<![CDATA[What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks?]]>What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? I don't mind if it's quite technical. I just want to hear what you folks are being surprised by!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/4bc07583-53dd-497d-bbb6-1edb5230e982/what-s-the-most-surprising-fact-you-ve-learned-in-the-last-couple-of-weeksRSS for NodeMon, 25 May 2026 08:27:56 GMTThu, 07 May 2026 10:46:26 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 23:57:51 GMT]]>@pschwahn @johncarlosbaez (putting on my chemist's hat) drinking distilled water is completely fine (and the osmosis thing mentioned in another response is utter bunk; by the time it's gone down the hatch, it would have some stuff dissolved in it that makes it less hypotonic). It's just that distilled water doesn't really taste all that good; it's the dissolved minerals and gases that make water tasty. (Personally, I find it slightly bitter.)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/tpfto/statuses/116536001916391823https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/tpfto/statuses/116536001916391823Thu, 07 May 2026 23:57:51 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 23:28:05 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez Chromosomes often get knots in; and there are enzymes that among other things, unknot them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topoisomerase

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.org.uk/users/penguin42/statuses/116535884875781514https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.org.uk/users/penguin42/statuses/116535884875781514Thu, 07 May 2026 23:28:05 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 23:11:05 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez That there are unified formalisms for describing hybrids of reversible (eg. Hamiltonian) dynamics and irreversible dynamics (eg. friction) in which the role of energy (for the former) and entropy (for the latter) are formally very similar.

I'm not sure whether this is something deep or just a bit of bookkeeping for people writing simulations with the "entropy" being a useful fiction.

Eg. the metriplectic and GENERIC formalisms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GENERIC_formalism

Anyway, you asked, so...

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/dpiponi/statuses/116535818018524146https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/dpiponi/statuses/116535818018524146Thu, 07 May 2026 23:11:05 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 22:30:49 GMT]]>@saltywizard @johncarlosbaez this is deeply misleading and materially harmful to legitimate service animal handlers. Business owners, public transit operators etc are legally allowed by federal law to ask "is that a service animal" and "what tasks has the animal been trained to perform" and they are allowed to deny access to animals that pose a threat or disruption to normal operations regardless of supposed certification or training. What animals are allowed to be used in public spaces as service animals varies somewhat by state. But "pedigree" matters not at all and is not germaine to an animal's service as an assistance animal in the same way that businesses cannot deny access to wheelchair users based on the manufacturer of their chairs. Proprietors of public spaces cannot say "your cane/chair is homemade so you cant use it in here". But if the assistive device is causing damage or other disruptions, the user can legally be asked to take it outside. Do better by the disabled than to spread harmful misinformarion based on shitty clickbait. @Lambo

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Irenetherogue/statuses/116535659702664553https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Irenetherogue/statuses/116535659702664553Thu, 07 May 2026 22:30:49 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 22:20:54 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez @jer_gib north korean recipes actually tend to be less heavy on the garlic, although whether this predates their food shortages I'm not sure. I suspect it does though, and even a well-fed NK would not use as much, because the really famous strong-flavoured Korean food is more from southern regions like Jeolla-do.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://types.pl/users/liamoc/statuses/116535620725815734https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://types.pl/users/liamoc/statuses/116535620725815734Thu, 07 May 2026 22:20:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 22:10:19 GMT]]>@Lambo - I like this idea a lot!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535579114295221https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535579114295221Thu, 07 May 2026 22:10:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 21:49:15 GMT]]>@normalmode - Wow! For those who don't click:

"In​ 1606 a devastating pestilence swept through London; the dying were boarded up in their homes with their families, and a decree went out that the theatres, the bear-baiting yards and the brothels be closed. It was then that Shakespeare wrote one of his very few references to the plague, catching at our precarity: ‘The dead man’s knell/Is there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives/Expire before the flowers in their caps/Dying or ere they sicken.’ As he wrote, a Greenland shark who is still alive today swam untroubled through the waters of the northern seas. Its parents would have been old enough to have lived alongside Dante; its great-great-grandparents alongside Julius Caesar. For thousands of years Greenland sharks have swum in silence, as above them the world has burned, rebuilt, burned again."

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535496235921274https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535496235921274Thu, 07 May 2026 21:49:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 21:47:42 GMT]]>@jer_gib - both surprising! I wonder if the North Koreans would eat just as much garlic if they could afford it.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535490134886224https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535490134886224Thu, 07 May 2026 21:47:42 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 21:29:50 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez Stretching the “couple of weeks” timeframe a bit, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the first paragraph of this article:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/katherine-rundell/consider-the-greenland-shark

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/normalmode/statuses/116535419868921899https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/normalmode/statuses/116535419868921899Thu, 07 May 2026 21:29:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 20:49:19 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez @saltywizard
Shhh don't tell anyone yet, but soon we will run a public experimental instance of @peertube at @tibhannover , inviting researchers to publish explain videos about virtually everything, spreading those right here on the Fediverse... So please keep your good ideas in mind! (TIB - same place where we run the full backup of arXiv etc)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://openbiblio.social/users/Lambo/statuses/116535260555228067https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://openbiblio.social/users/Lambo/statuses/116535260555228067Thu, 07 May 2026 20:49:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 20:46:03 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez It looks like the continued fraction expansion of the Friedman constant has period 66754.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/457086/simple-continued-fraction-of-freimans-constant

It would be nice if there is a geometric interpretation of this constant.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/Ianagol/statuses/116535247709666183https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/Ianagol/statuses/116535247709666183Thu, 07 May 2026 20:46:03 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 20:09:30 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez I learned in Korea recently that North Korea is much more worried about the influence of K-Culture (music, drama, etc) than about military interventions or poverty. And that (South) Korea is the number one per capita consumer of garlic.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/jer_gib/statuses/116535104019014681https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://functional.cafe/users/jer_gib/statuses/116535104019014681Thu, 07 May 2026 20:09:30 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 20:09:17 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez
Somehow I missed this in the past. It's believable, but not particularly intuitive.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/dougmerritt/statuses/116535103187655030https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/dougmerritt/statuses/116535103187655030Thu, 07 May 2026 20:09:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:52:22 GMT]]>Here's my big recent surprise: the number

F = (2221564096 + 283748 sqrt(462)) / 491993569

plays a fundamental role in number theory!

For any irrational x, we define its 'Lagrange number' to be the supremum of c such that

|(p/q) - x| < 1/cq²

has infinitely many solutions for rationals p/q. So, the bigger the Lagrange number is, the easier x is to approximate by rational numbers. Quite famously, the golden ratio has the smallest possible Lagrange number, namely √5.

Here's the shocking fact: every real number ≥ F is a Lagrange number, and F is the smallest number with this property!

F is called 'Freiman's constant', because he proved this fact. His proof is 100 pages, and I don't want to read it... but some people have.

There's a lot more crazy stuff about the set of all Lagrange numbers. A tiny bit is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_spectrum#Lagrange_spectrum

Link Preview Image
]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535036632605800https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116535036632605800Thu, 07 May 2026 19:52:22 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:47:44 GMT]]>@thmprover @johncarlosbaez @pschwahn

The reason I heard is that it reverses the direction of osmosis in your gut, leaching nutrients from your body instead of distributing them.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/forrcaho/statuses/116535018410926551https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/forrcaho/statuses/116535018410926551Thu, 07 May 2026 19:47:44 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:38:31 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez @foldworks well akSHUallY I think you mean "general relativity" because only non-inertial reference frames could lead to the twins being different ages when reunited.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/forrcaho/statuses/116534982196390673https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/forrcaho/statuses/116534982196390673Thu, 07 May 2026 19:38:31 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:36:24 GMT]]>@eigil True. I'm a touch old-fashioned in this respect. I note that renaming all the things is the number one strategy when it comes to ignoring prior art. @johncarlosbaez @julesh

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://types.pl/users/pigworker/statuses/116534973836429663https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://types.pl/users/pigworker/statuses/116534973836429663Thu, 07 May 2026 19:36:24 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:29:08 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez @julesh @pigworker Mathematicians tend to call containers "polynomial functors". David Spivak has written a lot about them under this name.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/eigil/statuses/116534945312199021https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/eigil/statuses/116534945312199021Thu, 07 May 2026 19:29:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:12:57 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez @pschwahn I heard this in chemistry class in school. Well, "distilled water is not for drinking" was the rule, the justification was that it lacked some of the essential stuff found in tapwater.

Presumably, it was also to prevent students from drinking the distilled water, which parents donated to the chemistry class.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/thmprover/statuses/116534881673571388https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/thmprover/statuses/116534881673571388Thu, 07 May 2026 19:12:57 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:04:08 GMT]]>@julesh @pigworker - I don't even know what a "container" is. It's my own fault. There's this repository of computer sciency category theory terminology that's different from the mathy category theory terminology, and I've never been tempted to explore it. There must be something about it that repulses me. I guess my love of math fizzles out when it starts getting too close to computer science. I apologize.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116534846957058626https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116534846957058626Thu, 07 May 2026 19:04:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 19:00:04 GMT]]>@pschwahn - hmm, I never thought it was unsafe. It's just water, after all! But nobody ever told me otherwise. I wonder how common that belief is.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116534831006399881https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116534831006399881Thu, 07 May 2026 19:00:04 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 18:59:48 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez @isaackuo

we will have to mine the surface for structural material

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fediscience.org/users/drdrowland/statuses/116534829933080273https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fediscience.org/users/drdrowland/statuses/116534829933080273Thu, 07 May 2026 18:59:48 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 18:58:22 GMT]]>@saltywizard - I feel there should be YouTube videos about this....

@Lambo

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116534824290680734https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116534824290680734Thu, 07 May 2026 18:58:22 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to What's the most surprising fact you've learned in the last couple of weeks? on Thu, 07 May 2026 18:57:11 GMT]]>@johncarlosbaez @Lambo

i've heard local anecdotes about a pony on the bus, but i haven't researched national trends.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/saltywizard/statuses/116534819649633646https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/saltywizard/statuses/116534819649633646Thu, 07 May 2026 18:57:11 GMT