Random Thursdays Archives - Page 7 of 9

Category: Random Thursdays

Living Zombies: People Living Without A Heart

February 14, 2019

20 people die every day waiting for a heart transplant. Luckily science has found a way to keep people alive without a heart while waiting for a new one. Here’s everything you need to know about artificial hearts.

The first artificial heart was received by Barney Clark in 1982. He only survived for 112 days, but subsequent patients lived longer and longer and now go years on a machine.

The Syncardia Total Artificial Heart is the go-to artificial heart these days. It replaces the left and right ventricles with two bifurcated bladders through which fluid is pumped in and out, forcing the blood up into the atriums like a normal heartbeat.

The fluid is piped into the body through tubes that protrude from the abdomen that lead to a backpack. The backpack carries the pump device and the batteries that power it. Each battery lasts 6 hours.

Another, simpler device is called the Left Ventricular Assist Device, this is a continuously flowing pump that leads blood out of the left ventricle directly into the aorta, meaning people with this device have no pulse.

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5 People With SUPERHUMAN Abilities

February 07, 2019

They walk among us.

While movie-style superheroes are unfortunately just a fiction, there are in fact people with stunning superhuman abilities. Here are 5 of them.

1. Veronica Seider is a woman with superhuman vision.
She has the ability to recognize a person from a mile away, and can actually see individual pixels on the TV from across the room. Her eyesight is roughly the same as that of an eagle, which earned her the nickname the Eagle-Eyed Woman.

2. Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant with a superhuman memory.
He is able to recite Pi to over 25,000 digits and speaks multiple languages. One of the secrets to his success is the fact that he has synesthesia, which means he can perceive numbers and words as colors, textures, and shapes.
Daniel’s TED talk:

https://bit.ly/2jXNejK

3. Rajmohan Nair has the superhuman ability to conduct electricity.
While most people would die at even a tenth of an amp of current flowing through them, Nair can take several amps at a time, enough to power a lightbulb or power tools. Do not try this at home.

https://bit.ly/2A30eSb

4. Joy Milne has a superhuman sense of smell.
For reasons that nobody seems to understand, Joy Milne’s sense of smell is so acute, she can smell Parkinson’s disease. She smelled it on her husband 10 years before he showed any symptoms. Researchers are now trying to determine exactly what molecules she is smelling to help detect Parkinsons earlier and possibly save lives.

https://bit.ly/2HYkit9

https://bit.ly/2Gd30GV

5. Isao Machii has superhuman reaction speed.
A modern-day samurai, Machii holds 6 world records involving the katana, and can even split a BB that has been fired at him in mid-air while unsheathing his sword.

World Record: https://bit.ly/2UJgLQP
Pellet: https://bit.ly/1yv2hpX
Bean: https://bit.ly/2DXcNP4

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The Condition That Makes People’s Faces Disappear

January 31, 2019

Prosopagnosia is a rare condition, usually brought on by some kind of damage to the brain that causes people to lose the ability to recognize faces.

This is a type of visual agnosia, which prevents people from recognizing objects or shapes.

People with these conditions are functional in every other way, with normal intelligence and mental aptitude, but must adjust their way of perceiving through the world by relying on other senses, much like blind people.

With a little extra planning and care, these people can go on to live relatively normal lives.

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4 Most Compelling Videos Of UFOs

January 25, 2019

Videos of UFO phenomena are all over YouTube. Here are 4 of the most compelling I’ve found.

From the Taipei 101 Tower on New Year’s Eve to newly declassified footage from the US Navy and Homeland Security Department, here are four videos of UFO phenomena that defy explanation.

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Phantom Limbs: When You Feel A Hand That Isn’t There

January 17, 2019

Some studies have shown that up to 80% of amputees experience some kind of phantom limb pain – the feeling that the missing limb still exists. But is this all in their head?

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The Plague That Makes You Dance To Death

January 10, 2019

The Dancing Plague of 1518 was an event that caused more than 400 people to dance in the streets of Strasbourg, France for 2 months, leading to the deaths of dozens of people. This really happened.

Some of the solutions for the Dancing Plague include ergot poisoning, mind-controlling parasites similar to toxoplasma gondii or the cordyceps fungus, and mass hysteria, also known as mass psychogenic illness. Many also attribute the Dancing Plague to St. Vitus, and have called it the Plague of St. Vitus.

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6 Jobs That No Longer Exist Thanks To Technology

January 03, 2019

From human alarm clocks to a global ice cutting industry, here are 6 once-common jobs that no longer exist thanks to technology.

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Introfest 2018!

December 27, 2018

You voted, here are the results. These are the top 6 intros from my channel over the years. Enjoy!

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The 5 Worst Christmases Ever | Random Thursday

December 21, 2018

Christmas is a joyous time of year for most people, but sometimes horrible disasters occur that ruins Christmas for a lot of people. Here are 5 of the worst Christmas disasters of all time.

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How Atomic Bombs Help Catch Art Forgeries

December 13, 2018

Art forgery is a multi-million dollar business, one that museums and appraisers are constantly battling. But there is one technique they’ve found to foil forgers that’s near foolproof – and it involves atomic bombs.

Wolfgang Beltracchi is an artist who got his start as a forger of classic masters like Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. But he and those in his business found a foil in Peggy Guggenheim, Dr. Elena Basner, and a cadre of scientists that found a technique that searches for traces of the isotopes cesium-137 and strontium-90.

The reason is that these isotopes are only created by fission of Uranium 235, and between 1945 and 1963, 522 open-air atomic bomb blasts scattered these isotopes into the atmosphere, which then got into the soil, made its way into flax plants, which were used to create linseed oil, which was used as a binding agent in paint.

So if a painting shows traces of these isotopes in the paint, there is no way that it was created before 1945.

This technique has foiled hundreds of art forgers in the years since and has proven to be one of the most difficult challenges for future Wolfgang Baltracchis.

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