frezned: thefourofclubs: My sister just came upstairs and looked at me with...
My sister just came upstairs and looked at me with really really wide eyes and shouted she actually shouted “NOTHING EVER REALLY TOUCHES ANYTHING! QUANTUM PHYSICS! HOLY SHIT!” and then ran back downstairs
that was so weird I’m a little bit scared
Okay so the whole thing is that atoms repel each other when they’re close together. But that’s “close together” on an atomic level, so like when you touch the surface of a table with your fingertip you can’t perceive distance between them.
And you feel the tabletop because the atoms of the table repel the atoms of your finger, and vice versa, and your body’s tuned to perceive that force.
So the electrons of the finger atoms aren’t actually knocking into the electrons of the tabletop atoms, they’re just repelling each other from a distance, kind of like how magnets do.
Things are really weird at the atomic level, though, because we’ve adapted to perceive everything at the human-size level. Electrons aren’t little marbles, they’re more like little clouds of energy.
So to say “things don’t REALLY touch” because they are actually just repelling at an atomic level is TOTALLY WRONG!! BECAUSE
repelling at an atomic level
is what touching IS
Tom wins life.
Source: fuckyeahbeyblades
Dolphins Catch Fish with Shells
Proving once again humans aren’t the only animals to use tools, Australian researchers documented bottlenose dolphins using conch shells to capture fish. Once the conchs contained small fish, the dolphins swam with them to the water’s surface, and raised them above to shake the water out, leaving their prey to slide into their mouths. What’s more, the same scientists believe it is possible the dolphins are learning the conch fishing method by observing and imitating one another. Learning is another behavior chiefly associated with humans, but the Murdoch University research is another blow to that human-centric view. To put it simply, scientists are gradually overturning the outdated and false notion that humans are the only intelligent species on the planet, and animals are merely dumb beasts.
Oldest "Human" Skeleton Found--Disproves "Missing Link"
“The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin’s time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today’s apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas”
YES!!! This is amazing!! I HATE chimps and gorillas and I’m pretty excited that we’re not closely related to them like we used to think. (seriously I think chimps and gorillas and monkeys that are bigger than my finger are probably the only animals I strongly dislike. I just find them creepy. They’re a bit too “uncanny valley” for me.
(OP:areminder/RB:robotindisguise)
Source: areminder
i’ve always been fascinated by the details of bodies and chemicals and hormones and the science of romance.
