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2024-11-11

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We Finally Know What Creates Static Electricity, After Thousands of Years (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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We finally have an answer: The beginning and the end of the sliding motion that produces static electricity experience different forces – resulting in a charge differential between the front and the back that results in the crackle of static electricity.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Like things we thought we nailed down in the 19th century and haven’t thought to revisit with modern methods and equipment. Then someone decides to look at it again and uncovered a boatload of previously unknown data.

“We thought we understood hiccups, but this changes EVERYTHING!”

(I dunno if hiccups are secretly a scientific black box or not, but you get the idea.)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Fun hiccup fact: the default human state is hiccups, and there's a small part of the brain that normally suppresses them. There have been rare cases where it'a damaged and someone just... never stops hiccupping. A fate worse than death imo.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If there was ever an argument against intelligent design, it's shit like this.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

See also the giraffe nerve that takes a 15 foot detour because it didn't evolve to go on the other side of their hearts. It's theorized to have travelled even further in dinosaurs:

(Source)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

This is horrifying to me for some reason