this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
964 points (98.1% liked)

Science Memes

11047 readers
3140 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I mean, on a cosmic scale, the moon is tiny, and it is quite close to the earth.

So, this isn't wrong.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Just watched a flat earther trying to dispute that the moon is not 250k miles/kilometers away from earth because he was able to photograph it with his camera.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

There's a scientist with a knife approaching you at a speed you're uncomfortable with.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

This was one of the few things that Lucretius was very wrong about in De Rerum Natura.

Nailed survival of the fittest, quantized light, different mass objects falling at the same rate in a vacuum.

But the Epicurean cosmology was pretty bad and he suggested that the moon and sun were both roughly the size we see them as in the sky.

Can't get them all right.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Reminds me of good old Ken M

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Ken M <3 that takes me back

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

Aliens landed in my backyard the other day, and these little one-inch creatures came out. They walked up to me, I looked down and said - "Are you really one inch tall?" - and they said - "No, we're really very far away".

That's an old Steven Wright joke. Weirdly half-forgotten, the man deserves at least as much love as Mitch Hedberg does.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There is a great story about that by the great writer Italo Calvino called 'the distance of the moon': https://irenebrination.typepad.com/files/calvino-italo-cosmicomics.pdf

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

In that story, sometimes the moon would be so close, that if you would jump on the right moment you would be taken up by its field gravity.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Always time for one of my favorite fun facts:

The moon is so far away from the earth that all the planets in the solar system could fit between the earth and the moon.

I mean, not for long, but it would be worth it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hold on a second. You can fit Jupiter and Uranus in there?

WTF?! I have to check this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Ok shortest distance earth moon surface: 340 000 km.

  1. Diameter Jupiter: 143 000 km
  2. Diameter Uranus: 51 000 km
  3. Diameter Neptun: 49 500 km
  4. Venus: 12 000 km
  5. Mars: 6 800 km
  6. Mercury: 4 800 km

Earth: 12 800 km

Damn I even can fit an another earth in there and it is still plenty of space

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is 116 500 km, so we're missing the mark with a little more than 43 000 km.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well 340 is the shortest distance of the orbit

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

True! But that was also what you used 😜 I looked up the average distance though, which seems to be 385 000 km. Which means we would fit everyone with about 2 000 km to spare 😃

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The interesting part is that it would be kind of a close fit, astronomically speaking

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

All the craters are from rednecks shooting at it. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

And ancient peoples of all continents shooting arrows at it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Speaking of conspiracies. Anyone seen the wild statement that was made by a col at Salt just this week?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpl0FrdJWfs

Absolutely no clue what to think of it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

I was having a debate I didn’t know I was having with a flat earth guy at a Christmas party last year lol. He was asking me questions and I didn’t get why but were basic science so I was answering and then suddenly clicked when he started making remarks about how we only see one side of the moon. I still don’t get where he was going because I laughed it off and went about my business but he seemed to think that “they” were projecting a picture of the moon I guess? Or maybe the sky is a giant screen? I don’t know , it was just funny that it happened but I do wonder how you could think something like that but not think that ‘they’ would have that kind of technology and capabilities but not be able to project a different side or picture of the moon if that’s all it would take to debunk peoples claims of the moon being fake.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

mine is "airplanes are secretly very fast roller coasters"

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

FECK! ARSE!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

When I first started using Facebook, a relative shared something from a conspiracy theory page, and I started reading all of the stuff from the page and it blew my mind (I was around 11 or 12 I think). But then a few conspiracy theories were too obviously wrong even for the child I was. One was a video of the moon being passed over by a cloud. Because the cloud was very thin and the moon was bright, the light shone through nearly unaltered. And the text was claiming that the cloud was passing behind the moon and that this was the evidence that the real moon had been destroyed and a fake one had been built which was much closer to earth (beneath the clouds).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well this is by design. Some conspiracy theories are just out there to make everyone think all conspiracy theories are hoaxes. They are the completely idiotic ones that is impossible to even see how they would work.

The entire flat earth society is also a complete hoax. It's just there because people Google on these things and that's the first hit the search engines give you. I think they say on the page that the earth is like an elevator that goes up all the time, or something like that. :)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I like to pretend they're memes. It makes the world a little less bleak. 😂 Sometimes they're actually unironically hilarious and you'll see them here.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 5 months ago (5 children)

My favorite self made up conspiracy of the moon is:
As we all know the moon is moving away from the earth slowly each year but that means it was once much closer perhaps so close even that it rolled along the surface of early earth, pushing down on creatures that were lazy and didn't get out of the way into the ground giving us fossils.

When the dinosaurs disappeared it wasn't from an apocalypse they just got tired of being squished and dino capitalism and decided to grab onto the other side of the moon as it rolled by and are now stuck up there.

And that's why the government won't let us go to the moon. Because they don't want us to meet our dino comrades.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Did you come up with this as a kid? Totally sounds like something I would've thought of as a little one.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

the moon is made out of cheese.

goverment cheese was never made to feed the poor or to bail out dairy farmers,
it was used to built the set where they faked the moonlanding.

and now they feed it to the poor to get rid of the evidence.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (1 children)

With the current theory of how the moon was formed, it was in fact close enough to be touching the earth at one point... technically

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Thats some new kind of tidal locking

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Thank you.

I know, the evidence is outstanding. Truly the final leap in logic when you really look at the pieces.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

You never hear about all the planes that crash into the moon, that is clearly in the sky why does the government cover up the truth?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

It's part of their model already. And oh! The sun has the same size.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Also in this model, the sun and moon cannot be seen in the sky at the same time, except during an eclipse. And the stars never change through the seasons, they are fixed points that look the same no matter where you are at on Earth.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

I can't remember which comedian said this but he absolutely loves talking to flat earthers. Whenever they bring up the moon being too small, etc., he bursts out laughing and says, "You believe in the moon?!"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You believe in the moon?

load more comments
view more: next ›