In this Discussion
- chin3beggar June 2006
- darbie_starpower June 2006
- doctor5cap June 2006
- editor19work June 2006
- ezorvera June 2006
- formerly shades of blue June 2006
- giggleguy June 2006
- honeyowl4 February 2006
- irisjudge83 February 2006
- jedi_grrlie June 2006
- jetsurf799 June 2006
- mexico39taiwan June 2006
- moveadvice72 January 2006
- pencilhail02 June 2006
- QueenofthePosers February 2006
- rain7look June 2006
- RejectedSponge June 2006
- sense1bengal June 2006
- thephantommilk June 2006
- tune1shade June 2006
- women60banana June 2006
- woodmaid8 June 2006
Comments
The domestic sheep is the most common species of the sheep genus. It is a woolly ruminant quadruped that probably descended from the wild moufflon. Many breeds of sheep exist, generally divided into wool class breeds and hair class breeds. Farmers develop wool breeds for superior wool quantity and quality (fineness of fibers), wool staple length and degree of crimp in the fiber. Hair class sheep are the original class of sheep, developed worldwide for meat and leather.
More useless information:
The Super Bowl is today.
Throwing salt over your left shoulder:
Originated in Rome where they used salt as currency. Because it was so valuable and rare, if you spilled it, it was said that the devil was watching over you. And with the left hand/side being considered evil, over your left shoulder he was watching. So you take a pinch of the salt, throw it over your left shoulder, always with your right hand, and blind the devil. ^^
I love that one.
Let's see now...-delves deep into the sewers of her mind-
Angus Young, the guitarist of AC/DC, actually enjoys painting landscapes in his free time. The man who helped write "I Wanna Cover You In Oil" enjoys painting landscapes. He is also just 5'2'', and drew the devil-Angus cartoon that is painted on the headstock of the Angus Young Signature Gibson SG.
Whatshisface from Star Trek never actually said "Beam me up, Scotty."
Roughly translated, Schizophrenia means 'shattered mind' in Greek.
Queen is coming to Portland Oregon in April and I'm probably going! -glee- $50 nosebleed seats, so what. ( For those of you blanking out, Queen is the artist of Another One Bites The Dust, and Bohemian Rhapsody. WHOOO!)
So, back in the Victorian days when soda parlour were in its heyday, the clergy banned sodas because they had addictive and aphrodisiac qualities. One of the more popular additions in these sodas was ice cream. So, the parlous made "soda-less" sodas on Sundays (just ice cream and syrup). They called them the Sundays.
Sundays. Sundaes! YES!
The Big Bang theory tells us how the Universe began and is evolving. In essence, it is a theory that was created to explain two facts that we know about the Universe - it is gradually expanding and cooling. In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble found that galaxies far from our own Milky Way are moving away from us. In fact, the further away galaxies are, the faster they are receding. So he concluded that the whole Universe must have been expanding. Working backwards this means that at one stage the Universe must have come from a single point.
We also know that the Universe is cooler now than in the past. In the 1960s Arno Panzias and Robert Wilson detected the afterglow of the Big Bang, known as the cosmic microwave background [or CMB for short], which revealed that the Universe was once a very hot, hostile place. Both these discoveries led astronomers to deduce that the Universe began as an infinitely compact fireball.
The Big Bang describes how this fireball grew to form all the stars and planets we see around us now. Because of its name many people think of the Big Bang as a kind of explosion that happened at some specific point in space, but this isn't correct, as the Universe didn't spring from one central ignition point. Instead, during the Big Bang space was first created and then stretched.
The easiest way to understand this tricky concept is to think of the Universe as a fruitcake in an oven. Imagine you are a bit of fruit inside the cake. As it bakes, the cake rises and all the other bits of fruit around you move further and further away. No matter whereabouts in the cake you are, everything around you is moving away at the same rate. But unlike the fruitcake, there is no centre to the Universe.
ECHOES
After the Big Bang, the Universe was an incredibly hot fireball, expanding to create the Universe we see around us today. In the beginning though, space was jam-packed full of tiny particles. Light couldn't travel anywhere: it was immediately halted by all the particles that were flying around. So space was completely opaque, a concept which is very hard for us to imagine, as we are used to being able to see everything around us.
But after 300,000 years, the Universe had cooled to about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun. This was when particles began to join to form atoms. Atoms don't interfere with light, letting it travel by unimpeded. So gradually light began to pour through the Universe.
The afterglow from this momentous event formed a bright halo, whose light then began gradually to filter down through space and time. As we look out into space we also look back into time. If it were possible to see out this far, this cosmic halo would form the furthest visible point in the Universe. Everything beyond this, from the birth of the Universe until this epoch of 'first light' will be invisible to us forever.
But if we can't see it then how do we know that it's there? In 1963, two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, chanced across a mysterious signal, later called 'the cosmic microwave background', or CMB for short. This signal is the leftover energy from this historic cosmic event. An event so powerful that its effects filtered all the way through space and time and can still be detected today. You can even see it for yourself - the fuzzy interference that appears on your untuned TV set is the signature from the early Universe.
When astronomers measured this signal in different directions, they saw that it was stronger in some areas than others. This is due to the fact that in the early Universe atoms weren't spread out evenly, so light flooded across the Universe in uneven ripples. There have been many recent projects, such as BOOMERanG and MAXIMA, which involved sending balloons above the Earth's atmosphere to measure these ripples in the CMB. Astronomers can then create a map of the early Universe and see how matter evolved into galaxies. Not only that, but by measuring this pattern across all of the sky, astronomers can calculate the shape and size of the whole Universe. Doing this will help to crack one of the greatest mysteries of all time - the fate of the Universe.
THE END
Astronomers are now fairly sure that the Universe was born 15 billion years ago in the Big Bang. Since then, the Universe has been constantly expanding, stretching the very fabric of space itself. But will it ever die? And if so, how?
There are three alternative scenarios for the future fate of the Universe. If the expansion continues forever then the Universe is destined for the Big Freeze, gradually pulled apart into a cold desolate wasteland of dying stars and black holes. If space stops stretching and springs back on itself, it will shrink until galaxies start colliding in the Big Crunch - terminating in the mother of all black holes. However, there is a more peaceful option. The final scenario involves the Universe gradually slowing down to a halt. With the whole Universe balanced precisely, cosmic catastrophe would be averted and space would be saved. At least for a while. Eventually the Universe would succumb to the Big Freeze, it would just take a lot longer.
The fate of the Universe is basically a battle fought between the inward pull of gravity and the outward push of expansion. So astronomers are trying to calculate the strength of these forces. The amount of gravity the Universe has to wield against this expansive onslaught depends on how much stuff there is out there in space. Anything with a mass has its own gravity. Even you yourself have a gravitational force that attracts everything else around you, including other people. The bigger you are, the stronger this force is, and so, the Earth, being the most massive thing around, completely overwhelms the tiny forces that we personally possess. So to calculate the fate of the Universe, we must weigh it to find its density.
In astronomy, the density of the Universe goes under the symbol Ω (or Omega), the last letter of the Greek alphabet, meaning 'the end'. The precise amount of matter needed to gradually halt the expansion of the Universe is known as the critical density, where Ω=1. If Ω is 1 then the future of the Universe is a gentle, serene stop. Smaller than 1 and we're heading for the quick Big Freeze, a universal ice age. Larger than 1 then it's Crunch time. So our destiny depends on our density. Recent results show that Ω is at least 0.3. That figure includes the mysterious dark matter that lurks invisibly in space and has yet to be fully understood.
It has also been proving difficult to measure the precise expansion rate of the Universe. Recently it's been discovered that this expansion is accelerating under the grip of a previously undetected force, called dark energy, that is helping to pull the Universe apart. Until both these dark questions are answered, the fate of the Universe still hangs in the balance.
However, although the end of the Universe may look pretty black, this impending cosmic catastrophe is not our most pressing concern. In about 4 billion years the Sun will expand and engulf our planet Earth. Also around the same time, our nearest galactic neighbour, Andromeda, will start to crash into our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Life on Earth must escape into space if it is to survive.
BLACK HOLES
Black holes were once thought to be the monsters of the Universe, devouring everything around them in a frenzied cosmic feast. But now astronomers think that rather than being a space menace, black holes may be fundamental to the creation of galaxies.
Black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape, making them impossible to see. But we can see the stuff that is being sucked in to these massive cosmic vacuum cleaners. Anything that approaches a black hole is first torn apart by its immense gravitational force and then forms a flat rotating disc that spirals into the hole.
As this debris gets closer and closer to the mouth of the black hole it speeds up and the bits start to smash together. The material heats up due to this friction [this is the same effect as when you rub your hands together to warm them up]. When this happens around a black hole, X-rays are given off which we can detect. If the black hole is really large and has lots of debris in its disc, then it can reveal itself as one of the brightest objects in the Universe - a quasar.
There are two main types of black hole - stellar and supermassive. Stellar sized black holes are the remnants of massive dead stars that have imploded. The nearest one to us is part of a binary system called Cygnus X-1, discovered in 1971. It is in the constellation of Cygnus, also known as the Northern Cross. It's estimated that our galaxy contains millions of these stellar black holes. Supermassive black holes, on the other hand, can have initial masses millions of times that of the Sun. It's now thought that they may lurk in the centre of every galaxy and be integral to the way galaxies evolve. There might also be other types of black holes, such as mini black holes, smaller (in volume) than atoms but as massive (in amount of matter) as whole mountains. Or even middle-sized black holes, mid-way between the stellar and supermassive variety. It's possible that there could be such things as 'white holes', the opposite of black holes, spewing out matter and energy into the Universe. However, this is just another of the cosmic mysteries still awaiting a solution.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle.
Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.
Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Ninety eight per cent of the weight of water is made up from oxygen.
Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
I learned that tonight at my bon-fire.
The word “PEZ” comes from the first, middle, and last letters of the German word for peppermint, PfeffErminZ.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
Pearls dissolve in vinegar.
Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are ten to twenty years of age or older.
The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.
The first CD ever released to the public was Billy Joel's 52nd Street in Japan in October 1982. CDs were not introduced to the U.S. until March 1983. The Boss's Born In The U.S.A. was the first compact disk that was available in the U.S.
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
Prior to contrary belief, the 57 on the Heinz ketchup bottle does not represent the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
hahaha
hahaha
hahaha, I have a lot more..
This is addicting..
Scientific research has been found to be a leading cause of cancer in rats.
When you eat celery you burn more calories than you consume.
A shrimps heart is in its head
In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.
It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
Horses can't vomit.
The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
A dragonfly's life span is 24 hours.
A human's thigh bone is stronger than concrete.
Babies are born without kneecaps.
A novel called Gadsby had 50,000 words, and none had the letter E.
Cockroaches fart every 15 minutes.
The longest word in the English language has 1,909 letters.
Albert Einstein couldn't speak very well at age nine.
Houseflies vomit on their food before eating.
Over 10% of americans each day eat at McDonalds.
Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
Peanuts are an ingredient in dynamite.
Fish scales are an ingredient of lipstick.
The average woman consumes 6 pounds of lipstick in her life.
Each year over $2,000,000,000 worth of Halloween candy is sold.
Cat urine glows under a blacklight.
The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30ft.
There are approximately 250,000 sweat glands in your feet, and they sweat as much as 8 ounces of moisture per day.
If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs -- it will let you go instantly.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks, otherwise it will digest itself.
There's 118 ridges on a dime.
A penny dropped from a skyscraper can't kill you or even break any of your bones, it will just hurt, a lot. However, it can penetrate the roof of a car.
Caterpillar means "hairy cat" in Old French.
The Hawaiian alphabet only has 12 letters.
The dot that appears over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
The magic word 'Abracadabra' was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.
The only English place that has a name that ends with an exclamation mark is "Westward Ho!"
The pound key (#) on the keyboard is called an octothorpe.
The term "mayday" used for signaling for help (after SOS) comes from the French "M'aidez" which is pronounced "MAYDAY" and means, "Help Me."
The word Spain means "the land of rabbits."
A kiss for one minute can burn 26 calories.
A person infected with the SARS virus, has a 95-98% chance of recovery.
fraternal twins = "unidentical twins."
fraternal twins = "unidentical twins."
to be fair pushing anythings eyeballs will make it let you go
and other such balls
and other such balls
<please insert useless fact, thank you>
<some djs are very cute>