While scrolling through social media, we often stumble upon fun and quirky facts that make us smile or shrug. But then, there are those facts that make you pause and wonder, “Wait…is that really true?”
So when a curious Redditor asked, “What’s a fact you learned that instantly made you question reality?” people flooded the thread with some of the most jaw-dropping facts they’ve ever encountered. Ready to have your mind blown? Keep reading, Pandas!
#1
I read somewhere that we can only see about 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum, meaning we’re practically blind to most of what’s going on around us. It made me question how much of reality is hidden from us, existing beyond what our senses can perceive.
Another one that shook me was learning that trees can communicate with each other through underground fungal networks, sharing nutrients and even warning each other about threats. It completely flipped my understanding of forests — they’re not just a collection of individual trees, but more like an interconnected community working together. Reality suddenly seemed a lot more complex.
Image source: syedadilmahmood, Pixabay/Pexels
#2
That some people don’t have an inner monologue or voice; and that some people literally can’t picture things in their minds.
Image source: Late-Republic2732, Mochammad Algi/pexels
#3
I was raised Mormon. When I learned how much was copied from the Freemasons, I began looking at the non-church sources for information. Finding out your whole life has been a lie is a hell I wish on no one.
Image source: Scary-Baby15, Christian Lüts/flickr
#4
The Romans figured out how to make heated floors. Central heating sounds like a modern invention, but apparently its been around for 2000 years.
Image source: SnooChipmunks126, Pascal RADIGUE
#5
That everyone you know or have met has a different version of you in their minds. Their perceptions are based on their interactions or impressions of you. No one really sees you exactly the same way.
Image source: oneredhen1969, Tomé Louro/Pexels
#6
My son is 5 now and I still look at him dumbfounded at times. Like I MADE you. You grew inside of me and now you exist with your own consciousness. And continue to grow. Crazy.
Image source: Patience_3236, Yan Krukau/pexels
#7
That there is no way to know for sure if you and any other person sees the same color when looking at the same thing.
Image source: DigGumPig, Fabien Burgue/pexels
#8
You know those fun universe animations that starts out with the earth, or maybe something on earth, then zooms out bit by bit, comparing us to something larger in the universe? Then it keeps going. You can’t see earth anymore, but you can focus on the sun. But then the sun is gone. And we’re still getting smaller because we haven’t gotten to the biggest object yet. Smaller and smaller and smaller. We barely even exist. But I complain about the drive to Dallas.
Image source: girlikecupcake, Pixabay/pexels
#9
Not really a fact, but a feeling. I was raised in a religious setting, so the question became “If God made everything, who made God?” I used to spiral into these thoughts, like “How does the universe exist?” “Where did everything come from?” “How is it possible to exist? Nothing can exist!” I eventually learned about dimensionality and stuff and put it to bed with the fact that whatever the answer is, I have no capacity to understand it anyway.
Image source: GDMFusername, Michael Morse/Pexels
#10
These were both from when I was relatively young, 7 or 8. And obviously as a result of the religious environment I was raised in.
1. There are religions other than Roman Catholicism. I thought RC was just what everybody did.
2. People *actually believe their religions are true*. I thought that everyone else was just going along with things for whatever reason – as I was – because, even as a kid, none of it made sense. I quickly learned that questioning things just got you in trouble so did what I was told.
Image source: BuzzVibes, Haydan As-soendawy/pexels
#11
That one about how bananas are berries but strawberries aren’t really berries… like what even is fruit anymore.
Image source: angelmixy, Robbi F /pexels
#12
Dude when I found out honey never spoils like how is that even real… is it just magic or what?
Image source: ypuresweety, Pixabay/pexels
#13
That we had thought before we had language.
Image source: CarboniteCopy, The British Museum
#14
When you do a proper shuffle of a normal 52 card deck, the resulting shuffle order of the cards has a very near 100% chance of that being the first time that order has ever happened in the history of the universe.
Image source: AstroZombieGreenHell
#15
My physicist husband claims that there are differently-sized infinities. Apparently, a lot of mathematicians think that, too. HOW????
Image source: CrowRoutine9631, Ketut Subiyanto/pexels
#16
The double-slit experiment. Even when you slow the experiment down so that it’s only a single photon, electron, etc. being measured you still see the interference pattern. Unless you put your detector behind the slits, then it’s a solid set of two lines behind the slits.
It’s almost like the universe is rendering itself differently based on observation.
Image source: Mr_Lumbergh, Graham Beards
#17
Apparently schizophrenia can hit anyone at any time, and using psychoactive d***s (like LSD and magic mushrooms) significantly increase the chances of you getting schizophrenia. To keep a long story short, it isn’t a stretch to say that most religious and philosophical figures of our past were probably schizophrenic since many religions and metaphysical questions before science were based on visions, voices, and generic “signs” of whatever sparked their tirades. Makes me wonder a lot about how reality and unreality are just a matter of perception.
Image source: FubarJackson145
#18
Most everything is made up of nothing. The distance between the nucleus of an atom and the electron is insanely large.
If the nucleus were a ping pong ball, the electron would be about 2 mi away.
Image source: Virtual-Chicken-1031
#19
Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood. Like, what kind of alien sea creature is that?
Image source: Nyx_Enchant
#20
How infinite the universe is and we don’t know much about it.
Image source: RosePetal_23, Jacub Gomez/pexels
#21
Brain Eating Ameobas are everywhere and the only reason people don’t constanly dying from them is because it’s really hard for them to enter our bodies through our nose.
Image source: spytez
#22
Platypuses (male) are venomous.
Image source: Gumbercules81, Klaus/flickr
#23
It is literally impossible to describe, in words, what quantum superposition is. Everything you’ve heard about quantum superposition is, at best, “sort of right” but also “alot wrong” but we *don’t have a way to describe it properly* so those half-assed (schrodinger’s cat, both and neither at the same time, etc) ‘explanations’ just stick around because without understanding the math you just can’t understand quantum superposition properly.
Quantum reality is simply that different from macroscopic reality. Our intuition cannot comprehend what is happening. I do not understand quantum superposition, and unless you’re a theoretical quantum physicist neither do you. And some of them don’t!
But we *know* it’s real. It happens. It affects reality. We cannot convey what is happening with words. That f***s with me so hard.
Image source: xyponx, Dhatfield
#24
That about 97% of the observable universe is already out of reach for us even with light speed technology.
Image source: YuukiSonzai
#25
Saudi Arabia is a net importer of sand and camels.
Image source: Luisguirot, Alex Azabache/pexels
#26
Who ever spends more money on their lawyer, wins in court. Truth doesn’t matter. It only matters who argues better.
Image source: Neddyrow
#27
I learned that lobsters can theoretically live forever, and now I’m questioning why we’re not all trying to unlock the secret to lobster immortality.
Image source: Prestigious_Club_609, Ellie Burgin/pexels
#28
One fact that often blows people’s minds is that the universe is constantly expanding.
Image source: False_Put_10
#29
I remember watching a video on how the universe might end. It was a 30-minute time lapse of what occurs from the Big Bang to the “end.” EARTH’S entire existence from beginning to end wasn’t even a minute before it formed and burnt out. Really felt insignificant just trying to comprehend the time frame of the universe.
Image source: rvoyles91
#30
Human comprehension of reality is so far from accurate its functionally useless. Every understanding, scientific discover, whatever we make, is at BEST just us trying to make things make sense to us. But humans simply don’t have the brainpower/hardware to come anywhere close to an actual understanding of reality.
It’s like an ant walking on an iphone. Its brain can process things like “this surface is smooth” “there is no food here” and thats about as complex as it can get, but that’s nowhere near the level of complexity of the iphone itself.
Image source: Temporary_Race4264
#31
Quantum entanglement. There are particles light years apart that react instantaneously when the other is touched. We live in a world of magic and wonder.
Image source: aspiringsensei
#32
How big the universe is. Conversely, how small the smallest building blocks of the universe are.
Image source: revolutionoverdue
#33
“The Birthday Paradox” is a fun one. I wouldn’t say I “questioned reality” as I am math nerd, but it’s fun to share with people who aren’t so inclined.
For those unaware, it deals with the probability of two randomly chosen people out of a larger group of people having the same birthday, and that you only need a room of 23 people for that probability to be greater than 50%. 50 people and it becomes 97%.
To explain a little further on why this ends up seeming so surprising/impossible for most people when they first hear this, it’s because people often confuse the premise of “probability that 2 randomly chosen people share a birthday” with “probability that 1 other randomly chosen person shares MY birthday”, which is not the same calculation.
Image source: CosmoJones07
#34
If you had a really long stick that connected to the Moon, and you pulled the stick, the other end of the stick wouldn’t move instantly. It would take as long as it takes for the speed of sound travelling through wood to reach the Moon from Earth for the other end to move as a result of your pulling the stick
I think the thing that gets me about this is I knew everything I needed to know to reach this conclusion on my own but I’d literally just never thought about this specific hypothetical before, and when you actually write it out like that it feels so counterintuitive even though I intellectually understand all the component pieces that make it true.
Image source: badgersprite
#35
Light doesn’t experience time. From its departure from a quasar on the far end of the universe to a sensor on a space telescope that was built a decade ago, the journey took almost the entire lifespan of existence.
And yet, as far as the photon is concerned, the trip was instantaneous.
If that wasn’t wild enough, here’s the real mindf***: There’s no such thing as a free photon. They only exist as a carrier for energy exchange between electrons. For a photon to exist it has to have a sender and a recipient. Two electrons separated by the entirety of space and time somehow agreed to exchange a photon.
Image source: Majik_Sheff, Faik Akmd/pexels
#36
When measuring a coastline, the smaller the unit of measurement, the longer it is.
Image source: p0tat0p0tat0, Dennis Jarvis/flickr
#37
Chicagos parking meters are paid out to a non USA nation for the next like 50! Years!
Image source: YourEveryDayCaveMan
#38
I read once that the arrangements of molecules or cells or atoms (i really can recall what precisely) looks eerie similar to the way galaxies and clusters look.
This made me think that perhaps our universe is just a sumatomic thing within something larger, like a fly in a cats a*s.
Image that!
Image source: Noelojm, Pixabay/pexels
#39
Just learned today that if a photon enters a cloud of atoms that are cold it can leave that cloud before it enters.
negative time.
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2448067-light-has-been-seen-leaving-an-atom-cloud-before-it-entered/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2448067-light-has-been-seen-leaving-an-atom-cloud-before-it-entered/).
Image source: random-idiom
#40
Time dilation.
Image source: wifeunderthesea
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