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".
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287points
#2
that the human brain is the only organ in the history of existence that named itself.
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212points
#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!
187points
The Reddit user really got the ball rolling when they asked the community members what is a cool scientific fact that they know that sounds unbelievable. “I am always interested in learning about cool new facts and what better place than Reddit to ask this question!” they told Bored Panda.
Their question attracted roughly 3,000 comments, which must have provided plenty of information for them to get acquainted with. The answers from other redditors covered all sorts of fields, from chemistry to geology and everything in between. The OP, who is a mechanical engineer themselves, said that they have always been fascinated by physics and the universe.
They also revealed which scientific fact blew their mind the most: “The fact that I love the most and like sharing with people is that the human brain named itself! Given enough time, hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from!”
#4
30-50% of people don’t have an internal monologue.
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181points
#5
The largest organism in the world is a massive underground network of mushrooms.
179points
#6
Giraffes’ tongues are black and purple to prevent sunburn while they’re feeding up high.
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177points
#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.
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170points
#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.
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166points
#10
Magnolias predate bees and were first pollinated by beetles and earlier bug species.
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157points
#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.
153points
#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.
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152points
#13
GPS tracking is not the satellites tracking the object, but the object tracking the satellites.
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149points
#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
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141points
#15
A serving of movie theater popcorn is equivalent to two Big Macs, in terms of calories, saturated fat, and sodium.
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138points
#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)
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)
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138points
#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.
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133points
#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
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129points
#19
The blue whale, at nearly 100 feet long and nearly 200 tons, is the largest animal known to have ever existed.
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114points
#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...
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105points