... While Bravus is busy writing textbooks and getting caught up on other duties, perhaps this thread will help satisfy a curiosity about science for those of us who are non-scientists. Real scientists, of course, are doubly welcome, and needed, I hasten to add, in order to keep this right-brained nit-wit from getting too fuzzy, whatever that means. (See what I mean?!?)

Well here goes:

"No law of physics that we know of prohibits time travel," said Dr. J. Richard Gott, a Princeton astrophysicist.

In his recent book "The Universe in a Nutshell," Dr. Stephen W. Hawking wrote, "Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible."

Read more at : Back to the Future

If all this is just too mysterious for some of us, well here is a more mundane fact from an earlier century:

"According to an old English system of time units, a moment is one and a half minutes."

The next time someone asks you to wait 'just a moment' you can glance at your watch and time them. ;)

The average person has 100,000 hairs on his/her head. Each hair grows about 5 inches (12.7 cm) every year.

So... in one year a person grows 500,000 inches of hair.
Divided by 12 that is 41,667 feet.
Divided that by 5280 and we come up with roughly 8 miles.
In a 75 years the average person grows about 600 miles of hair!

A Canadian, however, grows in the same time more than 960 kilometers of hair. ;)

There is a difference in the number of hairs a person has according to their hair colour, isn't there?

from wikipedia:

Average number of head hairs (Caucasian) [3]

color number of hairs diameter
Blonde 146,000 1⁄1500th to 1⁄500th inch 17 to 51 micrometers
Black 110,000 1⁄400th to 1⁄250th inch 64 to 100 micrometers
Brunette 100,000 variable variable
Red 86,000 variable variable

According to the chart blonds have 46% more hair than brunets. I suppose they might grow 46% more length in a life time. But have the studies been done??!! :)

Check it out at: Wikipedia

This is only caucasian hair, and doesn't consider other great-looking hair like African, Oriental/Asian,

If avg hair growth is 5" a year and I get my hair cut almost every month @ ~ 3/4" that comes to 9" a year. I knew my hair grew like weeds.

Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, born 300 years ago this month, classified and named more than 4000, animals and nearly 8,000 plants. - Smithsonian vol. 38, No. 2, May, p. 105, article: "Organization Man" by Kennedy Warne

I doubt that Carl Linnaeus, named any dinosaurs!

"Dinosaur Names
So where do dinosaur names come from? Dinosaur names come mostly from the people who discovered the dinosaurs. The names are made up from words in the Latin and Greek languages. Here is a list of Latin and Greek root words commonly used in dinosaur names. The meanings (included below) of these words help tell us the meaning of the dinosaur's name.

WORD..................MEANING

allo..................other or different
anato.................duck
ankylo................crooked
anuro.................tail
apato.................deceptive
avi...................bird
bary..................heavy
brachio...............arm
bronto................thunder
cera..................horned
caudia................tail
cephalo...............head
chasmo................opening
coeli.................hollow
compso................pretty
diplo.................two
dino..................terrible
docus.................beam
don...................tooth
elasmo................plated
gnathus...............jaw
hadro.................large
ichthyo...............fish
lopho.................ridged
mega..................large
metro.................measured
micro.................small
nycho.................clawed
pachy.................thick
para..................beside
pod, ped..............foot
proto.................first
raptor................thief
rex...................king
saurus................lizard
stego.................roof
steno.................slender
super.................superior
thero.................beast
tri...................three
tryanno...............tyrant
ultra.................extreme
urus..................tail
veloci................speedy

-by George Manty at http://www.mantyweb.com/dinosaur/dinosaur_names.htm


When were dinosaurs first discovered? Who gave them the name dinosaurs (terrible lizards)?

Wow, interesting. So a stenographer is a slender writer? Maybe they should have been called barygraphers or pachygraphers. Then they wouldn't have been chased around the desk all the time. Hehehehe

:)

The Greek or Latin terms are useful for office taxonomy. Has anyone ever had a boss who was 'pachycephalic?'

Oooooo good one! ROFL