@Sapphicgiraffic@snouts.online The first science fiction story is commonly held to be Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in the 19th century, but one could argue that the first science fiction story is actually A True Story, written by Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian Greek satirist who lived in the second century AD. It involves a trip to the moon, complete with depictions of alien moon-creatures, and how life on the moon differs from on earth.

@Sapphicgiraffic@snouts.online weird truth #2: many, if not most, of the transistors and wires on a modern processor or DRAM chip are literally smaller than light; visible light has a wavelength between 400 and 750 nanometers, and feature sizes on semiconductor processes have been smaller than this ever since 1993, when typical feature sizes were on the order of 350 nanometers. Modern devices get as low as 7 nanometers.

@Sapphicgiraffic@snouts.online weird/uncomfortable truth #3: The largest known structure in the universe is called the Great GRB Wall, discovered in 2013. It's a massive cluster of billions of galaxies about ten billion light-years in length, and it's about eight times larger than our understanding of physics and cosmology implies should be possible. No one knows why it's so big or how it got there.

@Sapphicgiraffic@snouts.online Weird truth #4: There's reason to doubt whether two of the most famous ancient Greek philosophers, Pythagoras and Socrates, ever even existed at all. None of Socrates' writings have survived, and are primarily known through citations in other works, who may have been using the name as a generic "wise philosopher" name, since philosophical works were often written in the form of a dialogue between two characters. Pythagoras, on the other hand, is thought to have been a pseudonym used by members of the Pythagorean school of philosophy, and it's entirely possible that no one by that name ever actually existed.

@Felthry @Sapphicgiraffic and here i thought pythagoras was someone who recruited geniuses into his cult, and then killed them off and claimed their work as his…

@meena @Sapphicgiraffic@snouts.online I suppose that's also possible! but iwrc we do have reason to believe that multiple people used the name Pythagoras as a pseudonym.