“The thing about science is, first of all, it’s after the way the Universe really is, and not what makes us feel good” - Carl Sagan
moments of existance
my man, Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the history and present state of NASA, why we’ve stopped dreaming and what we can do to help.
hexa-awesome.
The Hexagon
Hexagons have to be one of my favorite shapes, it’s hard to say why but I just think they’re neat. They have internal angles that add up to 720 or 4 lots of pi for those who prefer radians (everyone). The other neat thing is that the length between a vertex and the one opposite is twice the length of one of the sides in a regular hexagon. This in turn means that hexagons can be constructed from equilateral triangles. The area for a hexagon is given by the formula A=((3√3)/2)t^2 where t is the length of one of the sides, or alternatively simply A=1.5dt where d is the length between parallel sides. The elegant construction discovered by Euclid is also pictured.
Hexagons also pop up a lot in nature, being the shape of honey combs (for it’s space optimizing ability), igneous basalt columns, crystal structures, benzene rings, snow flakes and the clouds on Saturn’s north pole.
As a scientist, I feel that my role is to object when religious belief causes people to teach lies about the world. In this regard, I would argue that one should respect religious sensibilities no more or less than any other metaphysical inclinations, but in particular they should not be respected when they are wrong. By wrong, I mean beliefs that are manifestly in disagreement with empirical evidence. The earth is not 6,000 years old. The sun did not stand still in the sky. The Kennewick Man was not a Umatilla Indian. What we need to try to eradicate is not religious belief, or faith, it is ignorance. Only when faith is threatened by knowledge does it become the enemy.
— Lawrence Krauss - Should Science Speak to Faith? (via scipsy)
