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They say truth is stranger than fiction. And if you ask me, reality is also scarier than fiction. A horror movie about zombies or monsters will have me yawning, but reframe that same film to feature deadly bacteria or diseases lurking in swimming pools, and I won’t be sleeping for a week. So for all of you pandas out there who are interested in hearing about real-life terrors, we’ve got the perfect list for you.

Below, you'll find some of the scariest things that scientists have proven to be real, that sadistic Reddit users have been kind enough to share. Enjoy freaking yourself out by reading about these things that sound too crazy to be real, and be sure to upvote the responses that make you question whether scientists really need to keep making discoveries…

#1

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Nurse here.

COVID.

Now, let me explain what I mean. I am an ICU nurse and I have been in the "front lines" during the worst of the pandemic, first as a nurse manager in elderly homes, and later in Intensive Care Units.

Thing is... I cannot really express how terrifying this disease can be. I have seen young, healthy people dying and not being able to do anything for them. I have seen people that did everything right get the disease and end up under my care for months. Problem is that, no matter how hard I try, if you don't have a basic knowledge of intensive health care, you cannot really make your mind around what the word "critical" actually means.

Let me try to make your mind around this if you don't get what I mean.

Imagine getting sick and rapidly deteriorating to the point you cannot breath on your own. You are taken to ICU, fully analgosedated (so you are asleep and pain free), you get paralising agents (so all your muscles, including breathing, are fully relaxed), get a tube to your lungs, connected to a machine that will breath for you, and having all sorts of medicines whose only job is to keep you alive as your body fights off the disease with the help of different medications.

But then, even so, it is not enough, and you cannot properly oxygenate. So we do "prone" you, that means you be turned upside-down on the bed. But after about 24 hours we need to turn you back again on your back, because being on that position for so long can cause harm. But half an hour after turning you on your back, your blood tests show that you are not breathing properly again, and then we have to prone you again.

Repeat that for days. Weeks. Months.

Add to that that your family cannot get close to you. Maybe they can watch you through a glass door, if available. Add also that if your heart crashes (stops), the nursing & medical teams will be unable to get to you until they are properly dressed.

Did you get a mental image of what all this is? Let me tell you, that is about a 20% of what the word "critical" actually means when we talk about COVID.

PS: If you are a negationist, or anti-vaccines activist or whatever... don't. Just don't. Please.

Volgrand , Mufid Majnun Report

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Tams21
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1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Imagine doing that job during the height of the pandemic with little to no rest for months. We've seen societies and entire countries totally shut down, many (if not most) people know someone that's died yet some people still don't even seem to accept covids existence or seriousness. It's sobering.

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#2

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers How the brain is literally rewired and chemically altered by childhood neglect and abuse.

petalumaisreal , Anna Shvets Report

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And the like
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've recently learned the definition of "pruning" during teenage years: basically (but please anyone who's expert in the field correct me in case) during your teenage years your brain eliminates some of the neural paths and focuses on others due to environmental causes. So our brain hasn't finished cooking till we're adult- and this goes without saying - but if we're sonunlucky to live in an abusive or stressing environment in our teenage years this will lead to a neural structure that won't change.

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#3

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Ageing. I'm content with death but the idea of my body growing old, frail and eventually falling apart before the end game gives me goosebumps.

anon , Matthias Zomer Report

#4

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers More like a theory, the “orangutan paradox”, when we film a documentary on orangutans, they can’t realise that we are observing them, yet they are the most intelligent species of their category, so aliens might be watching us and we are as oblivious as an orangutan

Time_Succotash , uzumaki anam Report

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4th Account
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Maybe they just don't care that we're observing them and just stick around for the free food

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#5

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Dementia

sorrymabad , Tim Doerfler Report

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N Miller
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And on the other end of the scale, just getting old and frail and *not* having any mental degradation. I'm torn between my two nightmares of losing my memories and personality, or being trapped in a body that has failed, still fully aware and understanding of what's going on.

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#6

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers That things we thought were stars (or fuzzy stars) a century ago are actually entire galaxies. Who knows who or what the F is out there?

OnionTruck , Arnaud Mariat Report

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#7

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Deep time.

The Earth was alive a million years ago. And a million years before that. A thousand million years before that.


Even if our civilization is miraculously successful and we live for 20 thousand more years and colonize thousands of planets like in Dune it's still nothing. A blink of an eye. The Earth would barely notice.

Spookd_Moffun , NASA Report

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GingerPanda
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm sure Earth will be glad that weird parasitic infection finally cleared up.

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#8

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Giant squids. Suddenly the old sailor story's of krakens wrapping tenticles around a ship and pulling it into the ocean doesn't seem like fiction.

OneTyler2Many , K. Mitch Hodge Report

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#9

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Brain-eating amoebas

dark_n_lovely_qu33n , wikipedia Report

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4th Account
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You can outsmart them by telling them about flat earth and anti vaxx theories

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#10

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Imo, that statistically, at least based on the Milgram study, about 2/3 of people will obey authority figures who tell them to hurt or even kill an innocent person. Then when you ask them why they did it, they give answers startlingly similar to "I was just following orders".

theinsanegamer23 , Milène REL Report

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#11

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers That we've only explored (numbers might not be quite right) 2% of the oceans and that the oceans makes up 78% of the world. I wonder what's in there

OffensiveCabbage , Francesco Ungaro Report

#12

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Gamma ray bursts. No warning, no escape, no defense, no survivors.

Swampwolf42 , wikipedia Report

#13

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Climate Change

Puzzled_Ad2563 , Melissa Bradley Report

#15

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Some tumors have teeth, hair and even eyes.

Twat_Waffle_Stomp , Tima Miroshnichenko Report

#16

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Zombifying fungi as depicted in games like The Last Of Us exist, and are very potentially even scarier than how they appear in there.

The fungi of the genus Condyceps like to infect insects by scattering spores on them. After a while these insects will start to behave erratically. Eventually they try to reach a high place, like a stalk, where they lock their legs and then die. The fungus then sprouts from their body, scattering its spores below to infect the animal's brothers and sisters.

A theory currently is that the fungus doesn't even affect the brain, but rather that it cuts off the brain from the muscles. If this is the case, it means that the brain of the infected animal still functions normally, but its body just doesn't follow its commands, leaving the animal to die a slow but somewhat conscious death in order to infect more of its kind.

BobstheBoldore , wikipedia Report

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#17

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers The Yellowstone super volcano.

overheatbelief , Pixabay Report

#18

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers The scariest thing for me, is that we have scientifically mapped human psychology. We know social habits, and evolutionary survival instincts that we've carried over from our ancient past. We have extensive knowledge on how to elicit the exact response out of a human on command. And the scary thing is that corporations use this information to sell things to us.

Everything about a product's design from it's shape, to it's color pallet to it's odor is specifically and intricately designed to hack our brains and trigger the exact specific response that they want from us.

Once you are aware of how much human psychology goes into advertising, you will never look at an add the same way again.

The_Quicktrigger , Jose Francisco Fernandez Saura Report

#19

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Prions, horrific and totally unpredictable.

geordiesteve520 , wikipedia Report

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Feathered Dinosaur
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

BSE, only in humans. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease being the most common. There's no known therapy for prion diseases, they always end lethally.

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#20

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Lead in gasoline may very-well have decreased the human IQ on a global scale while in use.

keldoged , Skitterphoto Report

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Firstname Lastname
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Explains why drivers be making bad judgment calls about cutting me off when exiting the gas station parking lot...

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#21

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers 60% of your poop is made of living and dead gut bacteria. These gut bacteria combine to produce more dopamine and serotonin than your brain can produce. Abundance of these neurotransmitters has a significant affect on the brain. Production of neurotransmitters is far from their only pathway to the brain.

Fecal transplants, used for illnesses, change your eating behavior. Patients who have a healthy weight but receive a transplant from an obese person are highly likely to become obese. Patients who are obese but receive a transplant from a thin person are highly likely to become thin.

In a real sense you can consider yourself to be a servant of your gut bacteria.

unskilledplay , wikipedia Report

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TheElderNom
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm obese and if I was offered a poop pill that'd help I'd take it. Two decades of yoyo dieting, ED's and snide commentd have messed up both my head and my body. I was a chubby child but as a teenager I was perfectly healthy, normal weight and lots of exercise. But the teasing that started in first grade turned to bullying and I stopped caring. Why deny myself treats when I'd always be fat?

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#22

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Cracking your neck could cause you to have a stroke but its rare

anon , KoolShooters Report

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#23

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Time, it's not scary until you start thinking about it

RealPinyw , Jordan Benton Report

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Stardust she/her
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Time will become meaningless very far into the future long after the last star went supernova, the last blackdwarf cooled down, after the last blackhole exploded and after the last proton has decayed. Once every particle of radiation cools down towards absolute zero, only then is everything meaningless, nothing interesting or new will happen anymore and nothing will be left for entropy to make more disordered

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#24

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers That a person can be killed by organisms so tiny that we can't even see them

cold_toast_n_butter , CDC Report

#25

That most people are addicted to technology but have no idea how it works. Instead of making humanity better and more efficient it’s ruining people’s lives. Of f*****g course

LSD_for_Everyone Report

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Bernd Herbert
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We are at apoint in our technological development that nobody can really know how everything works. That’s why we have specialists like engineers and scientists

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#26

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers That hearing is the last sense to leave, when dying.

ma5terbate , Kindel Media Report

#27

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers The capability to harness nuclear explosions

MadgoonOfficial , ctbto Report

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WonderWoman
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And the maniacal, egocentric, power-hungry @ssh0les that control said devices - that is the most frightening of all. (i.e. American Republicans, Putin)

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#28

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers How little human scientists actually know relative to the amount of things in the universe

FCFirework , ThisisEngineering RAEng Report

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Libstak
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We have what we know we know, what we dont know we know, what we know we dont know, and by far the highest percentage of all knowledge is what we dont know that we dont know....

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#29

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Finding substances that can change your behaviour, memories and general personality.

Puggymon , danilo.alvesd Report

#30

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers How human perceptions and values can be so easily hacked by tweaking some chemicals here and there.

androbot , Louis Reed Report

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#31

Lobsters are practically immortal and continue to grow as long as they don't die from disease or killed by predator.

merkitt Report

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River Daski
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

there has been study that they can die of exhaustion or literally being trapped in their own shell. as they get older, molting becomes harder and harder, and their age does show in the inability to produce as much energy as it used to, thus, it's unable to molt properly and is squished by its own old skeleton

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#32

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers Not the scariest, but thought I should add because it's kinda suspicious.

Many governments are increasingly admitting that UFOs (which means unidentified flying objects, not aliens!) are real. They have been detected by many advanced military systems. They have been observed to seriously outperform our best technology/jets.

Now of course, what's a UFO conversation without bringing in the possibility of extraterrestrials watching us? Creepy but fascinating.

Yoprobro13 , Albert Antony Report

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4th Account
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

UFOs are not just spaceships. They can be any flying object that we don't know about

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#33

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers The size of our galaxy, how many *other* galaxies there are and how far away they are. When you can actually see something that incomprehensible..

Jfonzy , Philippe Donn Report

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Feathered Dinosaur
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's so sad I won't ever leave this solar system, let alone our galaxy. One can only dream and read sci-fi novels

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#34

Entropy. Time shall consume all things. Inevitable heat death of the universe.

Revolutionary_Elk420 Report

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Stardust she/her
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Our universe has only just begun, if you compare its lifepsan to that of a human’s, it just left the womb. Most of the universe’s life will be spent in darkness and cold

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#35

False vacuum decay.

It's a quantum physics' concept, but essentially it rises the question that there might be a lower energy state to matter as we now it.

There's no way to be sure that it's not the case, and because of quantum fluctuations there's a non-zero chance that somewhere some day, a particule will decay into its "true" lowest energy state.

Depending on how far that "true" vacuum is from the "false" one, the implications could range from a small changes in cosmological constants, to the cessation of all fundamental forces as we know it, i.e. full & immediate destruction of baryonic matter, or even immediate gravitational collapse of the universe.

TL;DR: if the universe quantum-blips in a no-no way we go bye-bye Thanos-snap-style

F0lks_ Report

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#36

Toxoplasma gondii. A parasitic organism in cats that causes rats to become attracted to cat urine rather than be repelled. It favors risk taking behavior in humans that have been exposed. How many things have you down because of Toxoplasma gondii?

certifiedfemale9999 Report

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Penny Kemper
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Nothing. And I'm the only one cleaning the litter box and I'm not attracted to the urine. Smh

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#37

Someone Asks What The Scariest Thing Science Has Proven To Be Real Is, And People Deliver 30 Of The Most Chilling Answers The infinite expansion of the universe. Everything in the universe is not only getting farther and farther apart, but accelerating in it's expansion, such that one day in the distant future, whatever creatures are left to look up from their planets and wonder, will see an empty sky devoid of stars and galaxies as they've all expanded beyond the cosmic horizon. All worlds will be alone, drifting in the infinite dark, with no possible way of knowing the scale and beauty of what was.

swim4018916044 , Gaëtan Othenin-Girard Report

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Backup Banana
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Technically we don't know if the universe is expanding, right, as we don't know the extent of it to begin with. Maybe it's always the same size but it just doesn't use all the space and capacity all the time, you know, like we allegedly don't use all of of brain, if we go study, we don't literally grow a larger brain, we just use more of what was already there.

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#38

Sun is going to die. It will explode and stop providing energy after 5 billion years. We better find a new star to relocate by then. Nearest star Proxima Centauri is 4.5 light years away from Earth and with current technology we can reach the neighbouring star in 6300 years trip.

srvanika Report

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Telepathetic
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"We" are not going to be around in 200 years let alone long enough to have to worry

Stardust she/her
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The sun is not going to explode, it will expand into a red giant and its outer layers will eventually cool off and float away leaving behind a white dwarf star that will slowly cool over a long period of time

4th Account
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It will only take 1 year to pull it of if we wait 4.99 billion years

JMil
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It will not explode. It will fuse larger elements up to nickel and iron. It will expand and cool (red giant style) and engulf the earth. The sun does not have sufficient mass to go supernova. I, just can't....

MadamGreenIce
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm appaled by the remark 'we better find a new star to relocate by then'. Haven't we had enough of destroying one planet that we have to destroy another one? And for OP's info Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf that is a fraction of our Sol's mass. It's a dying star.

M O'Connell
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You are partially correct, but are perhaps missing the implications of Proxima Centauri's lifecycle. A red dwarf is not a star which is dying, it is a low-mass star, which are the longest-lived stellar objects in the universe. Proxima Centauri will continue its low steady glow for billions of years after our Sun has ceased sustaining fusion. The lifetime of a star is proportional to its mass divided by its luminosity. Luminosity is proportional to mass to the power of 3.5. A star 1/4th the suns mass will therefore live approximately 32x as long.

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Jeremy James
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The squids or octopuses or whoever is left are going to have to figure out that whole interstellar travel thing without us, because we're not going to last another 50 years, let alone 5 billion.

Rebelliousslug
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

“With current technology we can reach a neighboring star in 6300 years trip” what is this fantastic technology because where I sit, humans are struggling to make it to a planet in our own solar system

David Paterson
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I did a calculation on this. Pluto and the moons of Neptune might become pleasantly habitable during this period. But even then, I would not recommend looking directly at the Sun from even that distance. As for the word "explode" it's appropriate for that short period of time when the Sun sheds its outer layers to become a planetary nebula.

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#39

The Great Filter.

Essentially, the theory goes that the reason we don’t see a universe teeming with life is that life is extremely unlikely. So, that must mean one step in the development of intelligent life is highly unlikely. The Great Filter is that unlikely step. The Great Filter could be in the past, meaning that there was some step in the evolution of life on Earth that was unlikely and we got past it. Or, and here’s the scary part, what if the Great Filter is in the future, and every intelligent civilization is doomed to bring about it’s own destruction?

EDIT: So science hasn’t exactly proved this real, but it’s a worrisome theory nonetheless

Eferver Report

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David Paterson
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The two big flaws in this hypothesis are that: One, the cycle of chemical reactions needed to produce even minimal RNA based life are so unlikely that they won't even occur one in a trillion visible universes. Two, our galaxy could be teeming with intelligent life but we're too stupid to recognise it.

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