Asklemmy

I dunno whether it counts: but that science has effectively cured AIDS.

In 2004, 2.1m people died from it. Twenty years later that figure was a little over a quarter at 630k. The goal for 2025 is 250k. I think that's absolutely remarkable.

As a child in the 80s I was terrified of AIDS. It made me low-key scared of gay men because the news made it sound like I could I could get it from any one of them. And here we now are, able to provide a medication that can almost completely ensure that you will never be infected by HIV.

Astonishing, really.

Retinal photosynthesis, also known as the Purple Earth Theory. Colours are weird. Earth plants absorb red and blue light, they look green to us because that’s the wavelength of light that cannot be used by the chloroplasts.

It’s hypothesized that this was advantageous on Earth because blue light goes further into water than the other wavelengths, facilitating the development of photosynthetic algae

Retinal photosynthesis is another viable chemical chain reaction that could be used to create ATP (usable biological energy) from light.

It’s another molecule similar to chlorophyll, but it absorbs green light instead of red/blue - alien planets might be purple!

There’s a viable parallel evolutionary pathway that leads to plants with magenta leaves

When the moon is at its farthest orbit from earth, all of the planets in the solar system can fit in between earth and the moon.

That our species took millions of years of evolution and the chance for it to be exactly this way was so infinitesimal... And yet here we are, chasing arbitrary numbers on paper-slices and in some bank-account while also being sexists, racists, whatever-ists and destroying the very rock we exist on. Yet things like star trek are called utopia not actual-ia.

This always baffle me.

the implication of einsteins mass-energy equivalence formula is mind-blowing to me. one gram of mass, if perfectly converted to energy, makes 25 GWh. that means half the powerplants in my country could be replaced with this theoretical "mass converter" going through a gram of fuel an hour. that's under 10 kilograms of fuel a year.

a coal plant goes through tons of fuel a day.

energy researchers, get on it

That time passes differently in galaxies with different gravities. One of these galaxies is Mormon heaven.

OK, it's really a mathematics equivalence, rather than a scientific fact, but Euler's Identity:

e^iπ^ + 1 = 0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity

it shows a profound connection between the most fundamental numbers in mathematics.

The fact that there is no discernable difference between an alive body or a dead body when it comes to chemical makeup.

All the pieces are there. All the atoms and molecules are still in the same places. Yet despite this the body is still dead.

The label 'homo sapiens' for our species.

Biological evolution