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‘What Is A Scientific Fact That Absolutely Blows Your Mind?’: People Share 35 Incredible Facts About Our World
The world of science has been capturing our imagination for ages. Especially in the current times, when a part of the public is skeptical about the things scientists tell us. While causing a divide, it reminds us just how much (and little) humans know about the world around us, whether it’s Earth, space, living beings and entities that live in them, or our own bodies.
So today we are diving into a mind-blowing science class where facts sound too crazy to be true. And thanks to Redditor analyzeTimes, who asked “What is a scientific fact that absolutely blows your mind?” on the Ask Reddit community, we have a whole lot to uncover. From a Voyager that has been traveling >30,000 mph for 43 years and is only 20 light hours away to our brains simultaneously creating stories and being genuinely shocked by plot twists as we dream, these are some of the best ones to mess with our brains.
Scroll down, upvote your favorites, and share a scientific fact you find hard to wrap your head around in the comments below!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
When you dream, one portion of your brain creates the story, while another part witnesses the events and is really shocked by the plot twists.
SykesDaMan 3 years ago
I think it also happens when awake: "What if this thing happened/I did something?" "How and why are you thinking about this far fetched thing?"
RELATED:
#2
I spent some time with Gene Cernan, the Apollo 17 astronaut who was the last guy to walk on the Moon. He told me two things that I couldn’t stop telling people:
1. the Earth is round in space like a ball, not flat looking like the Moon is to us. He said while looking up from the lunar surface, the Earth just hung there, like a grapefruit that he could almost grab if he just jumped high enough. Could see the weather change too.
2. because of the smaller size of the Moon, not only is it’s curve very visible, the apparent horizon is also much closer so he said there were moments where if he ran too fast or jumped too high he felt like he was going to fall off.
#3
Trees can communicate and cooperate using a network of underground mycelium. They can store excess energy in it for later use, can trade different nutrients with neighbors so their needs are met, take care of their young when they're unwell, and even warn others of a spreading disease or parasite.
A Dasher Panda 3 years ago
And then bipedal macrofauna come by and cut vast holes in that network, dump chemicals on it, or set fire to it.
Mary Peace 3 years ago
Triple up-vote, you deserve. We should get down on our knees (being careful not to squash little plants) and really thank those trees that give us so much.
kevin simeon 3 years ago
As true as it is... I believe the earth will heal.. long after we are gone... and that it can’t just get destroyed right away.. it has survived phenomena way worse than humanity.
Alex the Country Dog 3 years ago
Right, Kevin. This is the argument justifying every environmental atrocity humans commit.
Zophra 3 years ago
I don't know about that - humanity just keeps on comes with one thing after another. In the past, there was a major catastrophe or ecological change and thennatural selection based on that new environment. We just keep coming... all fronts, everywhere...changing the environment in so many ways that what species can keep up except possibly the "generalists.?
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
In other words, fungi are good. Mycelium is threads, essentially, and it's fascinating. "Entangled Life" was a dense but fascinating read, if anyones interested.
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
“Fantastic Fungi” was a GREAT documentary. I saw it twice in the theater and have watched it on Netflix a couple of times as well.
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Earl Grey 3 years ago
Quaking Aspen “trees” are just stems from a single gigantic clone that has a common root system, and which lives for tens of thousands of years. See: https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Plants-and-Fungi/Quaking-Aspen
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
Sort of like how Yellowstone’s various thermal spots are just outlets for a massive caldera that extends throughout most of the western U.S. and into the Pacific Ocean. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s eventually found that it’s in charge of the Hawaiian Islands as well.
René Studer 3 years ago
I read that the tree giraffes like to eat from (don’t know what its called in english) is able to warn other trees in the vicinity about the animal. The giraffe would then have to find a tree that hasn’t received a warning yet for its next meal.
Whatshername 3 years ago (edited)
Cool! So the warned tree will then run and hide? /s
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Carrie Smith 3 years ago
Acacia trees. They're very thorny, which is why giraffes have such long tongues that can wind through the thorns.
plantsarecool 3 years ago (edited)
I just left a similar comment on on another bp post about acacia trees but anyway all plants communicate in their own way. Some using chemicals they produce, some using mycelium, some through a form of awareness at a cellular level that we don't understand yet. In the future they will look back in disbelief at how unaware we were and in horror at how we've treated them.
Aisling Raye 3 years ago
These are fun facts to share with the one vegan at the dinner party that won't shut up about being vegan. (Not that I've done that but the specificity of that example makes it pretty clear that I am a snarky a$$hole and definitely have) - TBC I have no problem with vegans but some of them are preachy and a bit "much" much as some religious people are preachy and a bit "much." Like, dude, I respect your life choice but can ya maybe not make it your whole personality and then try to cram it down my throat? /rant
Load More Replies... Aisling Raye 3 years ago
This is why I pointed out that it was that one. I for sure have nothing against vegans. I tried and super failed at even being vegetarian (although I do my best to be mostly meatless if that's even a thing.) My comment wasn't supposed to be a blanket statement about vegans. It was a rant born from my feelings about anyone who gets preachy about personal things - the people who only talk about their diet, the people that make their cross-fit routine their whole identity, the evangelical people who look down on anyone who believes differently. It comes from my distaste for people who think their way of life is the only way of life and who actively and loudly proclaim how their beliefs make them somehow better than everyone else. I started with a snarky comment and ended up on a weird tangent of a rant about something much bigger and that's on me. I hope this apology makes sense.
Wistiti 3 years ago
And yet we do not think of them as sentient beings. Even though some scientist has been pushing the idea since Darwin (even Darwin with his observations didn't push as much - although apes to humans really had him in a pinch).
DC 3 years ago
Reactions and consciousness aren't the same. There is no brain-like structure of any complexity close to being able to be really sentient. Usually, sentient plants are only brought up in discussions with people trying to justify eating meat, which tramples on the interest of well-known and doubtlessly proven sentient beings, which then is countered by a halfheartedly-humorous rant about how we ignore plants' feelings (which, in the end, is even more of a point against meat, as a lot more plants are to be used there than if fed to humans directly). Also, reactions of trees to their surrounding have to work with limited means, compared to beetles and the like ... immobility pretty much prevents them from requiring any neuronalesque processes that are too complex - they can only answer chemically. But, that is besides - it still is fascinating. Plants, trees in particular, are cool anyway.
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Emmett O'Brian 3 years ago
Except that plants have been shown to learn. One researcher trained tomato plants to turn their leaves in response to a fan blowing on them. Another taught sensitive plants to not close their leaves in a mini tower of terror she made for them. Nobody knows how they learn though.
DC 3 years ago
While that may be true (a lot of such claims have been debunked in the last few years, so some scepticism should be allowed), it doesn't indicate that much. A brainlike structure OTOH ... well, we don't even recognize those we already know very well of, at least not regarding how we treat other animals than ourselves. Plants ... the more we know, the more we can take into account, but unlikely will do so right from the start. The most likely to, if identified as valid, become plants' rights activists are today's animals' rights activists, who often are the only reason anyone brings up sentient plants at all.
Jim Wamsley 3 years ago
Well discussed in the book 'Finding the Mother Tree' by Suzanne Simard
Lovin' Life 3 years ago (edited)
Now this is very interesting. I love to sit and read under trees. I love nature and often wonder what they do other than just survive and be being beautiful. Eye opening. I want to learn more now.
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
Redwood trees are the oldest and tallest trees on earth.
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Crochet lady 3 years ago
We had 2 150" trees (out of very many) come crashing down last July. There was no wind, no storm. Just the scariest, loudest crashing I've ever heard in my life. It shook me to the core. They came inches away from hitting our house, where we were sitting. It was so loud neighbors from 3 doors down came rushing to see what happened. It makes my heart sad every time I look out into my yard and see the gaping holes they left. Arborist said one tree was diseased & brought the other tree down when it fell on it. You wouldn't think you could miss trees but I do.
Seonie 3 years ago
David Attenborough's new BBC documentary Green Planet touched on things like this. I loved it
Mary Peace 3 years ago
I'm watching the last part of that on BBC at the moment. About how scientists are helping the plants that are threatened.
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
Fantastic Fungi. I saw it twice in the theater and have watched it twice on Netflix. I learn something new every time.
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Dave Chapman 2 years ago
It also has been found, that the Entire Earth could be connected by fungi that is found in the soil, that might have formed a network that stretches around the Planet! Fungi are the reason that our Planet is habitable and many believe that different fungi could possibly be the cure for almost all Human diseases! Fungi can also break down oil spills and turn hazardous waste into harmless matter. We haven't even scratched the surface of what fungi can do for us, it's truly an amazing life form!
kevin simeon 3 years ago
I understand your point... but if you want humans to totally avoid nature... we will not be here anyway... so intentionally or not, we're all guilty.. some people only take it too far.
Marylu Horkowitz 3 years ago
Richard Powers' Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Overstory" is worth reading
Ramirez rachael 3 years ago
This is awesome and how could anyone think anything different. Trees being bros
Mosheh Wolf 3 years ago
That is a very human-biased view of the world. Since trees are familiar and visible, not to mention that trees have been anthropomorphized, we assume that they are the ones who are the central ones to this relationship. It is just as likely that the mycelium are farming the trees for the sugar that he trees produce, and are spreading the nutrients to optimize the growth of the trees. Damage to one of "their" trees would cause the mycelium to activate the defense systems of the rest of "their" trees. Since fungi were around long before trees, my scenario is more likely, than the "trees talk, using fungi" Just-So-Story.
Mary Peace 3 years ago
I think they don't build spaceships because they don't need them. It would be like the fish with a bicycle.
Robyn 3 years ago
no, it's true you egotistical twatt I call you this because you have (OBVIOUSLY) done no research or used a bad site.....
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#4
The time period in which dinosaurs lived is so vast, there were dinosaur fossils when dinosaurs were still alive.
John Baker 3 years ago
There are human fossils while humans still exist, and we haven't been here anywhere near as long as the dinosaurs were. Also, there's more time between Allosaurus and T. rex than between T. rex and humans.
#5
Whales will grow up singing a specific song based on where they were born, but they’ll learn verses of other songs from whales they encounter throughout their lives!
#6
Hippos sweat sunscreen. They produce "sweat" made of one red and one orange pigment. The red pigment contains an antibiotic, while the orange absorbs UV rays.
#7
Some forms of anaesthesia don’t numb you to pain- they make you forget that you felt it.
#8
The knowledge that the atoms of our bodies contain elements only forged in the center of stars, and that such stars upon death blow the elements via supernova across the universe and into our very existence. We are made of star dust.
Serial pacifist 3 years ago
Scientists know virtually nothing about dark matter and dark energy, which make up about 95% of the universe. So, we basically know nothing about the stuff that makes up 95% of our reality! Talking about being kept in the dark!
#9
I recently read about the Split-Brain experiments. There is a procedure for severe epilepsy that involves cutting the connecting nerves of the two brain hemispheres, resulting in the two hemispheres being unable to communicate with each other. The experiment shows that both halves can answer questions independently of each other, have seperate opinions/preferences, form memories independantly. Basically suggesting that there are two minds in the brain. That just blows my mind(s).
Klingsor 3 years ago
Quite an upbeat description of hemispherectomy. My 10 yo daughter suffers from a rare and severe form of epilepsy. There is no cure and the prognosis is that her condition will gradually worsen. When her quality of life becomes catastrophic enough, the only thing left is to have a hemispherectomy. In almost all cases the procedure will lead to severy cognitive disablility and partial paralysis.
#10
Caterpillars basically dissolve into liquid in the cocoon. The only thing left are the so called ‘imaginal discs’, groups of cells that contain all the information and the mechanism to turn that soup into the various body parts of a butterfly (the same applies for other insects).
#11
If the entirety of the Earth’s history were compressed down to a single day, humans of any sort wouldn’t appear until the last second before midnight.
#12
That there is a species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii, that can become young again when damaged or stressed. So they become young again. So they are immortal. Just an addition, the tardigrades. They can survive the vacuum of space.
#13
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
#14
The size of animals still blows my mind. You can read about how a manta ray is 23 feet long and 3 tons but it doesn’t really hit you until you realize that’s heavier than most cars.
New Prometheus 3 years ago
Humans have hunted most of the megafauna into extinction. We have hard time coexisting with big animals.
#15
When you lose weight it leaves on your breath.
So when people lose 100 lbs/ 50 kg, they have exhaled that much carbon.
#16
An object has every color except the one you think it has, because its the only color that doesn't get absorbed.
AmmoniteCat 3 years ago
Great. Now I'm suspiciously staring at everything on my desk and telling those inanimate objects, "Reveal your true forms, you chameleons!"
#17
If some sort of super-advanced alien species on a planet 80 million light years away from Earth built a high-tech telescope that let them see objects on the Earth's surface, they would be seeing dinosaurs right now.
Chinmayee Kalghatgi 3 years ago
And also if there were aliens 5 billion light years away and they detected our signals we would be long gone by then. Those aliens would arrive at a scorched empty planet without any life
#18
Sharks are older than trees, also, trees almost destroyed all land life on earth as there use to be nothing that could decompose them, so dead trees covered the ground and killed all other vegetation. Only once fungus evolved did trees start decomposing.
Splash Bach 3 years ago
The trees that couldn't be decomposed turned into coal. No new coal has formed since the fungus evolved to break down the dead trees
#19
If you put 1 of every animal in a bag and then pick one out you have a 1/5 chance in picking a beetle.
#20
Voyager 1 has been traveling >30,000 mph for 43 years and it's only 20 light hours away.
#21
The Cathedral Effect. If you work in a room with low ceilings, you will stay a bit more focused and be better at detailed, analytical work. If in a room with high ceilings, you will be more open and creative.
This can be simulated by wearing a brimmed hat if you’d want to hammer away at say data entry or data analysis.
#22
There are some Ice Age animals that are so perfectly preserved in permafrost that scientists have been able to find them still with all their soft tissue, hair, and organs. They even found a couple mammoths that still had liquid blood in them and I remember one scientist even tasting the mammoth meat.
#23
A recently discovered vine can mimic nearby artificial plants, modifying the size, shape and colour of its leaves to match them. The only plausible explanation is that plants can see.
#24
Exponential power.
Fold a “big sheet” of paper - that is 0.1 mm thick - 50 times and the height of stack is over 20 times the distance earth to moon. Thank you.
Chinmayee Kalghatgi 3 years ago
You can theoretically do this but you cant fold a piece of paper mroe than 7 times. Fun fact: if you were to fold a piece of papper 300 times you will end up with a book that has more pages that atoms in the observable universe
#26
Slime molds don’t have brains or nervous systems but some how retain information and use it to make decisions. Even more crazy is that they can fuse with another individual and share the information.
Chinmayee Kalghatgi 3 years ago
In fact, they are so intelligent that they can quickly get through mazes. They have a sort of awareness that doesn’t allow them to get stuck at dead-ends.
#28
Both the absolute hottest and absolute coldest temperatures ever recorded in the known universe were achieved here on Earth.
The hottest temperature ever physically recorded in the known universe was when scientists at CERN used the Large Hadron Collider to collide lead ions. This produced a temperature flash of 5.5 trillion degrees celsius.
That’s 5,500,000,000,000°C. Convert to Fahrenheit, and you get this:
(5.5e+12°C × 9/5) + 32 = 9.9e+12°F
For the record, the current temperature at the core of our sun is around 15 million degrees celsius. 15,000,000°C. That’s 350,000x less intense than the flash produced by the lead ion particle collisions. That temperature, even if minuscule and fleeting in size and duration, was actually created here on Earth, in a lab. Let that sink in.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in the known universe was achieved relatively recently by a group of German researchers who achieved a nearly incomprehensible feat of 38 trillionths of a degree above -273.15°C, or more commonly known as Absolute 0° Kelvin. They did this by dropping magnetized gas down a nearly 400 foot tower in order to study a 5th state of matter; Bose-Einstein Condensate. For the record, weird s**t starts to happen near absolute 0°K. Example? Light turns into a liquid you can pour into a glass.
The coldest place we have recorded data from within our observable universe is the Boomerang Nebula, hovering nearly an entire degree (kelvin) above absolute zero. Still unfathomably cold.
So while we are still essentially infinity away from achieving Planck Temperature (the staggeringly high temperature of beyond decillions of degrees celsius in which conventional physics breaks down and we enter a whole new realm of theoretics) we are extremely, extremely close to achieving absolute 0°K here on Earth.
Chinmayee Kalghatgi 3 years ago
However due to quantum mechanics we cant go to 0k since when measuring a particle we cant know how fast it is and where it is at the same time. If we get an atom to 0k then we would know how fast it was going= 0 and where it was which isnt allowed in this universe
#29
You can fit all the planets (Pluto included) between the Earth & Moon.
coraline jones 3 years ago (edited)
Planets are actually really far from each other! Here is what they look like to-scale: https://bit.ly/3BGl5Hr
#30
Giraffe necks are actually too short to reach the ground, so they have to splay their legs in order to drink water.
#31
The astronauts on the ISS aren't floating around because of lack of gravity, far from it. They are in constant free fall, falling over the horizon of earth. Being pulled by gravity towards the earth.
#32
Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than the building of the great pyramids.
Serial pacifist 3 years ago
The oldest known beer jug is over 5400 years old. Archeologists discovered ceramic vessels from 3400 B.C. still sticky with beer residue. 1800 B.C.’s “Hymn to Ninkasi" is an ode to the Sumerian beer goddess. No warrior/beer helmets have been unearthed yet.
#33
If 2 pieces of the same type of metal touch in space, they will bond and be permanently stuck together. Space welding (cold welding).
#34
If all the DNA in the average person was stretched out in a single line, it could reach from Earth to the Sun and back 248 times.
#35
With the help of quantum tunneling, there is a 1 in 5.2^61 chance that the molecules in your hand and table would miss each other when slamming it, making your hand go through the table.
What do you think ?
Who Panda 420 3 years ago (edited)
I actually learn more from the comments by my fellow pandas than I learn from the posting. Thanks for all the tidbits
Susie Elle 3 years ago
I've got an uninteresting scientific fact; jays (that used to be quite uncommon where I live) are excellent sound mimics, which was proven to me by the fact that me and a bunch of neighbours this morning spent an hour looking for the dying cat we could all hear screaming that turned out to be a mf jay sitting in the top of a tree >:(
WoodenLion 3 years ago
me & a buddy ran through stickers and briars through a field once to 'save' a woman screaming "help!" - it was peacocks.
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Aroace tiger (she/they/he) 3 years ago
Concerning that the peacocks heard the screaming enough to mimic it
WoodenLion 3 years ago
found out later it was normal peacock sounds. we got scraped up pretty bad.
Chich 3 years ago
In the cold death version of the universe where everything just gets further and further apart and energy ebbs away, this entire 'bright' phase with stars and galaxies etc is so brief as to be almost unmeasurable. "Forever and ever" is actually a nasty curse to wish on someone.
Cheri Aline Sydney 3 years ago
This, Chich, brings passive aggression to a whole other level!
Load More Replies... Chinmayee Kalghatgi 2 years ago
This period in time when there is lots of light and activity is just a blink in the rest of the universe’s time. The universe will spend most of its life in darkness occasionally lit up by blackholes dying
Izzy Curer 3 years ago (edited)
Aluminum is an excellent heat sink, so putting a piece of frozen meat on a heavy aluminum cookie sheet will cause it to defrost much faster than a piece of meat lying on your counter. It acts like its sucking out the cold, but it's really conducting the heat of the air into the vacant energy of the meat
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
Borborygmi. It's a real thing. The noise your abdomen makes (technically, your lower GI tract) as it digests food ---- the noise of gas and liquid and matter moving merrily along. (One hopes, anyway.)
Lovin' Life 3 years ago
I am so confused by many of these. My brain hurts! Hell who knows, I may not even have one.
Mary Peace 3 years ago
Obviously you're thinking about stuff, and that's good. Don't worry about feeling confused, lots of us are with you on that. Lots of these facts just boggled my mind as well.
Jo Choto 3 years ago
Why do I get so distressed by some of these facts? It shouldn't bother me that there are more card shuffles than atoms, or more water atoms in a teaspoon, than teaspoons of water in the ocean, but it does. I think my brain gets troubled by things that are too big or too small for me to actually experience and observe.
Who Panda 420 3 years ago
As I stated above sometimes I learn more from the comments of other people on here than I do from the original posts. And even if not some things are really really funny which makes it worth reading. This is a posting site so if you don't like to read posts or you don't like to post this might not be the right site.
Load More Replies... Cheri Aline Sydney 3 years ago
Don't Look, you just don't recognize a good time when you see one... You know, people just enjoying interacting with each other....
Who Panda 420 3 years ago (edited)
I actually learn more from the comments by my fellow pandas than I learn from the posting. Thanks for all the tidbits
Susie Elle 3 years ago
I've got an uninteresting scientific fact; jays (that used to be quite uncommon where I live) are excellent sound mimics, which was proven to me by the fact that me and a bunch of neighbours this morning spent an hour looking for the dying cat we could all hear screaming that turned out to be a mf jay sitting in the top of a tree >:(
WoodenLion 3 years ago
me & a buddy ran through stickers and briars through a field once to 'save' a woman screaming "help!" - it was peacocks.
Load More Replies... Aroace tiger (she/they/he) 3 years ago
Concerning that the peacocks heard the screaming enough to mimic it
WoodenLion 3 years ago
found out later it was normal peacock sounds. we got scraped up pretty bad.
Chich 3 years ago
In the cold death version of the universe where everything just gets further and further apart and energy ebbs away, this entire 'bright' phase with stars and galaxies etc is so brief as to be almost unmeasurable. "Forever and ever" is actually a nasty curse to wish on someone.
Cheri Aline Sydney 3 years ago
This, Chich, brings passive aggression to a whole other level!
Load More Replies... Chinmayee Kalghatgi 2 years ago
This period in time when there is lots of light and activity is just a blink in the rest of the universe’s time. The universe will spend most of its life in darkness occasionally lit up by blackholes dying
Izzy Curer 3 years ago (edited)
Aluminum is an excellent heat sink, so putting a piece of frozen meat on a heavy aluminum cookie sheet will cause it to defrost much faster than a piece of meat lying on your counter. It acts like its sucking out the cold, but it's really conducting the heat of the air into the vacant energy of the meat
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
Borborygmi. It's a real thing. The noise your abdomen makes (technically, your lower GI tract) as it digests food ---- the noise of gas and liquid and matter moving merrily along. (One hopes, anyway.)
Lovin' Life 3 years ago
I am so confused by many of these. My brain hurts! Hell who knows, I may not even have one.
Mary Peace 3 years ago
Obviously you're thinking about stuff, and that's good. Don't worry about feeling confused, lots of us are with you on that. Lots of these facts just boggled my mind as well.
Jo Choto 3 years ago
Why do I get so distressed by some of these facts? It shouldn't bother me that there are more card shuffles than atoms, or more water atoms in a teaspoon, than teaspoons of water in the ocean, but it does. I think my brain gets troubled by things that are too big or too small for me to actually experience and observe.
Who Panda 420 3 years ago
As I stated above sometimes I learn more from the comments of other people on here than I do from the original posts. And even if not some things are really really funny which makes it worth reading. This is a posting site so if you don't like to read posts or you don't like to post this might not be the right site.
Load More Replies... Cheri Aline Sydney 3 years ago
Don't Look, you just don't recognize a good time when you see one... You know, people just enjoying interacting with each other....
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