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Science can be fascinating and fun. We love to learn new facts about our planet and beyond, like the fact that hippos sweat sunscreen. But it can also be pretty scary at times. I, personally, try not to think about the effect microplastics have on our health or how many times BP has spilled oil into our oceans. There's nothing fun about these kinds of facts.

Perhaps a similar thought brought about the curiosity of this Redditor. Instead of fishing for some fun science facts, the user u/DogeStonks69 asked others, "What's the scariest science fact that the public knows nothing about?" And boy, did the commenters deliver. Be prepared to possibly face some existential dread after going through these entries.

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#1

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Scientists were trying to study the effects that microplastics have on the human body and brain but were unable to draw any reasonable conclusions because they **could not find a control group.**.

TheSpaceBornMars , Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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#2

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know I'm sure there are plenty of people who know this, but personally I find it terrifying af.

If the vacuum of space didn't block sound from reaching us, the sun would be as loud as a jackhammer *everywhere* on Earth. Everywhere, at all times. And because sound travels slower than light, if the sun were to go out it would take eight minutes for the light to stop but 13 years for the sound to stop. So life on a cold, dead Earth for 13 years and still hearing the jackhammer scream of our dead sun.

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#3

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know The greatest chemical contributor to IQ loss and violent behaviour is Lead and it's still in millions of people's piping.

re_artist , Alchemist-hp (talk) (www.pse-mendelejew.de) Report

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Let's dissect some of these scary facts. Like the microplastic one. Why are there no control groups to test its effects on? The problem with microplastics is that they're everywhere: in the water, in the earth, and in the air. But what's more concerning is that it is in living tissues, too. 

The fact that there are nano and microplastics in our blood, placenta, heart, liver, and bowels alone is enough to scare us. But that's also the reason why scientists can't properly study its effects – there is no place (even in the human body) where they are not present, so we can no longer make comparisons.

What are the potential dangers of having microplastics in our organs? It's possible they make us more susceptible to cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, and Alzheimer's disease, and they might even affect our fertility. There is a study where researchers found that microplastics in the brain might correlate with autism-like traits in mice.
#4

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know In Yellowknife, NT Canada, there was a gold mine operating for 54 years, and a byproduct of that mining process was arsenic trioxide... 237,000 tonnes of it, enough to give a death sentece to everything on the planet. They figured the best thing to do was to bury it in permafrost. The problem is, it's starting to get warmer, so they have to figure out what to do with it. It's not a secret. Just no one is talking about it.

Shaveyourbread , Trevor MacInnis Report

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#5

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Scientific litterature conclusion on alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases in general is that the diseases start decades before the first obvious symptoms and that we need to treat them at this stage. When you exhibit obvious symptoms, it's too late, your brain is already mush.


If you get diagnosed with alzheimer's at 65, you had the disease since your early 40's at least. And you experienced very mild symptoms but didn't notice it. And your brain fought like hell to compensate the deficit. When you get diagnose, your brain is already very severely damaged and will never recover from the deficit.

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#6

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Only my grandma and I know how handsome I am.

mystical_apple05 , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Declining insect population rates are also bad news for us. We often think of insects as nuisances: annoying flies, bloodsuckering mosquitoes, and disgusting roaches. But the reality is that insects, no matter how gross, are extremely important to ecosystems.

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Reuters reports that a 2020 study found how Earth has lost 5% to 10% of its insect populations in the last 150 years. That's between 250,000 and 500,000 species total. Another study found that we're losing insect populations at a rate of 1% to 2% per year.

Which species are the most affected? Out of the gross ones, only the beetles, including dung beetles. The insects that have the worst numbers are bees, moths and butterflies, aquatic insects, and those insects that eat other insects, like certain species of ladybugs and ants.
#7

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Brain aneurysms can happen at any time, to anyone. No matter what age you are, or even how healthy you are, if you are currently alive, you have a chance of getting a brain aneurysm. When you do get one, there's a 50 % chance you'll just die immediately. Like, you'd be alive one minute, and then lying on the floor unconscious the next minute. Are the chances of actually getting a brain aneurysm at any random moment low? Yes, but it's still not 0.

Wales_forever , MART PRODUCTION/Pexels Report

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#8

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know There are millions and billions of dollars in research into how to make people buy c**p. The missus took a year of psychology and what they got the most research on is how to manipulate you and me into buying c**p we don't need. Mental illness we know a little about. Making you want the new c**p that you don't need? We know a helluva lot about how that works.

Hattkake , Negative Space/Pexels Report

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#9

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know CO2 levels are causing the pH levels in the ocean to move towards an acidic level. No not like burn yourself acid, but just enough that it's causing an already noticeable impact to microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain. This may eventually lead to a ecological collapse. It seems to be impacting phytoplankton which is responsible for producing a good chunk of the air you breath as well. If the oceans go anaerobic the atmosphere would become toxic. A similar event has occurred during one or two of the past mass extinction events.

CodeMonkeyPhoto , Josh Sorenson/Pexels Report

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So, what's causing the poor guys to become extinct? Besides the abundance of pesticides, climate change is a big factor. It causes temperature changes and alters seasonal timing.

As temperatures rise, insects may no longer have cooler environments to migrate to. Droughts reduce food availability, and heavy rainfall might even drown them. Extreme weather events might be dangerous directly or destroy their habitats.
#10

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Swimming in freshwater could expose you to Naegleria fowleri — a brain eating amoeba** that is fatal 97% of the time, and is almost impossible to treat effectively.

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#11

We are currently in the sixth major extinction event, where our flora and fauna are being destroyed by human activity at a fast rate. It cannot be completely stopped anymore, only mitigated, and, let’s be real… we as humans have little interest as a whole to do so.

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#12

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Insect population depletion.

abysse , Egor Kamelev/Pexels Report

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What exactly would happen in a world without insects? Environmental writer Oliver Milman told Boston public radio WBUR that it might be worse than we think. "It would be an extremely dire place to live in – and certainly not something we should ever aim for."

"You would certainly have mass starvation [and] societal unrest… It'd be a place where there would be rotting feces and corpses everywhere because dung beetles and other insects that break down those materials would be gone."
#13

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know We know that there is a string connection between pregnant mother's having viruses such as the flu during pregnancy and schizophrenia. It will be interesting what we see in 15 years post COVID.

DrAimCaf , Jonathan Borba/Pexels (not the actual phtoo) Report

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#14

The End-Permian mass extinction was the worst in Earth's history. 70-80% of species died. It was caused by volcanic activity in Siberia spewing magma for thousands of years, releasing CO2 and igniting fossil fuel deposits as it bubbled up for good measure, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect and acidifying the oceans. Species had a better chance of surviving the asteroid that k***ed the dinosaurs. Today, the global climate is heating up 10x faster than it did at the end of the Permian.

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#15

People don’t talk enough about the melting permafrost and the associated positive feedback loops that only accelerate what’s already started.

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Pollinators would be perhaps the biggest loss. Pollinating crops by hand is an enormously labor-intensive operation, as China's Sichuan province has already learned. Their project to hand-pollinate orchards only yielded short-term results, prompting the discussion that we need to protect our pollinators even further. 
#16

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Take an Astronomy 101 course at your local community college. People have no idea the amount of and variety of things that exist in space, that can and do happen, that would send us back to the Stone Age, or outright annihilate life on Earth. I’m not talking asteroids, comets, and solar flares, everyone knows those, I’m talking supernovas, gamma ray bursts, wandering planets, wandering back holes, and more. And none of it do we have any ounce of control over. The good thing is the galaxy and universe are unbelievably large, so our chances of being affected by these things are, quite literally, astronomically low, but it ain’t zero.

TheMagnuson , Felix Mittermeier/Pexels Report

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#17

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know I'll let the others have the easy ones.

The inevitable displacement of Mexico City due to the abuse and lack of fresh water. It will be an international incident by their own making, displacing roughly 20 million people. Half of their utilities infrastructure is faulty and the current leadership has no viable way to repair and maintain their current system. It's not a matter of if, but when the system collapses. Normal groundwater reserve use is ten percent for any major city and only under dire circumstances should it be used at all. Mexico City uses almost half of their supply from groundwater reserves annually. Current projections show a complete collapse within 15 years.

beanrush , Samad Deldar/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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#18

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know If you start showing any signs of rabies, you are going to die. Or at least in 99% of cases that happens.

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#19

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Alcohol increases the permeability of the blood brain barrier by unpredictable factors, which is why people die from overdose on their normal d**g dosages.

desexmachina , Mahrael Boutros/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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#20

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Your poor posture could lead to incurable chronic pain

sit up straight.

MobPsycho-100 , Kawê Rodrigues/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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#21

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know By the time AIDS was first discovered in the United States in 1981, 250,000 Americans were already infected with HIV.

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#22

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Last time i had to go under the knife i mentioned to the anesthesiologist "i read online that no one knows how anesthesia even works" and he kinda just said "yeah....".

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#23

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Europa even though smaller than earth has more water than all water bodies in the world combined.

terrific_mephit325 , NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill Report

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#24

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know An Extinction Level asteroid could hit Earth with only a few days notice. Asteroids can appear very quickly from what appears to be nowhere. There is nothing we could do to prevent it from hitting.

markydsade , Alex Andrews/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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#25

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Our bodies have no way of knowing that we're breathing oxygen. If I could snap my fingers and replace all the oxygen in you room with another inert gas you wouldn't notice. You wouldn't start to choke or struggle. You'd just get sleepier and sleepier until you die. That's why carbon monoxide is so dangerous. If you have any sort of gas appliance in your building, invest in a detector. 

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zedrapazia avatar
Zedrapazia
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not exactly true. If the CO2 levels in your blood rise, that's what gives you the feeling to suffocate. That means however that the only way your body knows you are suffocating is if your CO2 levels rise. If there's another gas instead and the CO2 levels don't rise, you won't notice until it's too late.

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7 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Your addition doesn't make the OP not exactly true. You are just adding more explanation as to why.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That's not entirely true, because it heavily depends on the type of gas you'd replace oxygen with. CO exposure will also cause nausea, dizziness and headaches. CO2 will cause you to struggle, wheeze, gasp for air and become desoriented. Ether will cause you to experience euphoria.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

CO and CO2 aren't inert. OP should've been more clear about CO , but they never mentioned CO2. Not being able to expel CO2 is what causes you to feel like you are suffocating, so yeah breathing in nothing but CO2 would make you feel like you are suffocating.

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7 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not true. You will start to feel dizzy, even nauseous, before you feel tired from most gasses. You will be aware before you pass out.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Vsauce has a video exploring what was the scariest thing for humans. High CO2 levels made people with damaged amigdalas who don't feel fear to have the same body reactions as people with functioning amygdala react to fear. In other words, CO2 poisoning was the scariest thing as even people who can't feel fear feel fear from it. I don't know the phases for CO2 poisoning, but it didn't seem like one just fell asleep. So I think that other gases or a mix of gases can make you sleep without feeling anything? Link attached if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/9Vmwsg8Eabo?si=Fgsez_8yHb2-NdTk

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is true for inert gasses such as Nitrogen, Argon and Helium but not true for Carbon Dioxide or Carbon Monoxide, which are not inert gasses and are in fact toxic gasses. Inert gasses simply replace the oxygen in Haemoglobin which causes asphyxiation. Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide replace the oxygen but they also change the blood's chemistry which causes poisoning as well as asphyxiation.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There recently was an execution using nitrogen, BTW.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Honestly if I had to pick a way to go, nitrogen asphyxiation would be at the top of the list

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Choking and struggling is a sign of high carbon dioxide. I don't know if you can have high carbon monoxide without high carbon dioxide? Certainly not from the output of a vehicle catalytic converter.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yet something as simple as that seems impossible to use on death row inmates. Authorities use lethal d**g compounds that don't always work (and THAT'S crazy!!) or electrocution which is a painful death

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In Switzerland there's "pods" for lethally sick/old people so they can die in peace instead of suffering through their end. Basically like sleeping in. The US tried that once in Florida, but completely botched it because they used a mask instead of a pot, and the mask was too small too. The innate didn't want to die (as a dying old and sick person that voluntarily does that obviously), so he kept moving around trying to get rid of the mask and hold his breath as much as he could. It was a miserable way to go.

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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

[... replace all the oxygen in you room with another inert gas ...] Oxygen is not an inert gas. Problems come when simple and stupid mistakes are made, lowers the validity of the rest of the article.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

One thing to think about, since it's not always obvious you're lacking oxygen, especially if you're excited or something. Ever see pictures or videos of families or influencers with dry ice in a swimming pool and it looks all cloudy and cool to swim in...put too much first one person passes out and starts to drown, the someone further away jumps into save them and succumbs then someone else does the same. I feel anxious just seeing someone put a small amount in a body of water that you could get trapped in. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51680049.amp

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Lowering o2 and raising co2 will give you a massive headache first. Had the co2 and h2 scrubbers and burners on my submarine c**p out for a lil while. We had to get to periscope depth and breach to ventilate every like 6 hours or so until they were fixed.

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

i knew carbon monoxide was dangerous but describing it like that is terrifying

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#26

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Tetraethyl lead raised worldwide lead levels so significantly they had to drill into arctic ice to find an uncontaminated sample.

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#27

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Here's something different: Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Mathematics, the very science that we use to build bridges, fly airplanes and operate nuclear power plants, is inherently broken and there's no way it can be fixed.

Gödel himself lost his mind over this.

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#28

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Earth’s magnetic field started shifting at an accelerated rate in 2000. The earth is long overdue for a magnetic pole swap.

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#29

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know Gamma Ray Bursts.

If ever one happens to be close enough and aimed exactly at Earth, we're basically all dead.

Wild4fire , NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/ICRAR Report

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#30

30 Of The Scariest Science Facts People Don’t Seem To Know For two days in September of 1859 a massive solar flare (coronal mass ejection) powerful enough to make hanging telegraph lines burst into flames from the induced current washed over the Earth. Another massive burst in 2012 only just missed Earth, but it's not going to be pretty when our luck runs out on this.

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