For me it is the fact that our blood contains iron. I earlier used to believe the word stood for some ‘organic element’ since I couldn’t accept we had metal flowing through our supposed carbon-based bodies, till I realized that is where the taste and smell of blood comes from.

  • Urist@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    There is about 8.1 billion people in the world. Assuming romantic cliches to be true and that we all have exactly one soulmate out there, we would have a very hard time sifting them out. If you were to use exactly one second at meeting a person it would take you 257 years to meet everyone alive on earth at this moment, which due to human life span being significantly shorter and the influx of new people makes the task essentially impossible without a spoonful of luck. Moral of the story: If you believe you have found your soul mate, be extra kind to them today.

    • Damage@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      Soul mates are made, not found. You get with someone compatible to you, and through the sharing of experiences and affection, if nothing goes excessively wrong, they become unique for you.

  • whileloop@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There’s a giant ball of extremely hot plasma in the sky and we aren’t supposed to look at it. What is it hiding? Surely if someone managed to look at it long enough, they would see the truth!

  • Mothra@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Time relativity always boggles my brain, I accept the fact but I find crazy that if I strap my twin and his atomic clock to a rocket and send them out to the stratosphere at the speed of light, when they return he’ll be younger than me and his clock will be running behind mine. Crazy

  • Iraglassceiling [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The birthday paradox

    If you get 23 people in a room the odds of two of them sharing a birthday are 50%

    The birthday paradox is a veridical paradox: it seems wrong at first glance but is, in fact, true. While it may seem surprising that only 23 individuals are required to reach a 50% probability of a shared birthday, this result is made more intuitive by considering that the birthday comparisons will be made between every possible pair of individuals. With 23 individuals, there are (23 × 22)/2 = 253 pairs to consider, far more than half the number of days in a year.

    • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      it’s not part of the paradox, but there are also days when people tend to have more sex
      like new years, valentines, christmas etc. (in the west at least)
      so you tend to get more people born 9 months after those days

      • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        In high school my graduating class was 38. The one before us was 21, the one after 18.

        Coincidently there was a massive blizzard that snowed everybody into their house for a week about 9 months before my birthday.

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Queuing theory can have some fun surprises.

    Suppose a small bank has only one teller. Customers take an average of 10 minutes to serve and they arrive at the rate of 5.8 per hour. With only one teller, customers will have to wait nearly five hours on average before they are served. If you add a second teller the average wait becomes 3 minutes.