There pretty much isn’t a single day that goes by where we don’t thank ourselves for the internet. The internet has been one of the greatest tools in recent memory in terms of educating masses of people outside of the curriculum of organized education. We took some time to dig into the craziest sections of scientific fact that we could find and we came out the other side with some true statements that are likely going to break your mind or at the very least bend it. Listed below are 11 of the most mind bending scientific facts of all time. We’d strap on a helmet because these are going to really blow your mind.
Human sweat has no odor.
Alright, we hear you reaching through your screen to try and call us a liar on this scientific fact, but it won’t work! This fact is as accurate as a great car insurance quote: we stand by it 100%. The truth is that human sweat contains no natural odor. Sweat itself has no smell and if you were to capture it in a vacuum you wouldn’t really sense it with your nose. Instead the odor that you smell from sweat is actually bacteria doing its job and eating the sweat. The waste byproduct of this bacteria munching away at your sweat ends up creating the smell that you are familiar and probably disgusted by. Inside of your body bacteria is working at all times to get your body operating the right way and you should be glad. Take care of that bacteria by nurturing a positive diet that keeps your stomach firing on all cylinders, thus helping this bacteria work even more efficiently.
Human sweat has no odor
Your cells have been dividing since the Earth began.
Perhaps even trippier than conceptualizing space is our inability to conceptualize life at the cellular level. Fortunately we have an example far more interesting than the random advert for car insurance online quotes, though those are even made of matter. Did you know that every cell in your body has been dividing ever since the very moment that life on Earth began? These divisions will continue until your life ends outside of any cells that you pass on to your children. You can also pass cells on, living, via organ donation to the new donor. Pretty crazy to realize we have cells as old as time in our own body. This says nothing about how rapidly your cells regenerate even after just brushing against something with your skin. Cells in general sort of freak us out, there are just too many of them doing too many different things.
Your cells have been dividing since the Earth began
The human brain has more working synapses than the Milky Way has stars.
The Milky Way is almost too large to fathom, even from our perfect vantage point here on Earth. In fact, any time you begin to try and rationalize the size of space you will probably end up getting a headache of some form. Those headaches themselves are little miracles, especially as you learn more about this fact. The Milky Way is thought to have a mass consisting of over 100 billion stars. Amazingly this number, which is hard to even write down due to all of the zeroes, has nothing on the amount of synapses in the human brain. Did you know that you have 100 trillion synapses all firing off within your brain? Your brain is firing off neurons up to 50 times every second for the entirety of your life. Yeah, you’re gonna need all of those synapses aren’t you? The next time you find yourself scrounging for discount auto insurance quotes just realize how much brain power is going into the mind numbing exercise.
The human brain has more working synapses than the Milky Way has stars
Pluto has yet to make a full revolution since we found it.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh in the Lowell Observatory located in Flagstaff, Arizona. Since that discovery, almost 100 years ago, Pluto has yet to make one entire revolution. This is due to how far away Pluto is from the sun and its orbiting pattern that is dramatically different than Earth’s. Pluto itself has also undergone some pretty dramatic changes over the past several years as it has lost its planet status before getting it back. Pluto has five moons despite being the smallest planet in the solar system.
Pluto has yet to make a full revolution since we found it
The sun harbors Earth sized fire tornadoes.
The Earth has a variety of natural disasters that can make every human, brave as can be, quake in their boots. Look at catastrophic tsunamis and hurricanes. Look at F5 tornadoes. All of these disasters are nothing compared to what is going on at the surface of the sun. As it turns out, our sun hosts fire tornadoes that are bigger than the Earth in entirety. Can you even begin to conceptualize such a large destructive force? We can’t nor do we really want to.
The sun harbors Earth sized fire tornadoes.
Pure water cannot conduct electricity.
If someone asked you what material conducts electricity the best you would no doubt raise your hand and shout ‘water’. While technically true this is also completely false. Pure water itself would be a terrible conductor of electricity. Instead, the reason why water conducts electricity so well is due to the impurities in the water itself. Remove those impurities and you have no conducive material left.
Pure water cannot conduct electricity
Blind people can sense emotions.
We’ll call this sense ‘blindsight’ for lack of a better word. Did you know that blind people have the ability to sense the emotion of people near them even without being able to see? Blindsight has shown itself as the ability for blind people to sense visual stimuli even without being able to see themselves. This means that blind folks will know when you are making an angry face, or a sad face, or a happy face. There is something deeper going on physiologically that scientists don’t completely understand. At the risk of sounding into woo science, there must be some sort of energy transference that blind people understand. Our last statement is just conjecture but the first statement is absolute fact. Trippy, right?
Blind people can sense emotions
Touch is an illusion.
Now we are ready to completely shred any semblance of sanity that you may have left at this point in time. Did you know that you never really touch anything? What you feel as ‘touching’ is really just your own atoms pushing against the atoms of another object. This is the sort of infuriating fact that will keep you up at night as you try to really understand the concept of touching things itself. Something we take so for granted is completely beyond our realm of reality.
Touch is an illusion
You cannot disprove the Matrix.
There is no scientific way known to man to completely disprove that we are not all objects inside of a computer simulation. Pretty trippy to realize that we may all be AI, programmed to perform the way that we are programming. This obviously alludes to films like the Matrix but it has an even deeper current underlying it all: the nature of free will. We can no more prove or disprove free will than we can prove or disprove any singular religion. At the end of the day we just kind of have to accept that we are what we are, whatever that is.
You cannot disprove the Matrix
Memories do not work the way you think that they do.
Can animals remember vivid concepts from days, months, or even years ago? Can humans actually remember these same things? Undoubtedly humans have the miracle of memory to fall back on but you no doubt don’t understand it the way that science does. Whenever you think back to a memory, whether cherished or otherwise, you aren’t actually replaying the event in your mind. Instead you are thinking of the most recent time that you looked back on the memory. This means that every time you look back on the memory you create a duplicate that is a little less accurate than the one before it. The only time a memory will ever be ‘fresh and accurate’ is the first time it ever happened in your life. This is why memories are deemed so unreliable: you are literally erasing the original memory from your mind every time you look back on it. Now try and not let that keep you up at night, we dare you.
Memories do not work the way you think that they do
The human body produces more heat by volume than the Sun.
You don’t need a scientific degree to understand that the sun is pretty friggin hot. I mean, look at the thing. The sun is a gigantic mass of energy that single handedly can be thanked for allowing life to flourish on Earth. Still, it should blow your mind to realize that the human body can produce more hear by unit volume than the sun itself. The next time you are sweating (odorless sweat, that is) you should take a moment to really soak it in: You’re hotter than the sun, sort of.
The human body produces more heat by volume than the Sun
