The Most Astounding Fact

Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to designate "the most astounding fact" about the universe. Here is his answer: As I listened to deGrasse Tyson's poetry I was reminded Lawrence Krauss indicating that the atoms in your left hand came from different stars than the atoms in your right hand. This is an extraordinary claim. I decided to look at a few technical articles on heavy element synthesis, and there is very good reason to think that the heavy elements on earth were synthesized in stars. See, for instance, this Wikipedia article on nucleosynthesis, which includes the following chart on the abundance of the various elements throughout the universe. And see this article on supernova nucleosynthesis. Here's an article on stellar nucleosynthesis. Finally, here is a Nova video that includes explanations by scientists themselves.

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The size of many things, large and small

I've seen similar websites allowing you to compare tiny and large things of the world, but this is a new one called "The Scale of the Universe." I spent ten minutes enjoying the comparison, then decided to share the link to the site. Here's one thing that I noticed for the first time: The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 250,000 miles. If you traveled that long distance, starting from the surface of the sun, traveling toward the center of the sun, you'd be only 1/3 of the way through the sun.

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The ability to engage in a culture jump started human animals

What gives human animals such an advantage over so many other animals? Culture is the answer according to Susan Okie at TruthDig, commenting on a new book by Mark Pagel:

About 45,000 years ago, members of our species, Homo sapiens, reached Europe after earlier migrations out of Africa via the Middle East. The newcomers’ arrival must have come as a shock to the Neanderthals, a separate human species who had inhabited Europe for some 300,000 years. As Pagel notes, the new arrivals “would have carried a baffling and frightening array of technologies”—not only new kinds of weapons and tools, but also perhaps sewn clothes, musical instruments and carved figures. “It would have been like a scene from a science fiction story of a people confronted by a superior alien race.” The aliens likely didn’t owe their advantages to dramatically superior genes, but to a development, some 40,000 years prior to their arrival in Europe. Something happened that had immensely speeded up their ability to learn, adapt and acquire new strategies for taking over the planet: Homo sapiens had acquired culture.

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Looking at galaxies

You could spend many hours at the Hubble site, viewing the photos of distant places--places that are so far away that you become an extraordinary space and time traveler whenever you view these images. The photo below is that of M51 - "The Whirlpool Galaxy." Out of This Whirl: the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and Companion Galaxy Source: Hubblesite.org How many sentient beings living in M51 are currently viewing the Milky Way Galaxy and wondering how many people there are viewing them? That thought motivated the SETI movement and the Drake equation.

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Morality without religion

In this TED talk, primatologist Frans de Waal asserts that human morality has evolved, and that the existence of morality doesn’t depend on religion. He observes that “humans are far more cooperative and empathic than they are given credit for,” and that they are, in many ways similar to other primates. From de Waal’s experiments, one can learn that chimpanzees (who have no religion) often reconcile with one another after fights. The principle “is that you have a valuable relationship that is damaged by conflict so you need to do something about it.” What are the “pillars of morality,” that which morality is based on? Reciprocity (fairness) and Empathy (compassion) are two constants. He indicates that human morality includes more than these two factors, but not much more. Check out the beautiful 1935 video of chimpanzees at the 3:35 min mark; they cooperate in synchronized fashion to pull in a heavy box of fruit. Then check out at 4:20 what happens when one of the two chimps is not hungry, thus not motivated to work hard. This is incredible footage that will remind you of a species you often see in the mirror. What makes the uninterested chimp to work at all, according to de Waal, is receipt of a past or a future favor, i.e., reciprocity. [More . . . ]

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