this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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Science Memes

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Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



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[–] ShaunaTheDead@fedia.io 142 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Quantum mechanics unveils the spaghetti code on which our universe runs

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 56 points 3 months ago (2 children)

String theory… further proof that breaking your spaghetti violates the fundamental laws of the universe.

[–] IndiBrony@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

breaking your spaghetti

This angers the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[–] applebusch@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I just want to say that string theory is in all likelihood complete bullshit and I'm tired of people acting like it's not.

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[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 3 months ago

i can't wait to see the source comments

"this should NOT work, yet it does, if you touch this i will flay you alive"

[–] argh_another_username@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 months ago

This is beautiful, it’s poetry.

[–] Omgboom@lemmy.zip 78 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Just because you know how something works doesn't make it not magic

[–] yesman@lemmy.world 29 points 3 months ago (2 children)

If you understand how quantum mechanics works, why are you keeping it a secret?

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago

Out of pure spite.

[–] JayDee@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

If you understand magnets you know how magic works. Hell, even aerofoils seem like a glitch in reality.

[–] BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The dictionary disagrees with you.

[–] lath@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

That's because it's a dic.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, but higher literature (DnD rulebooks) disagree with YOU

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[–] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago

The dictionary sucks.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Even magic itself loses its magic when you know how it works.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 10 points 3 months ago (11 children)

Does it, really? Or is it "magic" all the way down...? :-D

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[–] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

Any sufficiently analysed magic is indistinguishable from science!

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 64 points 3 months ago (2 children)

As a matter of fact, reality is far more exciting than magic. Magic is limited by what our feeble human minds can dream up. Science has shown time and time again that reality is far more complex and far more interesting.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

The difference between magic and science is that magic is centered on humans in the way that the entire cosmos was once thought to rotate around Earth. Both a magical universe and a scientific universe contain rules that humans can discover and tools that humans can use to influence their environment, but a magical universe is for humans and about humans whereas a scientific universe is not even indifferent to humans.

I admit that it would be nice to have gods and even the very fabric of reality care about what I want...

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, hon. The magical universe may SEEM to be centered around you, but you're really just experiencing the side benefits of it being centered around me.

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[–] modifier@lemmy.ca 31 points 3 months ago (3 children)

As a former evangelical Christian, the natural universe we inhabit is magical and exciting and fascinating in a way that it simply isn't when you believe it was the creation of an all-powerful God as basically a training ground for Heaven or whatever.

There is so much more to learn and understand. It is fucking awesome!

[–] applebusch@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

As someone raised by Christians I'm glad you made it out too.

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[–] orbitz@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I do agree but if you wanted to make to case for 'God' they could have made sure some of their creatures evolved to understand his work, assuming they did it in a logical way. I'm not a person with faith but just try and think a way is possible, though usually trying to understand weird comic and media universe type actions.

We are the way for a universe to understand itself (paraphrased from Sagan). Though his writing is much more interesting than this comment. I just think there's room for belief if it works for people, but not for the strict literal interpretations that many seem to believe.

[–] modifier@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

That Sagan phrase inspired me to adapt a Descartes principle:

Because I am conscious, the universe is conscious.

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says "Say, you're in here a lot, are you maybe an alcoholic?"

The horse says "I don't think I am." and immediately vanishes.

I would have said at the start that it was going to be a Descartes joke, but that would have been putting Descartes before de horse

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[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 31 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

God doesn’t play with dice
-Einstein

Tada!
-God

[–] DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works 28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

A good illusion is still spectacular even when the illusion is broken. The magical world was boring to begin with.

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[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 28 points 3 months ago (3 children)

If I watch too much fantasy world or read about it too immersively , I think about how all of their powers are normal to them. Light, fire, storms, electricity, the states of water, tides, giraffes, etc., they're all magical. We've just named them and have ways to describe how they work in an orderly, understandable, format.

[–] Baguette@lemm.ee 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ah yes the giraffe, the most magical being

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[–] refalo@programming.dev 23 points 3 months ago (10 children)

Science is just a stepping stone to philosophy.

Actually, all roads lead to philosophy.

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[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 3 months ago

its funny to me, the existence of science being something as mundane as "rubbing three moderately flat surfaces against each other in succession will inevitably produce a flat plane as it is the only functional outcome for that problem"

opposed to the incredibly complex and intricate technicalities of steel smelting, and even beyond that, casting properly.

and then also, we know why cicadas make so much noise, it's really simple. Just a little bit (ok well a lot of bit) of constructive interference. But actually, we also have no fucking clue how they manage to count such long periods of prime duration reliably and consistently.

There's also the technicality of being able to explain how molecule level physics works, but then not being able to comprehend molecule scale physics in something like biology until recently.

I'm convinced that science is just reverse engineering the universe. Eventually, one day, we will figure out how to create an entire universe, and we will.

Science is the ultimate version of philosophy.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The woo doctor says there's fairies in the garden and unicorns in the forest, and never shows them to me. The biologist says there's birds the size of your thumb that flap their wings so fast they become a buzzy blur, and there's huge winged creatures that fly through the ocean called "Manta rays." He shows me pictures and specimens of both.

The woo doctor says my fever is caused by a lack of yellow bile, eat this dandelion it's yellow. The physician says my fever is caused by an infection of tiny creatures inside my body, look you can see them if you look at this snot sample under a microscope. We have a chemical that kills these organisms called antibiotics, eat those and you'll get better.

The woo doctor says the dot in the sky he thinks of as the god of time has traveled into the crab part of the sky so I probably shouldn't make any big decisions this week. The astronomer looked through a bunch of old records, noticed a pattern, and predicted the next appearance of a comet down to the finest detail, years in advance.

The woo doctor says things that can burn are full of a substance called phlogiston, which is released by fire into the air, which can only hold so much phlogiston. The chemist says it's hydrocarbons or carbohydrates combusting into carbon dioxide and water vapor, and proves it by burning a variety of things and condensing water from the vapors that emerge. He's built way better lamps and is starting to build these powerful engines based on his techniques.

The woo doctor tells fun stories sometimes I guess. The scientist has all the actual cool stuff.

[–] Gloomy@mander.xyz 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The woo doctor says there's fairies in the garden and unicorns in the forest, and never shows them to me. The biologist says there's birds the size of your thumb that flap their wings so fast they become a buzzy blur, and there's huge winged creatures that fly through the ocean called "Manta rays." He shows me pictures and specimens of both.

This sounds so much like a writing prompt.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Does it? Because it sounds like history to me.

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[–] dogsoahC@lemm.ee 14 points 3 months ago

Science shows us why the world is excting and lets us find even more exciting things. That beings said, it's still a funny joke.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

All basically being bubbles of probability where a field of energy exists, in a seething universe of virtual particles (fields) coming into existence and getting annihilated by it's anti-part again.

The "universe of whirling chaos, birthing existence" i've seen in some Manga as origin story of gods, doesn't seem so far fetched now.

[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 9 points 3 months ago

I dont care about particles moving through walls because of science, i want to move through walls by yelling a word because of magic

[–] homura1650@lemm.ee 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Quantum mechanics is not magic. Magic specifies the outcome, but not how a system evolves to reach that outcome. Quantum mechanics has precise equations describing how a system will evolve over time, but is famously bad at describing the outcome.

By the same token, we can see that thermodynamics and conservation laws, while widely accepted, are magic. I have heard legend of a deeper magic known as "Lagragians", although knowledge of that lost art remains confines to the warlocks' ivory tower.

https://xkcd.com/2904/

[–] popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The rules for magic and the rules of existence in most fictional universes are significantly more defined (and, arguably, more solid) than the rules for science and existence in this world.

Even the brush off of "Its magic. I don't have to explain it," at least indicates that SOMEONE understands the effect and its relative existence.

If you find 5 people who say that they fully understand a single branch of science then I'd bet all of my money in my pocket that you found them in a padded recovery room sans shoe laces.

[–] 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I always like the comparisons to how magical our world would seem to someone in an alternate reality where transistors or maybe even electricity wasn't a thing.

Like you can dumb it down to really magical sounding things like calling a cpu "runes etched in sand".

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

this makes me think of the meme about time traveling an awing everyone and they ask but what is electricity to the average joe guy

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The internet has definitely stolen a lot of the magic from the world. Foreign places aren't mysterious anymore. I've seen a million videos and pictures of every place I want to visit already, and I talk to the people who live there every day. The Burmuda Triangle isn't something mysterious anymore, The Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, UFOs, everything, it's all pretty much disproven now. Even ancient Chinese medicine has been peer reviewed and either proven or disproven. Where's the magic that existed before the internet? I guess in the quantum realm, but that doesn't have the same type of mystery.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Open your mind, and you'll see it again. Below organisms lay organs, tissues, cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and even before you hit the quantum it all works together spectacularly, in ways that nobody really understands.

e.g. is there a cure for Alzheimer's, or "cancer", or death? Can we grow new limbs, either from the patient's own cells or at least off the rack generically? We've convinced ourselves that just bc we have a good enough microscope to view the book of life (DNA, plus some other stuff like mitochondria and centrioles) that we "understand" it, but we do not, I promise you, or else we would have all of those aforementioned things.

But don't take my word for it: pick one of those places you mentioned and visit it - I mean actually go there. You will see what even the locals who have lived right next to it for their entire lives do not. Or start reading a Wikipedia page for something you have always been interested in but never taken the time to learn about, and you'll see that you may never want to stop... The mystery is nowhere close to being gone, we've just told ourselves that it is.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 4 points 3 months ago

Your third paragraph hits on something I had to realize in my “how to enjoy existence” journey. Put simply, don’t discount meatspace. Sometimes your brain needs those experiences even if you think you don’t. Plus with any current or near future technology, consuming media about a place is not the same as being there. There is no comparison vs the data throughput of all of your senses, even before you get to the social/cultural aspect and being able to interact.

I’m in the US and have coworkers in Europe along with the ones local to me. We talk almost every day, and interacting with them led me to learn a bit on my own about their area, culture, etc.

I’ve also gotten to visit a couple times over the past couple years, and yeah like I said there’s no comparison. You get a lot of the vibe for a place in all that extraneous data your senses are always generating. Just seeing how the people carry themselves, and the different ways various mundane everyday stuff is done, it all incrementally builds into a more cohesive experience.

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