35 Scientific Facts That Are Hard To Believe Are Actually Real

It should be noted right away that some of the facts and stories told in this collection are, well, a kind of beautiful exaggerations. They are essentially correct, but presented from a particular angle. For example, there is a story that some species of fungi communicate with each other by exchanging specific electrical impulses.

Such a study by Professor Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England actually took place in 2022, and his team discovered that certain patterns exist in the electrical spikes between four species of fungi: enoki, split gill, ghost, and caterpillar fungi. The scientists counted nearly five dozen of these.

Can these be considered fully-fledged “words,” and can we begin to talk about “talking fungi”? Of course not. But Professor Adamatzky quite reasonably suggests that the exchange of these impulses is similar in nature to the communication inherent in other living organisms. Ain’t it fantastic anyway?

Another beautiful story is the Amazon rainforest, 60% of which remains unexplored, and no one actually knows what lies beneath its lush greenery. On the other hand, how realistic is the 60% figure? Why not, for example, 50 or 90?

Well, if we consider this issue from a geographic and historical perspective, the advent of lidar technology has enabled us to peer beneath the treetops and discover several lost cities in Bolivia and Ecuador.

As for uncontacted tribes, quite a few of them are still known to science. But from a biological perspective, yes, many plant and animal species, especially small ones like insects, remain unexplored. Finally, the specific local climate and the general impenetrability of the forests greatly complicate detailed research.

But 60%? Well, we all love numbers, and this one, despite being quite vague, actually takes our imagination. We can’t actually calculate the exact percentage of historical, biological, and geographic facts that are still unknown to us, but 60% seems quite challenging.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that some of the facts cited in this list won’t later be refuted by any new research. And we’re not even talking about scientific hoaxes (although that does happen). Modern science simply doesn’t stand still, and what was once an axiom may well prove untrue later.

A classic example: for nearly two thousand years, humanity was pretty much convinced that the Sun and stars revolved around a stationary Earth in the firmament. To explain the obvious inconsistencies in this concept, outstanding minds, like the ancient scholar Ptolemy, even invented additional theories.

It took the genius of Nicolaus Copernicus to make people look at the world from a different perspective – and suddenly, everything fell into place, and the additional theories invented to “fill in” the gaps turned out to be just unnecessary!

However, sometimes scientific hoaxes do occur – as happened, for example, in 1999 with the so-called “Archaeoraptor,” supposedly an intermediate link between dinosaurs and birds discovered in China. The stunning scientific sensation turned out to be a complete dud – the scientists were simply “playing Lego” with dinosaur bones, “assembling” their “discovery” from several parts of various ancient creatures.

And sometimes, in pursuit of a scientific sensation, people deceive themselves. This happened, for example, with the “cold thermonuclear fusion” experiment conducted by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989 at the University of Utah. Alas, it was not confirmed in practice.

Well, the physicists themselves were also unsure of the results of their experiment, but the university administration was so eager to stir up the sensation that the announcement of the experiment’s results was made even before any official confirmation. Naturally, this resulted in a major scandal that partially undermined the reputation of serious science…

In any case, we do think you’ll find this collection of scientific facts and stories interesting. Although sometimes a bit exaggerated, they still demonstrate how phenomenal and amazing the world around us and even our own bodies really are.

So now, our dear readers, please feel free to read these stories to the very end, and maybe add your own in the comments if you also have any incredible scientific facts to share!