alive and drawing pensions. > > When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon there were still people who were born as slaves alive. For me the equivalent is this: 1972, the year between LZIV and DSOTM, was 36 years ago. Another 36 years before that is 1936: the gulf between 1972 and 1936 seems incomprehensible than between today and 1972, especially musically. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/96 "2008-11-12T22:23:48Z")
> [@UncleRojelio](#): > > Half the people you meet are dumber than average. Only Half? Wait. That was a dumb thing to say :rolleyes: If the phrase was “Half the people you meet are dumber than you” then my question is apt. ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/97 "2008-11-12T22:50:23Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > My eye was opened when I read in (I think) “The selfish Gene” that all humans start out female. Chemical processes during the very early stages of life turn female sex organs into male, and so on. Quite apart from the various ways one can jockey for advantages in gender politics based on this notion, what does that even mean? In concrete biological terms, how do humans start out female? I’m pretty sure we don’t all develop uteruses that are reasorbed in male fetuses. I’m pretty sure the gonads do not, in males, first develop into ovaries and then into testicles. I believe (but am not sure, I’m not an expert on fetal development) that there is canal in the abdomen that in females develop into the vagina and uterus, and in males allow the testicles to descend into the scrotum and is thereafter sealed, but if you’re gonna call that a vagina you might as well call a clitoris a penis and claim that everyone’s really male. I’ve seen this claim repeated a number of times, but I’ve never seen anyone actually explain what they mean by it. Instead, all you get is a naked claim, as if it’s obvious what is actually being claimed, even though the statement certainly isn’t using any of the definitions of gender that I’m familiar with. * * * As for a revelation… a somewhat related one: words don’t have meaning. Not in and of themselves. The same word can mean subtly or unsubtly different things depending on context or who is using the word, and sometimes they don’t mean anything at all (this is what I suspect is the case with the above issue, though I’m willing to be corrected on that). Moreover, people don’t always know what they think the words they use mean. It’s perfectly possible for someone to claim that they mean one thing with a word, and then go ahead and use the very same word in a manner that contradicts their claim. And they’re not necessarily lying. ---
**Author:** ![EpicNonsense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c37758/32.png) [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/98 "2008-11-12T22:52:05Z")
> [@UncleBill](#): > > Approximately one half of the US population has an IQ of 100 or lower. > > Explains a lot. I wonder what the average DoperQ is? ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/99 "2008-11-12T22:53:42Z")
I think the bit that brings the notion down to earth is that the change happens at the chromosome level. I.e. we start out as technically female (with the only female chromosomes) and then something happens … that’s the best I can describe it without spending some time weeding out the proper explanation from the internet. ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/100 "2008-11-12T23:10:56Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > Quite apart from the various ways one can jockey for advantages in gender politics based on this notion, what does that even mean? In concrete biological terms, how do humans start out female? I’m pretty sure we don’t all develop uteruses that are reasorbed in male fetuses. I’m pretty sure the gonads do not, in males, first develop into ovaries and then into testicles. I believe (but am not sure, I’m not an expert on fetal development) that there is canal in the abdomen that in females develop into the vagina and uterus, and in males allow the testicles to descend into the scrotum and is thereafter sealed, but if you’re gonna call that a vagina you might as well call a clitoris a penis and claim that everyone’s really male. > > I’ve seen this claim repeated a number of times, but I’ve never seen anyone actually explain what they mean by it. Instead, all you get is a naked claim, as if it’s obvious what is actually being claimed, even though the statement certainly isn’t using any of the definitions of gender that I’m familiar with. It is rather an oversimplification is that the default is female. But the fetus does not need to have anything “happen” to develop female genitalia. The male fetus has to correctly develop and produce both testosterone and another hormone which suppresses development of the uterus in order to develop male genitalia. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262.md?page=6)