5 Bizarre Scientific Traditions – Toptenz.web

Regardless of being proponents of logic and motive, scientists, researchers and different skilled teachers are a surprisingly superstitious lot with a mess of complicated and infrequently weird traditions. Right here’s a listing of 5 of our favorites, beginning with….

5. NORAD tracks Santa

That is maybe essentially the most well-known entry on this record, so it’s the one we’ll begin with. For anybody unfamiliar with it, mainly every yr since 1955, the North American Aerospace Protection Command, higher identified merely as NORAD, tracks the placement of Santa, in actual time, for all the kids of the world.

This custom truly began by chance within the ’50s when a newspaper incorrectly listed the quantity for a NORAD based mostly in Colorado as a quantity youngsters might name to speak to Santa. Because the legend goes, an amused Air Drive commander, who clearly had nothing higher to do, somewhat than telling his males to hold up on the children as an alternative gave the order to offer a tough location of the place Santa was to anybody who known as. Because of that commander’s goodwill, it’s custom for NORAD to trace the placement of Mr Kringle for tens of millions of children the world over.

4. When a probe lands, NASA technicians eat handfuls of peanuts

Through the years, like Commander Shepard in Mass Impact 2, NASA has probed numerous planets to discern their secrets and techniques. Not like Commander Shepard, nonetheless, NASA eggheads have a good time not with an attractive rendezvous with a lovely alien (but), however with a giant ol’ handful of peanuts.

The custom goes again to the 1964 when an absentminded technician opened a large jar or peanuts through the Ranger 7 mission (an unmanned probe despatched to the Moon). Because the identify suggests, the Ranger 7 was the seventh probe despatched to fondle the Moon’s floor however has the glory of being the primary profitable one. NASA technicians, being the paragons of logical reasoning they’re, attributed the success to the peanuts and now eat them earlier than each probe touchdown for luck.

3. When a rocket or probe launches efficiently additionally they eat plenty of beans 

Oh yeah, together with consuming plenty of peanuts it’s additionally apparently a practice to eat plenty of beans each time a rocket launch is profitable.

The custom once more goes again to the ’60s, and is described by NASA technicians as a “strategy to blow off steam.” Particularly, to permit individuals from throughout the NASA hierarchy to chow down collectively to foster workforce morale. It’s additionally presumably an excuse to make an unbelievable quantity of “put together for liftoff” themed fart jokes the subsequent day.

2. Cosmonauts pee everywhere in the bus that takes them to the launch pad

Should you thought NASA was superstitious, Russian cosmonauts will blow your freaking thoughts. Earlier than leaving for orbit, Russian cosmonauts should full a laundry record of seemingly trivial duties, together with planting a tree, carving their identify right into a door, and peeing everywhere in the wheels of the bus that takes them to the launch pad.

Cosmonauts do that to honor Yuri Gagarin, the unique cosmonaut, who is alleged to have accomplished all of this stuff previous to liftoff himself. Cosmonauts take these traditions so significantly that feminine cosmonauts have been identified to hold bottles of their very own pee to throw on the bus’ tires previous to launch so that they, too, can honor the world’s first spaceman. You already know you’re well-known when many years later ladies carry bottles of their very own pee to honor your reminiscence.

1. Scientists on the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Analysis Station watch The Factor 

The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station represents one of many harshest and most distant working environments identified to man. Earlier than working there, researchers should undergo a sequence of psychological exams to ensure they will take care of the thought of basically being trapped at an arctic analysis base. So how do the scientists and researchers on the base have a good time after they start a several-month-long winter shift? By watching The Factor. You already know, that movie about an alien monster murdering a bunch of individuals trapped at arctic analysis base.

To be truthful, the custom is extra tongue in cheek than something. Nonetheless, the actual scary half is that, as per custom, the researchers have to observe all three variations of the movie, together with the god-awful 2011 prequel.

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