Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t!

by Neil Patrick Stewart

  Although not particularly effective as a treatment for regular hypertension and angina, the drug has been approved as a treatment for pulmonary hypertension, and is marketed for that purpose under the name Revatio.

  Bullsh*t! Viagra is not a crystalline tropane alkaloid, but a much more dangerous drug, cocaine, is. It’s not a phyllosilicate, which is a mineral, and it is not (Al2Si2O5(OH)4), that’s the chemical representation of dickite. Sildenafil is a selective inhibitor of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP)-specific phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5), an enzyme that regulates blood flow to the penis.

  Sildenafil is marketed as Viagra, but Levitra and Vivanza are brand names for vardenafil, and Cialis is a brand name for tadalafil.

  THE MILKY WAY!

  The official name is the Milky Way Galaxy, which is actually redundant in a way: The word “galaxy” comes from the post-classical Latin galaxias, which means “milky way.” The Greek root gala means “milk.”

  The Milky Way is the galaxy we live in, and at its center is a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*. The entire galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter, and our sun is just one of the estimated 200–400 billion stars in it.

  English is the only language in which we refer to the galaxy as the “Milky Way.” In other languages it is known as the “Diamond Finger,” the “Thousand Layers of Paper,” the “Iron Shirt,” the “Deity’s Palm,” and the “Nephrite Belt.”

  Fact. The ancients dubbed our galaxy the Milky Way because of the visible milky patches of night sky, which were actually millions of stars. A Greek version of milk was galaktos, which should sound familiar if you are galaktos-intolerant.

  Fact. Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-Star) has the asterisk because there is technically no way to prove that the black hole is there, although most space experts believe it is. (If you called this one the lie based on that criteria, you’re probably wearing a lab coat and should stop procrastinating and get back to your experiments now. Besides, Stephen Hawking thinks it’s there, and that’s good enough for me.) Sagittarius A* is only about 26,000 light years from the earth.

  One hundred thousand light years is incredibly wide. It’s 587,862,537,318,360,800 miles! It’s shaped like a disk, too. Depending on what you’re measuring, it’s only between 2,000 and 12,000 light years across.

  If you think an estimation of between 200 and 400 billion stars is pretty broad, you’re right. We still have plenty to learn about our home!

  Bullsh*t! All of those are moves or skills in Shaolin Kung Fu.

  Many other languages call our galaxy the Milky Way, but there are a lot of creative names as well, that derive from ancient legends: In Cherokee, it is Gi’lï’-utsÛñ’stänÛñ’yï, or “Where the Dog Ran.” In Hungarian, it is Hadak Útja, or the “Way of the Warriors.”

  MIND CONTROL!

  In 1999, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Yang Dan managed to control the mind of a cat with a complex series of electrodes directly connected to the cat’s brain. The team was able to make Bella sit, stand, walk, and turn both left and right with commands entered into a keyboard.

  A team at the Freie Universität Berlin has produced a car that you can drive with your mind. The program is called BrainDriver.

  As brain-computer interface technology gets cheaper and cheaper, several toy companies have jumped in the mix with mind-control games, including Mattel’s Mindflex and the Star Wars Force Trainer from Uncle Milton Industries.

  Bullsh*t! That would be cruel.

  Yang Dan’s team at UCB did do something awesome with cats, however: They decoded “messages” from firing neurons in cats’ brains and were able to produce images and movies of what the cats see.

  Holy crap, that’s awesome.

  Fact. The team, led by Raul Rojas, tricked out a Volkswagen Passat with some serious technological bling. The primary equipment is the driver’s headset, which is wirelessly connected to a computer interface. The headset measures electromagnetic signals from the brain, which, after calibration, mean different things to the software. Hence, the driver can think “slow down” or “turn left” and watch the car comply.

  The Passat is also outfitted with video cameras, radars, and laser sensors that help the car “know” its surroundings and help the driver with adjustments, such as the severity of a turn, for example.

  Unfortunately, the mind-controlled car is not street-ready: There is a short delay between the thought and the car’s execution of that thought (not something you want on the highway), and it’s still not possible to apply a lot of detail to your instructions to the car.

  Still, I want one.

  Fact. Both toys use electroencephalography (EEG) technology to read your brain waves. With an EEG headset, you can control the speed of a fan, which blows a Styrofoam ball into the air, giving the illusion of telekinesis.

  The Star Wars Force Trainer comes with the added delight of hearing Yoda’s voice praise your performance.

  PREGNANCY!

  On May 14, 1939, Lina Medina of Peru gave birth via caesarean section to a healthy 6-pound baby boy. There would have been nothing exceptional about the pregnancy if not for the fact that Ms. Medina was five years old at the time.

  In 1988, in the tiny African nation of Lesotho, a fifteen-year-old girl gave birth to a healthy boy via caesarean section. There would have been nothing exceptional about the pregnancy if not for the fact the girl had no vagina, and subsequently no apparent way to become pregnant.

  In 2008, in India, Omkari Panwar gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, via caesarean section, and there would have been nothing exceptional about the pregnancy if not for the fact that Ms. Panwar was eighty-one years old at the time.

  Fact. Medina remains the record-holder for the youngest mother ever to give birth. The birth was well-documented, and prominent physicians from around the world traveled to examine her and confirm that the five-year-old had indeed given birth.

  Lina Medina’s parents raised her and her son as sister and brother.

  Fact. The girl suffered from a congenital malformation called

  Müllerian agenesis, which led to her having only a dimple where her vagina should be. In other words, there was no access to her reproductive organs between her legs.

  She had visited the hospital nine months earlier to be treated for stab wounds to the abdomen. She reported that she had performed oral sex on her boyfriend immediately prior to being stabbed by her ex. This led doctors to conclude that sperm had traveled from a wound in her belly to her reproductive organs.

  While skeptics may doubt the possibility of such an unlikely pregnancy, a girl with no vagina became pregnant, and the skeptics have not offered an alternate theory as to just how it happened.

  Bullsh*t! Panwar was not eighty-one: That would be ridiculous. We can still be amazed, though, because she was seventy years old at the time. In a strange coincidence, Rajo Devi Lohan, also of India, gave birth to a healthy daughter in 2008 as well, and Lohan was also seventy years old.

  FLAMETHROWERS!

  Concerned about the potential for disastrous floods as a result of heavy snowfall, the mayor of Boston, James Curley, sent a letter to the president of M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), asking him to assign a group of engineers to the task of melting snow drifts. The mayor’s suggestion? Flamethrowers.

  Detroit inventor Charl Fourie unveiled a hood-mounted flamethrower for cars (maintaining that it was intended for self-defense only), and received thousands of orders, but was prevented from making them due to a federal law making personal possession of flamethrowers illegal.

  The modern flamethrower was invented in the early twentieth century, but massive tubed flamethrowers were used as early as 424 B.C., and the Byzantine navy had sophisticated brass-tubed flamethrowers mounted on their ships by 672 A.D.

  Fact. In 1948, the new year brought massive snowfall with it, and Mayor Curley was apparently desperate. I can’t think of anything that might go wrong by unleashing fl
amethrowers on the Boston streets, can you?

  His idea was perhaps not that far-fetched. Today you can buy the BareBlaster Ice Torch and scorch the heck out of your driveway, if you want.

  Bullsh*t! Fourie did invent a vehicle flamethrower, called the Blaster, in 1998, in his native South Africa. The Blaster was not hood-mounted, but spewed flame from underneath the side-doors (for the purpose of deterring carjackers).

  His first customer was a police superintendent, and he received a lot of media attention, but in the end only sold a few hundred units before moving on to his next invention: a pocket-sized personal flamethrower.

  By the way, in the U.S., there is no federal law against private individuals owning flamethrowers.

  Fact. Ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote about a massive siege engine built by the Boeotians, in which a bellows propelled burning resin and pitch up the length of a hollowed-out beam of wood, spouting fire on enemy fortifications. This was used to devastating effect against the Athenians in the Battle of Delium in 424 B.C.

  The Byzantine naval flamethrowers were dominant and effective, winning for them multiple sea battles during the Byzantine-Arab Wars.

  The modern flamethrower was invented by German scientist Richard Fielder in 1901.

  THE ATOM!

  The atom is made up of subatomic particles called electrons, protons, and neutrons. Electrons are the lightweights of the bunch: It takes over 1,800 of them to equal the mass of one proton.

  An atom is so small that it would take roughly a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) hydrogen atoms to tip the scales at 1 pound. A human hair is about 10 million carbon atoms thick. An estimated 2 x 1030 atoms make up the Earth.

  Nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction during which the nucleus of an atom splits apart. Fission can cause an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction, something the world has experienced firsthand in the form of the atomic bomb.

  Fact. Protons and neutrons have about the same mass, and they significantly outweigh electrons. If an electron had the mass of a small jelly bean, a proton would weigh the same as that 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke in your fridge!

  Bullsh*t! Too heavy, too narrow, and too few. It would take nearly 300 septillion (300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) hydrogen atoms to weigh a pound.

  A human hair is only about 1 million carbon atoms thick. A sheet of thin aluminum foil is less than 200,000 aluminum atoms thick.

  Written out, 2 x 1030 would be a 2 with 30 zeroes after it

  (2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), or 2 nonillion. In truth, Jefferson Labs estimates that the earth has 1.33 x 1050 atoms, or 133 quindecillion, which looks like this:

  133,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

  000,000,000,000.

  Fact. When the nucleus of an atom is split (fission) the fragments travel away from one another extremely rapidly. In an atomic bomb, neutrons freed by the split collide with other nuclei, causing them to split in a successive exponential chain reaction. The motion of all the fragments traveling so quickly apart from one another is converted to X-ray heat, which is what makes the bomb so destructive.

  MAGNETS!

  When magnets were first discovered in ancient Greece, they were lodestones, which were naturally occurring magnetized minerals. Lodestones were prized for their “magical” properties and were used to make the first magnetic compasses.

  While the very first credit cards were magnetic, these days the “magnetic strip” on the back of your credit card is not actually magnetic at all. The strip is made of injection-molded plastic, which stores information in a series of tiny bumps and valleys.

  In a groundbreaking 2010 study, neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered that magnets can alter your sense of morality. When participants’ brains were subjected to strong magnetic fields, they were more likely to judge a morally dubious scenario as acceptable, and vice versa.

  Fact. Lodestones are made of magnetite, which is partly iron. These lodestones were found in Magnesia, so they were called Magnes lithos, for “Magnesian stone.” Over the years, the word simplified to “magnet” and entered our language that way.

  Bullsh*t! Injection-molded plastic with information stored in miniscule bumps and valleys is the mechanism at work with audio CDs.

  The first credit cards were not magnetic at all–they were like business cards with a person’s account information written on it, allowing him to use credit at a specific store.

  Today, the strip on the back of your credit card is, in fact, made up of thousands of tiny magnets, encased in plastic. The technology is quite similar to the magnetic tape in an audio cassette or VHS movie.

  Just like when a tape deck spools the tape through to “read” the music, you are playing your credit card for the point-of-sale reader when you swipe it at the grocery store.

  Fact. The scientists used the magnetic fields to target the part of the brain that has been linked to moral judgment.

  When volunteers were subjected to the magnetic fields, they had a harder time separating intentions and outcomes in hypothetical scenarios. For example, when told that a woman tried to poison her friend, but the friend wasn’t harmed, magnetized brains were more likely to judge the situation as morally acceptable.

  I think this proves why Magneto is such a dastardly villain.

  BLOOD!

  One of the primary functions of our blood is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the parts of the body that need it. When our blood is carrying oxygen, it is bright red. When it is not, our blood is a much darker red, with slight traces of blue. In general, our blood is never totally blue. Our veins that appear blue are not actually blue–it’s an optical illusion.

  A biotech company called Arteriocyte has come up with a way to produce synthetic blood by “farming” it from umbilical cords. If FDA-approved, the process could eliminate the need for donating blood in the near future.

  There are about 8 gallons of blood in the human body. It would take 68 million mosquito bites to completely drain the average human of blood.

  Fact. Our blood is red because of hemoglobin, an iron-rich protein in our red blood cells. The presence of oxygen makes those cells an even brighter red.

  It’s a myth that deoxygenated blood is true blue; it is maroon, albeit sometimes with a bluish tinge.

  Some veins appear blue because of the complex way our skin absorbs and reflects light. Amazingly, they are not actually blue. If you weren’t looking at them through your skin, you’d see them for what they are.

  Blood, by the way, is 55 percent plasma, which on its own is yellow.

  Fact. Arteriocyte’s technology takes hematopoietic cells from umbilical cords and puts them in a bone-marrow-like environment, with all the nutrients needed to become blood cells. In three days, 20 units of transfusion-ready blood can be produced by 1 unit of umbilical cord blood.

  The discovery was financed by–who else–the Defense Department. Mass-produced synthetic blood could be much more easily delivered to battlefields than donated blood, which needs to travel farther and can expire before it arrives. After a traumatic injury, blood loss is the cause of 40 percent of military casualties in the first twenty-four hours.

  Bullsh*t! We only have between 1 and 2 gallons of blood in our body. It would take a mere 1,100,000 mosquitoes to empty our bodies.

  URANUS!

  In our solar system, Uranus is the third-largest planet volume-wise, and the fourth-largest mass-wise. Uranus is the coldest of the planets, and if you lived near one of the poles on Uranus, you would have forty-two years of sunlight followed by forty-two years of darkness.

  Uranus has thirteen known moons; the largest are named after characters from Homer’s Odyssey: Odysseus, Penelope, Poseidon, Athena, and Calypso. All five major moons are made of solid rock.

  Uranus has been visited only once, by a spacecraft called Voyager 2. It visited the Uranian system in 1986, and there are currently no missions under development for spacecr
aft to visit Uranus again. Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 and still communicates with Earth.

  Fact. Jupiter and Saturn take up much more space than Uranus. Neptune takes up less space, but has more mass, because it is denser. Uranus has the peculiar property of rotating on a drastically different axis than the other planets in our system. Because of this extremely sideways axis, one pole will spend forty-two years in the sun (half of the time it takes the planet to orbit the sun) and forty-two years in darkness.

  Bullsh*t! Uranus has twenty-seven known moons (and counting), and five major ones, which are called Titania, Oberon, Ariel, Umbriel, and Miranda, characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

  All five moons are made of rock and ice, and Miranda is predominantly made of ice.

  The rest of Uranus’s moons take their names from Pope and Shakespeare as well, including Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, Portia, and Prospero.

  Odysseus, besides being the hero of the Odyssey, is a crater on Saturn’s moon Tethys, and Penelope is as well. Poseidon is an asteroid, and was once the name of a moon of Jupiter. Athene (not Athena) is an asteroid, and Calypso is a moon of Saturn.

  Fact. In its first twelve years of operation, Voyager 2 visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, taking the first and most detailed pictures of each. There is still active communication between NASA and Voyager 2, even though it is more than 8 billion miles away.

  Scientists recently proposed a mission that would drop a “shallow probe” into Uranus. Seriously.