“Confirmation Bias Is A Scary Thing”: People Online Share 35 Scientific Facts That Sound Unbelievable But Are Actually True

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.

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.

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.

In the entire records of human history, there are only 16 instances of recorded hammerhead shark bites on humans, and not a single fatality.

1.3 million earths can fit inside the sun. 5 BILLION suns can fit inside the largest star ever observed, UY Scuti.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Some people have extra spleen or liver that are pea sized.

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.

The sound of a crack of a whip breaks the sound barrier.

On average Mercury is the closest planet to Earth by a considerable margin.

if someone were to scream nonstop for a year it would generate enough energy to heat up a cup of coffe