science

Heat death of the universe

Weirdo

In the late 19th century, British scientist Lord Kelvin made a prediction about the ultimate fate of the universe. He stated that the universe was slowly running out of energy, and that it would eventually reach a state of “heat death,” in which all matter would be evenly distributed and all energy would be used up. This prediction was based on the laws of thermodynamics, which describe how energy is transferred and transformed in a closed system.

Many scientists were skeptical of Lord Kelvin’s prediction, but in the 20th century, the discovery of dark energy lent support to the idea that the universe might indeed be expanding and cooling as Lord Kelvin had suggested. Today, the concept of the “heat death” of the universe is still a subject of debate among scientists, but it is an interesting example of a historical prediction that has gained credibility over time.

In the early 20th century, a group of scientists…

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In the early 20th century, a group of scientists in Russia carried out a series of experiments in which they attempted to communicate with plants. They believed that plants were sentient beings that were capable of feeling emotions and responding to stimuli, and they attempted to communicate with them using various methods, including talking to them, playing music for them, and even attempting to transmit thoughts telepathically.

One of the most famous of these experiments was carried out by a scientist named Elena Blavatsky, who claimed that she had successfully communicated with a plant and had even received messages from it. Although these experiments were met with widespread skepticism at the time, they continue to be a source of fascination and have inspired a number of popular books and movies. It is still a matter of debate among scientists whether or not plants are truly sentient, but the idea that they might be has captured the imaginations of people for decades.

Cross Correspondences

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In the early 20th century, a group of scientists in the United States conducted a series of experiments in which they tried to communicate with the dead through the use of psychic mediums. These experiments, known as the “Cross Correspondences,” involved the mediums receiving messages from spirits who claimed to be deceased scientists and scholars. The messages were often fragmented and difficult to understand, but the scientists involved in the experiments believed that they were able to piece together a coherent narrative through careful analysis of the mediums’ messages.

The Cross Correspondences were controversial and were largely dismissed by the scientific community at the time, but they gained a significant following among some members of the public, who saw them as evidence of the existence of an afterlife. Despite the lack of scientific evidence to support their claims, the scientists who conducted the Cross Correspondences remained convinced of their validity and continued to pursue their research until the 1940s.

Scientist Claire Patterson spent…

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Scientist Claire Patterson spent over 20 years trying to convince the public that lead was poison.

The inventor of leaded gasoline meanwhile once went to New Jersey to argue that leaded gasoline was perfectly safe, by pouring tetraethyllead onto his hands, and then putting a bottle of it under his nose and inhaling it for 60 seconds saying he could do it every day without any problems. He then had to leave work after being diagnosed with lead poisoning.
He also went on to invent Freon, a CFC that was later banned after being shown to be responsible for ozone depletion.

Then he got polio, so he invented another thing, a pulley system that let him pull himself out of bed. He would then die after becoming entangled in this and strangling himself.

In 1996 a physicist submitted…

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In 1996 a physicist submitted a paper full of word salad and gibberish to a postmodernist journal and it actually passed peer review and was published. This is known as the Sokal Affair.

“feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of “objectivity”. It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical “reality”, no less than social “reality”, is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific “knowledge”, far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities.“