Page 4 - Science Facts

A man was cured of being unable to perceive depth by watching Hugo in 3D!

Bruce Bridgeman, was a 67 year old Neurologist went to go see Hugo with his wife in a Santa Cruz movie theater. Unfortunately for Bruce, he suffered from what is known as stereo-blindness, a disorder that doesn't allow him to experience true depth perception.

Bruce describe his disorder as '“When we’d go out and people would look up and start discussing some bird in the tree, I would still be looking for the bird when they were finished. For everybody else, the bird jumped out. But to me, it was just part of the background.”

As Bruce entered the movie theater, he was asked to pay a cover charge because the movie was in 3D. Instead of arguing with the usher trying to explain his condition, Bruce paid, took his 3D glasses, and went into the movie theater. To his amazement, Bruce was able to see the movie in it's entirety, completely in 3D!

He continued to experience this new found dimension even after he left the movie theater! He says that lamp posts stood out from the background, trees, cars, and people seemed to pop and become more vivid than ever. Remarkably, since that day, he's seen the world in 3D - depth perception and all.

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Dr Heimlich, the man who invented the Heimlich maneuver, believes you can cure HIV with malaria!

Dr. Henry Heimlich, the man that invented the Heimlich Maneuver, the procedure in which to help someone that is choking, is in fact alive, but he's performing extremely controversial studies. One of which studies, known as malariotherapy, has received an extreme amount of criticism from health, and human rights organization around the world.

Heimlich believes if someone is deliberately given malaria, they disease will cure cancer, lyme disease, even HIV. However, as of 2009, the study has given no positive results, and has been considered 'unsound, dangerous' and has even been called 'atrocious'.

Heimlich says he performed malariotherapy on 7 subjects, all of which were cured of HIV - although he hasn't released any sort of document to prove his claims. Some doctors argue that malaria actually ENHANCES HIV, rather than cures it, mainly because areas of the world where there is a high HIV rate, as well as extreme cases of malaria, the mortality rate of these diseases is extremely high.

Henry Heimlich, a man who was inducted in the Health and Safety Hall of Fame in 1993 - is now being criticized for practicing unsafe medicine. For more on this 93 year old man, click the source!

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Water doesn't actually conduct electricity!

This might sound counterintuitive given everything that you probably know about electricity and water. In fact, however, it is not water that conducts electricity, but rather the impurities in the water.

An electric current is passed when electrons are passed from one atom to the other. However, a basic requirement is that the molecules have to have a charge already for electricity to be conducted.

Distilled water; that is, water that is completely pure and devoid of any other elements, does not have charged molecules, therefore these molecules do not swap electrons. Water in it's purest form cannot conduct electricity, but stuff like salt, calcium and magnesium in sea or fresh water do.

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Any 2 humans are genetically more similar than 2 chimps from the same troop!

Thanks to a near-extinction event 75,000 years ago, all humans alive share an extremely high percentage of our genes with each other. This means that any two humans anywhere in the world are more similar genetically than two chimps from the same troop.

A reason for this is that humans might have almost gone extinct 75,000 years ago. The culprit is thought to be the Toba volcanic eruption that happened in Indonesia at around that time. The eruption was the equivalent of 1 billion tons of dynamite and it might have reduced the average global temperature by 5 degrees Celsius and started a new Ice Age.

This event might have left only around 1,000 to 10,000 breeding human pairs. From there, humans repopulated and prospered. However, the reason we share so much DNA is that we all come from those few thousands of people.

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The Space Shuttle didn't fly around New Years because its computers couldn't handle year changes!

The now-defunct space shuttle program was over 30 years old by the time it was decommissioned. It's no surprise that the computer software that ran it had some kinks that people had to work around. One of them was dates.

The computer program does not recognize when the calendar year switches. It would recognize January 1st as day 366 of the previous year. To fix the problem, they would have to basically reboot the shuttle, which would mean a period of time with no navigation updates or control of the vehicle.

This had some real world effects: In 2006, NASA moved a Space Shuttle launch by almost 2 weeks just to give the Space Shuttle more time before New Years. Learn more about the space shuttle program at the source.

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