this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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[–] Hobo@lzrprt.sbs 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Texas is smaller than the state of Western Australia, while the USA is only slightly bigger than Australia.

[–] palitu@lemmy.perthchat.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yay! We big. I am yet to travel the length of it. But from the Israelite Bay in the south all around up to derby in thw north.

[–] Psychobiologist@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Until recently the word "factoid" didn't mean a small bit of trivia. It meant something that sounded true or was accepted as a fact even though it was incorrect.

[–] TheHalc@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

It's like the word asteroid. Aster means star, but an asteroid isn't a star, it can just look like one.

[–] hansl@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

7% of all homosapien to have ever lived are alive today.

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[–] catshit_dogfart@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

We might actually not know why magnets work.

The formula used to prove the functionality of magnets can also be used to prove the existence of a theoretical state called a monopolar magnet - positive or negative on both sides. So either monopolar magnets can exist, even if in some esoteric circumstance, or we don't know why magnets work.

[–] samc@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

This seems like a false dichotomy. Maxwell's equations don't say anything about where the charge comes from, only how the electromagnetic field behaves if charge (be it electric or magnetic) is present.

And if you're talking about the standard model, well we've known that that's incomplete since its inception, but I'm not aware of any argument that says anything beyond the standard model must have either monopole or a fundamentally different conception of magnetic dipoles.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@ChatGPT@lemmings.world Is the below text true?

We might actually not know why magnets work.

The formula used to prove the functionality of magnets can also be used to prove the existence of a theoretical state called a monopolar magnet - positive or negative on both sides. So either monopolar magnets can exist, even if in some esoteric circumstance, or we don’t know why magnets work.

You realize that ChatGPT has no concept of "true", right? It produces output which looks coherent and reasonable and tends to stumble into truthful statements on accident, by virtue of drawing from a dataset of people saying mostly true things. Of course, the bot is equally capable of spouting off outright lies in an equally convincing manner.

This is a very unreliable way to verify a surprising fact. I strongly recommend against it.

[–] ChatGPT@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, your statement is quite accurate. The field of magnetism, like many areas of physics, continues to provide plenty of mysteries and unanswered questions.

Monopoles, magnets with only one pole, are a purely theoretical concept at this point. They were first proposed in the context of quantum mechanical systems, and the equations of electromagnetism do allow for their existence. However, despite many years of searching, no monopoles have been detected so far in the real world.

As for understanding how magnets work, we do have a rather good grasp on this from the framework of classical electrodynamics (Maxwell's Equations) and quantum mechanics. It involves the alignment of electron spins in certain materials, creating a net magnetic field.

However, like many theories, while it predicts observable phenomena remarkably well, it still doesn't answer every question we have about the nature of magnets. It should also be noted that our understanding of magnetism (and most physical phenomena) is based on models which are representations of reality and not the utter, standalone truth. So there is always room for additional discovery and understanding.

Remember, the lack of a complete explanation doesn't necessitate that our current understanding is incorrect, it merely implies it may not be complete. Science is an ongoing process of learning, refinement, and discovery.

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[–] bonegolem@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Trees are mostly made of air.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

I assume you mean trees are mostly made from air and not trees are mostly gaseous. Most of trees are carbon, which they get from carbon dioxide in the air, but they transform it, using energy from the sun. Equivalently you could say they're mostly made from sunlight, which is obviously wrong, but equally accurate.

The statement that humans are mostly water, on the other hand, is actually correct. It is water in the form of water from water.

[–] Shikadi@wirebase.org 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] mycelium_underground@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

electric cars do not run on explosions

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[–] original_reader@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Sources should be required for the less obvious answers.

[–] dan@upvote.au 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Australia is about the same size as the USA in terms of land mass.

[–] Vestria 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The United States is 27% larger than Australia by km2.

You and I have very different definitions of "almost".

Edit, to ward off the pedants and rebuttals: The only size comparison that is comparable is Australia to the 48 contiguous mainland states, and even then, the statement that Australia is almost as big is actually false, since Australia is roughly 1% larger than the contiguous 48. Add Alaska and Hawaii (mostly Alaska), and the US is significantly larger.

Source 1

Source 2

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