Category Archives: Evidentialism

Back By Popular Demand: The Sun

Evidentialism Factslap: Every planet has a winter solstice.

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/kerrie-hill/ Earth is unique among planets in our solar system in a number of ways — a habitable atmosphere being chief among them. But when it comes to solstices, Earth is just one in a crowd. The winter and summer solstices represent the shortest and longest days of the year, respectively. Because of the Earth’s 23.5-degree axial tilt, certain parts of the planet lean toward or away from the sun, which creates the seasons. It’s during the solstices (December 21 to 22 and June 20 to 22) that the planet reaches its maximum tilt away (or toward) the sun, depending on the hemisphere you call home. 

Solstices also take place on other planets, but not quite in the same way. Both Mercury and Venus have little axial tilt, so they don’t experience seasons as Earth does. Mars, however, has a very similar tilt to Earth at 25 degrees, and the planet’s ice cap will grow and recede according to the seasons. Although Jupiter has a minuscule axial tilt, Saturn’s axial tilt at 26.7 degrees means solstices there are truly something to behold — during the planet’s summer solstices, its rings become intensely illuminated as they reflect the sun’s light.

However, Uranus is the true oddity. With an axial tilt of a whopping 98 degrees, the planet’s poles point directly toward the sun during its solstices. When Voyager 2 took images of the planet in 1986, Uranus was experiencing its southern hemisphere’s summer solstice, with that hemisphere bathed in continuous light while its northern hemisphere was trapped in frozen darkness. So although all planets have solstices, no two are exactly alike — and Earth’s remain something special.

And Walnuts Can Sulk

Pistachios can spontaneously combust.

It turns out there’s a price to pay for how good pistachios are: Under the right circumstances, they can spontaneously combust. Everyone’s favorite shelled nut is especially rich in fat, which is highly flammable. Thankfully, that only becomes a problem when pistachios are packed too tightly during shipping or storage. It’s important to keep the nuts dry lest they become moldy — but if they’re kept too dry and there are too many of them bunched together, they can self-heat and catch fire without an external heat source. 

Though exceedingly rare and easy to avoid if the proper instructions are followed, pistachio self-combustion is a real enough concern that the German Transport Information Service specifically advises that pistachios “not be stowed together with fibers/fibrous materials as oil-soaked fibers may promote self-heating/spontaneous combustion of the cargo.” Don’t worry, though: It won’t happen in your pantry with just a few bags, which means you can indulge in the nut of your dreams without worrying about their flavor becoming unexpectedly smoky.

Happy Gobble Gobble!


Evidentialism factslap: Sweet potatoes aren’t actually potatoes.

Sweet potatoes and common potatoes share part of a name and the spotlight at Thanksgiving meals, but the two are entirely different plants — and sweet potatoes aren’t even potatoes. While both root vegetable species are native to Central and South America, they’re classified as unrelated. Sweet potatoes belong to the Convolvulaceae family, a group of flowering plants that’s also called the morning glory family. Potatoes belong to the nightshade (Solanaceae) family, and are cousins to peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. 

Both species get their name from an Indigenous Caribbean term, batata, which eventually morphed into the English “potato.” By the 1740s, “sweet” was added to the orange-fleshed tuber’s name to differentiate the two root crops.

Then there are yams. Although they’re often served interchangeably with sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving dinners, this third root crop is biologically unrelated to either sweet potatoes or common potatoes. These tubers belong to the Dioscoreacea family, a group of flowering plants usually cultivated in tropical areas. Luckily, you don’t have to know their scientific classification to distinguish between the two non-spuds at the grocery store: Sweet potatoes have tapered ends and relatively smooth skin, while true yams are generally larger with rough bark and a more cylindrical shape. At most U.S. grocery stores, what you’re seeing labeled as a yam is probably actually a sweet potato.