Curiosities,Interesting FactsMAY 5, 2023

30 Frightening Scientific Facts That Folks In This Online Group Had The Misfortune To Learn

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The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once sagely remarked that "if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Damn rightly noticed, especially when you consider that for several millennia of its existence, humanity has been actively gazing into the abyss and highlighting itself first with a candle, and then with a flashlight. We call this process science.

And you know what? There are scientific theories that, from one awareness of them, from one thought, send goosebumps running down the skin and make us feel sick. And in this viral thread you can meet netizens opening up about the creepiest pieces of science they've ever known.

#1

30 Frightening Scientific Facts That Folks In This Online Group Had The Misfortune To Learn

The theory of MAD, or mutually assured destruction.

It's a great theory for helping me sleep at night, but uh... It kinda only works if everyone involved is always rational at all times, and never feels they have nothing to lose.

Thankfully no human ever acts irrationally.

And certainly if they did, we'd never let them keep control of nuclear weapons!

That'd be insane.

Ha ha. Really insane.

Like, "insane" is honestly putin it mildly.

Phoenix042, Oliver Cole

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197points

#2

Just being alive is the most f*****g bizarre thing in the world.

redditshy, Roberto Nickson

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164points

#3

Death. Just death. Blows my mind that one day we just cease to exist and people just go on with their life as if we were never there.

anon, Veit Hammer

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152points

Some people think that being afraid of science is basically weird, because it is thanks to science that we got to where we are, and modernity is not only about climate change, nuclear weapons and TikTok. It is also cutting-edge medicine, an opportunity to get to another continent in just a couple of hours, communication with people on the other side of the globe... But anyway, just seriously think about some scientific facts - and it really sends shivers down our spines.

#4

Alzheimer's/Dementia - anything where you lose your memory or become a burden to your family

Motor_Relation_5459, Andrew Neel

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149points

#5

Quite a common one, but space is SO BIG. Like, bigger than the amount that we can observe. Gives me the chills.

Backstage____, Pixabay

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135points

#6

I suppose that at any moment you can have an aneurysm and bam you're dead and there's not much you can really do to prevent it or even predict it

DoopFoopHoop, Robina Weermeijer

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123points

What else is the problem - for many people, science has replaced religion, and the principles there are just completely different. "My answer was the usual, ‘science is not a belief system’ followed by a deeper explanation. The conversation circled around to faith. I shared that I saw no inherent conflict between my faith and science," Dr. Marshall Shepherd, a leading international expert in weather and climate, writes in his column on Forbes.

"Many students (and parents) also suffer from 'science anxiety.' I am always concerned when I hear a parent say, 'I am not a science person nor is my kid.' Such statements train the child to succumb to parental insecurities or biases while setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy," Dr. Shepherd also notes, and it's actually hard to disagree with him.

#7

Antimicrobial resistance.

What's really crazy is, we owe our modern prosperity (especially in the US) to antibiotics. Each particular antibiotic only works for a short period of time, before pathogenic bacteria becomes resistant to it. We've been though numerous different antibiotics since the discovery of penicillin, and pathogenic bacteria have become resistant to almost all of them. We're running out of antibiotics that are still effective.

About 4 or 5 years ago, I learned that there were babies born in India who had infections that were resistant to all known types of antibiotics.

There's a good chance that in our lifetimes, we'll see people dying from common infections due to the lack of effective drugs to treat them.

uglyugly1, Edward Jenner

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111points

#8

Any AI smart enough to pass the Turing test, is smart enough to know to fail it

Shadeslaer, ThisIsEngineering

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110points

#9

The Carrington Event. In 1859 the sun spewed a huge amount of highly-charged plasma that brushed against the Earth's magnetosphere and caused every electronic device on Earth to receive a huge electric shock. At the time, "every electronic device on Earth" consisted of a few telegraph machines. Some simply ran even while disconnected from their power supply for a while, some melted.

If an event like this were to happen today (we're overdue for one), it would pretty much destroy every single electronic device, including all of the infrastructure used to generate and distribute electricity.

There would be widespread blackouts everywhere, and no way to contact anyone to call for help or find out what state the rest of the world is in. And no way to fix it other than re-creating centuries worth of scientific advancements by hand.

CapnFang, ISS Expedition 23 crew

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106points

But be that as it may, it used to be somehow easier in the good old days, wasn't it? To live, firmly knowing that above us is a solid sky with stars evenly nailed to it, through which the sun runs with the punctuality of a mail train. Live confident that if you strictly follow the rules specified in the holy books, you will definitely go to heaven... Live without thinking about how this world really works, and what awaits us when we cross that fine line... Science helps us replace faith with knowledge, but sometimes that knowledge is scary as hell.

#10

People in large groups become really bad at making decisions, planning, and making accurate judgements.
It doesn’t matter if the group is made of genuinely intelligent people, the above is always true.

Rusty-Wheel, Min An

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98points

#11

The brain is so complex that we can't understand it fully, ergo the brain is so complex that it doesn't understand itself.

Ponder that for a moment.

_spookyvision_

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84points

#12

That since 9/11 more soldiers [take their own lives] than die in war.

DanMittaul, Art Guzman

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82points

However, another fundamental difference between knowledge and faith is that knowledge is not absolute, and what was previously considered an immutable scientific truth may well be refuted tomorrow. After all, as Omar Khayyam once wrote, “Strange, is it not that of the myriads who before us pass'd the door of darkness through, not one returns to tell us of the road, which to discover we must travel too.” So now just read and scroll this list to its very end - and add your own scary scientific facts in case you have some, as we're sure you do.

#13

Atoms are 99.99% empty space. The nature of all seemingly solid matter is an illusion.

osunightfall, Tara Winstead

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80points

#14

naegleria fowleri (brain eating amoeba) has a 97% fatality rate and it’s immune to most antibiotics

Old_Championship3196, iccsafe

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72points

#15

There have already been five mass extinction level events

justandswift, Elviss Railijs Bitāns

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65points

#16

the fact that we will never ever be able to know everything. like theres a limit to what we can know and theres so much out there that will we just never discover.

another one that scares me is that we are all alone on this floating rock. i doubt we are the only intelligent life in this universe but its possible that we are in a sense and that it self scares me so much.

starfire1905, Nina Uhlikova

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64points