Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Adventures of an Astrophysicist" [6/11]

[Zebonka]

Someone needs to get this guy to put it all into some hilarious early-80's style hip hop

[Nightwing690]

muslims and islams are just crazy suicide bombing bastards who are so dumb stupid they don't know when to stop, drop a nuke on every middle eastern country where terrorism is occuring, please obama, kill off the loonies

[avalsonline2]

@Nightwing690 muslims and islams??? wow, that alone shows your ignorance. who the hell are islams and how are they different from muslims.

as for all muslims being dumb, clearly oyu havent watched the video all the way through...

you ARE the weakest link... thank you for playing. no consolation prise here.. may you bath in your ignornce in peace

[PrincessTS01]

Creationism and Christianity have so greatly misinformed and mislead America in the last 30 years that so many don't believe in the truths in evolution and science, we are loosing ground and will become as zealots of stupidity leading to the total destruction and overrule of our nation. Religion needs to stay out of schools & education, stay out of government and leave the people that are not part of their sects and cults alone! Creationisms lies are a work of the Devil of mankind!

[mymoset]

Spain actually discovered three elements. Platinum, Vanadium and Tungsten.

[rv186rs]

@mymoset Tungsten was discovered by a Swede, it's even called Heavy Stone in Swedish.

[mymoset]

@rv186rs In 1781, Scheele discovered that a new acid, tungstic acid, could be made from scheelite (at the time named tungsten). Scheele and Torbern Bergman suggested that it might be possible to obtain a new metal by reducing this acid.[9] In 1783, José and Fausto Elhuyar found an acid made from wolframite that was identical to tungstic acid. Later that year, in Spain, the brothers succeeded in isolating tungsten by reduction of this acid with charcoal, and they are credited with the discovery.

[rv186rs]

@mymoset "Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries before others who are generally given the credit."

So what that you quoted means to say is that Scheele made the discovery of the new element first but was not credited the discovery.

[mymoset]

@rv186rs It was actually a double discovery. It was discovered independently by two people on two different places, nearly at the same time. Scheele discovered the element, Elhuyar succesfully isolated it.

[rv186rs]

@mymoset Exactly, and you'r original comment about it was about discoveries. :)

(the swedish wiki does give another story though so I'm not completely sure about the validity of either one,

"Tungsten was discovered in 1783 by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, together with his Spanish laboratory assistants, brothers JJ and Don F. de Elhuyar. The mineral scheelite was already known and was called tungsten because of its high density.")

[mymoset]

@rv186rs Wikipedia and its things. The english entry about Fausto Elhúyar tells us this:

In 1783, he visited several European universities, such as the School of Mines of Freiberg, at which he lectured on metallurgy and mine machinery; the University of Uppsala, where he collaborated with Torbern Olof Bergman; and Köping, where he visited Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the one who announced Elhúyar's discovery of tungsten, and for some reason is credited for being made by him himself.

Curious, eh?

[w1cked001]

good bit about Al-Ghazali.

[Woolfieman]

Polonium and Radium should have double flags, French (Pierre Curie) and Polish (his wife, Maria). Basically, that's why Polonium is called Polonium, for Poland, and was named by Maria Curie.

[antipodeandreason]

1.20? No it's not. Our culture can not be summed up by this, no more than you could sum up America by the Tea party or fast food. Apart from that unscientific reasoning he is still great.

[johnchanlam1993]

@antipodeandreason

Are you serious?

[antipodeandreason]

@johnchanlam1993 Yes. It is a part of our culture sadly. America's social mobility is about 10th or so in a list of countries so be careful or what it is you are trying to say. If you mean do we have self important arse holes giving each other titles and acting a bit stuck up then yes they seem to have a grasp of our social / political systems ( no elected 2nd house for us ). But to define all of us by that then no it is not right. I live here so what would an outsider know but stereotypes.

[danzombie666]

2:18 is priceless :-D

[pustolov9]

"math is language of the universe and if you take that out of your personal equation you no longer contribute to the advance of human understanding of that universe" NdGT