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A scientific fact/tidbit you recently learned that you thought was interesting

Delvo said:
Elsewhere in the realm of parasites altering host behavior, there's a type of crab that normally hides as much as it can but, when infected, "dances" out in the open, which gets it eaten by the parasite's next host.
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For those interested in the topic, there's a great book that I read years ago called Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. Really fun and in depth look at all sorts of parasitism, which quite a lot of the zombie stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex.../ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes readers on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life-forms—which are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life’s diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior. He also vividly describes parasites that can change DNA, rewire the brain, make men more distrustful and women more outgoing, and turn hosts into the living dead. This comprehensive, gracefully written book brings parasites out into the open and uncovers what they can teach us all about the most fundamental survival tactics in the universe—the laws of Parasite Rex.
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a_unique_person said:
Electrons exist in the quantum electromagnetic field. The 'heavy' electrons, Tau and Muon, exist in a separate field.
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My guess is that you mean that electrons are an excitation in the electron field. Electrons, Taus, and Muons are all electrically charged and thus all equally interact with the electromagnetic field.
 
Take a paperclip. Put it on a surface in front of you. Get a magnet and pick up the paperclip with the magnet. A magnet that is small and light enough to hold in your hand can overcome the gravitational force of the whole of planet Earth.
 
a_unique_person said:
Take a paperclip. Put it on a surface in front of you. Get a magnet and pick up the paperclip with the magnet. A magnet that is small and light enough to hold in your hand can overcome the gravitational force of the whole of planet Earth.
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So when you drop the magnet... it's pulling the entire Earth towards itself! [emoji54]
Amazing!
[emoji16]
 
Rodents Of Unusual Size

Are actually rather chill and cuddly



They don’t inhabit fire swamps but do inhabit regular swamps in South America
 
cicadas on speed

Chris_Halkides said:
From CBS News: "'So, males for example, they'll continue to try and mate with females — unsuccessfully, because again, their back end is a fungus [their genitals have fallen off]. But they'll also pretend to be females to get males to come to them'...Usually, male cicadas will let out a loud humming sound to attracted female cicadas and the female will flick her wings to signal she wants to mate. But the fungus has males flicking their wings like females to attract males and in turn, infect them, [Associate Professor Matthew] Kasson says."
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NBCNews: "West Virginia University mycology professor Matt Kasson, his 9-year-old son Oliver, and graduate student Angie Macias are tracking the nasty fungus, called Massospora cicadina. It is the only one on Earth that makes amphetamine — the drug called speed — in a critter when it takes over."
 
A grizzly bear’s bite is strong enough to crush a bowling ball. Stronger than a lion's or tiger's bite.

(And yet a polar bear would likely still kick its ass)
 
William Parcher said:
How do you crush a bowling ball? It seems to be uncrushable.
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I think anything that can be fractured can be crushed. Hence traprock. You'd be hard put to crush a mild steel ball or a lump of pizza dough, because they are elastic and just squish down, but with enough force you can crush a ball of granite or ebonite, because they break.
 
Probability rather than fact but...
https://physicsworld.com/a/evidence-grows-for-deconfined-quark-matter-in-neutron-star-cores/

It is very likely that ultra-dense deconfined quark matter exists in the cores of the most massive neutron stars, according to a study by an international team of physicists. The team led by Aleksi Vuorinen at the University of Helsinki applied Bayesian inference to observations of neutron stars and concluded that there is a 80–90% that the exotic state of matter exists in the heaviest objects.
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