Science is a gift that keeps on giving. It enables us to understand some of the world’s most mind-boggling phenomena and the constant discoveries mean that there’s always something new to learn.
Redditors recently shared some astonishing scientific facts with the ‘Ask Reddit‘ community. Thanks to the user rambojambo11 who started the discussion on this topic, they compiled quite a collection of pieces of information that sound unbelievable. We have combed through it to present to you some of the most fascinating ones, so keep scrolling for your daily dose of science. Also, if you get hooked after reading this list, don’t worry, there’s more here.
Bored Panda has reached out to rambojambo11 and they were kind enough to answer a few of our questions. You will find their thoughts below.
#1
Infrared light was discovered all the way back in 1800. By accident. With a thermometer.
William Herschel (who also discovered Uranus) was experimenting with a prism. He wanted to see if different colors of light had different temperatures. So he had the room completely dark except a beam of light hitting a prism and casting a rainbow onto the table. He had placed thermometers in each color band to see if there was a difference. As a control, he had an additional thermometer past the ene of the light below the red band.
Except when he compared his readings he got something strange: the control thermometer was reading the highest temperature of all. This didn’t make any sense. Was his thermometer faulty? He tried a few more tests with more thermometers in other places and came to an inescapable conclusion: there must be an additional invisible “color” below red that carried more heat than any of the visible colors. He named it infrared, which just literally means “below red”.
Image source: sharrrper, Lemuel Francis Abbott
#2
that the human brain is the only organ in the history of existence that named itself.
Image source: mack__7963
#3
There was a period of about 50 Million years when we had trees on earth but nothing to decompose dead ones, so they just piled up, and up, deeper and deeper, they got buried and eventually we got coal!
Image source: DrTriage, Chalabala
#4
30-50% of people don’t have an internal monologue.
Image source: toasted_oatsnmore, kevin turcios
#5
The largest organism in the world is a massive underground network of mushrooms.
Image source: Easy_Cauliflower_69, Alison Harrington
#6
Giraffes’ tongues are black and purple to prevent sunburn while they’re feeding up high.
Image source: aprilmayjunejuly21, Slawek K
#7
Sharks pre-date trees
Image source: Suuperdad, byrdyak
#8
Soap works simply because it makes water **more wet**.
Soap breaks surface tension, easing water’s ability to get into cracks and crevices, to wash away dirt deposits.
Image source: Engelgrafik
#9
There’s a small chance that, if you were to slap your hand on a table, all the molecules in your hand would miss the table and go right through it.
The odds are *astronomically* tiny, but not zero.
Image source: tornedron_
#10
Magnolias predate bees and were first pollinated by beetles and earlier bug species.
Image source: TheBarenJark, Takemaru Hirai
#11
The immune system does not encounter viruses and formulate an antibody that matches its shape. Instead, the immune system pumps out random antibodies that sometimes happen to match a virus it comes into contact with, and then begins to produce more of that specific antibody.
Image source: davilambic, Fusion Medical Animation
#12
Water IS actually blueish-greenish in color. It’s just a very very weak tint, so it usually appears simply transparent (and reflecfing the color of stuff around and inside it). But when it’s in very large volume, in a perfectly white room, under perfectlu white light, the water’s very own teal colour becomes visible.
Similarily, the sun seems goldish-orange from Earth due to the atmosphere. The light of the Sun itself is mostly white. However, if we were to analise the light very accurately, it’s actually a very subtle pale greenish/lime. We still see it as plain white in space, but I just think it’s so cool.
Image source: DiagonallyStripedRat, Akira Hojo
#13
GPS tracking is not the satellites tracking the object, but the object tracking the satellites.
Image source: UnethicalFood, Sandra Tan
#14
If you got sucked into a black whole, time would slow down too. Meaning while you are getting Spaghetiified, time is slowing down to the point where you will watch the universe die with you
Image source: Mysterious-Bench-527, Greg Rakozy
#15
A serving of movie theater popcorn is equivalent to two Big Macs, in terms of calories, saturated fat, and sodium.
Image source: heidismiles, Corina Rainer
#16
Scientifically:
The odds of my girlfriend having the same key in our city (San Diego) turns out to 1:724,480 but it seems impossible.
After a year of dating, turned out we have the same key to our individual apartments. (Different lock manufacturers)
Image source: TheUpsideDownWorlds
#17
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.
Also there was a mummy found in China that was so well preserved that she still had all her skin, hair, organs, etc. Her body was even flexible that you could bend her limbs as if she was alive. They even found her last meal still in her stomach and could perform an autopsy on her to tell you why she died. She died over 2000 years before she was found.
Image source: digitalmarketeramil
#18
“The power required to make a 1000 decibel noise for one second is equivalent to the power of the entire sun for 4 billion years”
A family member was talking about a “600 DB” car horn he bought over the holidays, and I was trying to explain to him that 600 DB is enough energy to destroy the planet and then some. Lol
Image source: Blacksixki, Daniel X. O’Neil
#19
The blue whale, at nearly 100 feet long and nearly 200 tons, is the largest animal known to have ever existed.
Image source: TwoTheVictor, Georg Wolf
#20
There was a scientific paper published by a physicist, backed by numerous prominent scientists, that determined that peanut butter has no appreciable effect on the rotation of the Earth…
Image source: Cranzeeman, rusvaplauke
#21
The key to eternal life is coded into all known DNA cells but so far proven impossible to crack. Every known living thing generates, adds, becomes bigger, better, stronger faster up to a certain point to then suddenly reverse and we don’t know why.
When a baby grows it’s cells form al sort of usefull things. At around 21 years old the process reverses and science can’t figure out why. Technically we should be able to regenerate indefinitely.
Image source: Voorniets
#22
Female ferrets die if they don’t find a partner to make with. Since they don’t leave “Heat” Until they’re mated with, the Oestrogen overload leads to Anemia, and death.
Image source: TheEyeOfLight, zoofanatic
#23
A mirror is technically a time machine. When you look at your reflection, you’re not looking at your ACTUAL reflection, you’re perceiving photons that hit the mirror an immaterially short time before and is just now hitting your eyes. So you’re actually seeing a picture of yourself from the past.
That’s a vast oversimplification but, yeah.
Image source: ThatGamingAsshole
#24
In the entire records of human history, there are only 16 instances of recorded hammerhead shark bites on humans, and not a single fatality.
Image source: siouxsclues
#25
1.3 million earths can fit inside the sun. 5 BILLION suns can fit inside the largest star ever observed, UY Scuti.
Image source: marcw14, nineplanets.org
#26
a photon of light doesnt experience any time from the time it is emitted to the time it is absorbed. It was born, it died, all in one instant.
Image source: bonjelascott, Sigmund
#27
Apart from hosting life, the rarest thing about earth may be its eclipses. It is a complete coincidence that the moon is the same size, and orbits in the path of, our sun.
Image source: Wazula23, Karl Magnuson
#28
Lake Superior can hold all of the water from the rest of the Great Lakes combined with room to spare.
This is more geography, but it always blows my mind when looking at a map that the continent of South America is almost entirely east of the United States.
Image source: Marty_Eastwood
#29
In Newtonian physics it was generally accepted that a planet call Vulcan was closer to the sun than Mercury. The math needed some kind of extra planet to explain Mercury’s weird orbit. Astronomers around the world for a couple hundred years would confirm a sighting, but it would never be there when you tried to use physics to predict where it would be. Even the famous french scientist that found Neptune with math predicted Vulcan using the same formulas. The idea didn’t die until Albert Einstein changes physics with special relativity. Suddenly all the orbits of our planets make sense and Mercury has a weird orbit because it is so close to the sun.
Basically, smart dudes figured a planet existed when it didn’t because their system didn’t work out. It took changing the system to meet reality. Confirmation bias is a scary thing.
Edit: General Relativity not Special.
Image source: GoodRighter, claudioventrella
#30
Not super scientific but an animal fact TONS of people refuse to believe. Monkeys are omnivores and they love to eat meat, more so than fruits and vegetables. I mean Monkeys, not apes lots of people group them in the same category
Image source: Maximan402
#31
Some people have extra spleen or liver that are pea sized.
Image source: iremovebrains, Kevin Kandlbinder
#32
It’s almost 20 kilometres from the top of Everest to Challanger Deep at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Scaled down to size of a billiard ball, the earth would be smoother than any billiard ball ever manufactured.
Image source: hackyslashy
#33
The sound of a crack of a whip breaks the sound barrier.
Image source: Jccckkk
#34
On average Mercury is the closest planet to Earth by a considerable margin.
Image source: Fracture_98, Carlos Kenobi
#35
if someone were to scream nonstop for a year it would generate enough energy to heat up a cup of coffe
Image source: GBgabe13, Usman Yousaf
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