Look, the truth is, everyone has knowledge gaps. Some of them might be super niche. Others might be more general and embarrassing to admit to. But no matter how well-read and educated you are, there are always going to be things you don’t know about the world.
Though, some truths are so sensitive and mind-warping that you sometimes might wish you had remained ignorant. Today, we’re featuring a handful of online threads where people shared little-known facts that can be quite scary to contemplate. It’s the kind of stuff the general public doesn’t always know about or misunderstands. Scroll down to learn something new.
#1
The country that places the tariffs pays the extra tax, not the country we impose a tariff on. The consumer foots the bill.
Image credits: snizzrizz
#2
Science isn't scary. people ignoring science is.
#3
There are about 7000 known viruses, but scientists estimate that over a trillion are unknown.
CaramelMartini:
I took pathogens in university, and it was so, so interesting. Our bodies are being bombarded all the time with microorganisms trying to get in. Like, all the time. You have no idea how many different types are being born, trying to take hold, mutating, failing, dying out all around us. And sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they’re helped, and sometimes they combine in the freakiest way into something new. It’s fascinating and terrifying. And this is why I wash my hands all the time and I’m secretly glad for an excuse to still wear a mask in public.
Image credits: allmimsyburogrove
As The New Yorker points out in a recent piece, people are, generally, vastly uninformed about common everyday things. From how basic technologies and systems function to how political policies actually work. And yet, despite this lack of knowledge, people form (strong) opinions about all of these things.
“As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,” cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach write in their book, ‘The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone.’
Sloman and Fernbach urge people to preach and lecture others less and spend more time trying to work out the implications of, say, policy proposals. If you do this, then you might realize that you have barely any idea about how things work, and it might force you to moderate your views about the world.
#4
A direct hit by a gamma ray burst could sterilize the planet, or at the very least, k**l everything bigger than a microbe.
There's no way to know know or predict it's coming. Even if we could, we couldn't prevent it.
Image credits: AdFresh8123
#5
It's very difficult and costly to recycle plastic. So difficult and costly, that it is in all likelihood never done. Your rinsed peanut butter container probably goes into landfill, is incinerated, or dumped at sea. Anything that is recycled probably uses more energy than was expended in its original manufacture. I want to live in a world that is less throwaway, but I don't want to be lied to.
Yeah.
obox2358:
Aluminum is the one exception. It costs a lot to make new aluminum but very little to recycle it. This makes it the winner in the recycling world.
Image credits: Emotional-Boat7073
#6
Diamonds are worthless. Diamond cartels keep them expensive. Diamonds are literally pure solidified carbon.
Edit: unless obviously in tools. Which aren’t overpriced at all. I was talking about the overpriced diamonds used in jewelry.
Image credits: PutieTang
According to the researchers, this might be “the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitudes.”
There’s hope that, no matter the (often politicized) arguments you see in the public and political sphere, science continues to advance. The limits of human knowledge continue to be pushed, no matter what.
“At any given moment, a field may be dominated by squabbles, but, in the end, the methodology prevails. Science moves forward, even as we remain stuck in place,” The New Yorker states.
#7
Humanity on a geological scale will be about a 500,000 year 2" layer of compressed rock heavy in plastic, concrete, and refined metals.
Image credits: dfgyrdfhhrdhfr
#8
-40C = -40F
It’s the only place the two scales meet.
Flahdagal:
I was told to remember that 28c = 82F, and this has been very helpful.
Wumpus-Hunter:
Same for 4°C = 40°F; 16°C = 61°F; and 40° C =104 °F.
Image credits: mukn4on
#9
Your eyes don't technically see.
They just collect light, sends electrical signals to our brain, which then interprets those signals and constructs an image of what it thinks it's seeing.
So we're not actually seeing reality, just our brain's best guess of it.
AlexanderTheBright:
Also iirc:
• You have no blue cone cells in the focal point of your eye.
• You have a “blind spot” with no vision cells at all somewhere in your peripheral vision.
And your brain just kinda ignores both of those.
Image credits: X0AN
Which of the science facts shared here genuinely stunned you? On the other hand, which ones did you actually know before? What are some of the most uncomfortable, even frightening facts that you’ve recently learned?
What do you do to fill in the knowledge gaps you have? Let us know what you think in the comments, at the bottom of this post.
#10
Wood is one of the rarest materials in the universe.
Image credits: Icy_Platform3747
#11
All we have to do have world peace is in our own power. We turn everything over to greedy sadistic sociopaths, then wonder why is there endless war, racism, sexism, poverty, hunger.
#12
There is a very good chance that the last silver mine that will be opened, has been opened. Every production metric for silver has fallen short multiple years in a row, and MANY industries use silver in a non-recoverable way. Even the cannabis industry uses about 3 grams of colloidal silver per plant they use to make feminized seeds. Disposable consumer electronics uses a LOT of silver in the form of switch contacts, and basically all of that is going into landfills or getting incinerated.
Platinum and palladium production are also both way down, but since those products were already rare and expensive, there's less notice.
stryst:
True silver deposits are rare; basically all the known ones are currently being exploited, and the primary mines in Mexico are reporting that the ore they are pulling is less and less pure. Ore grades have fallen 22 percent.
Silver is very reactive, and geological chemistry means that silver gets mixed into and reacts with lots of other ores.
So global demand for silver has mostly been met (to the tune of about 74% of the worlds current supply) from recovery during the processing of copper and lead.
This production fell 7% short of world demand this year. That means that if ANYONE can find a deposit and get an operational mine running, they immediately have more customers than they can serve.
But it's just not happening.
So while that was kind of long, basically its really hard to find new reserves, and the current reserves aren't meeting global demand.
Image credits: stryst
#13
How truly dangerous antibiotic resistance is. Bacteria are capable of replicating and adapting extremely quickly. Even if you start with a regular non-resistant infection, it can become resistant to multiple d***s in a few short days. Once they give you a last-line-of-defense antibiotic like Colistin or a carbapenem, there is nowhere to go from there.
So make sure you take ALL of your antibiotics and don’t just randomly take them for every little infection. Poor antibiotic stewardship is the reason we’re here in the first place.
someguy14629:
A few points here:
1.) the biggest driver of increasing antibiotic resistance is the use in animal feed. Cows/pigs/chickens grow bigger faster and give a better return on investment than animals not fed antibiotics.
They literally get antibiotics every single day of their lives for no reason than increasing profits. This is far worse for the global health crisis than the occasional prescribing by a PA for a viral infection in a telehealth visit.
2). The reason we don’t have new antibiotics coming is due to profits. If you invent a new drug for erectile dysfunction or heart disease or diabetes you immediately have customers for decades. Each is being charged hundreds per month.
For an antibiotic, you get some customers who get the right infection for 7-10 days once in a while. There is no profit incentive in antibiotics. Unless government explicitly subsidizes research into new antibiotics, research and development dollars and effort are going to go into profit-generating drugs.
In the last, when new antibiotics were invented, there was not regulation and they were used by the agriculture industry so quickly (unregulated by FDA because they are just cows, not people) there was 50% resistance rate in the community by the time human testing had been completed. Thst is a huge turn off when you invest 10 years and a billion dollars into a new drug.
High risk of failure, long time line, astronomical cost, low profit margin all add up to drug companies going any other direction but antibiotics. We should not let profitability be the main driving force in pharmaceutical innovation.
Image credits: whatamifuckindoing
#14
A mass about the size of a grain a of sand could be accelerated to near light speed by a supernova and strike the earth with the force of a nuke.
Image credits: Independent-Bike8810
#15
Average 17 years for medical research to reach patients. Researchers are working/thinking 2024 but patients are receiving Bush era care.
Image credits: doubl3_hel1x
#16
The ocean is warming up and also becoming more acidic. We are on a fast track to an ecological disaster that will likely cause humanities extinction.
Image credits: InverstNoob
#17
Jupiter is Earth’s shield. Its gravity pulls away so much space stuff that would constantly hit and destroy our planet. Daddy Jupiter is particularly critical to sustaining life on earth.
#18
Complaining about the UN not doing anything useful misses the point of the UN: the only thing it was created for was to prevent another world war, and by that standard its worked so far.
Similarly, complaining that the US Government doesnt get anything done misses the point: it was designed to difficult to use and require cross party compromise and coalitions to work to stop one person getting too much power.
Image credits: AtomicMonkeyTheFirst
#19
Maps in school were usually distorted — Greenland is not bigger than Africa.
tdomer80:
My 41 year old daughter asked us if we were going to visit Hawaii at the end of our Alaskan cruise last year, “because it’s so close by”.
On a lot of maps of the USA, they just jam Alaska and Hawaii together off to the edge of the map, and that was her point of reference.
Image credits: aNJee4
#20
That your stomach doesn't actually growl from being empty. It's your intestines contracting.
Image credits: sad8lxxo
#21
Eating at a Potluck is playing food-poisoning roulette.
Image credits: socalefty
#22
What makes reinforced concrete so strong (rebar embedded within the concrete) is also what will make it fail. Rebar on most construction sites is already rusty and corroded, and will continue to corrode because of water within concrete and within small cracks.
The reason a lot of old Roman structures are still standing is that their unreinforced with no rebar to corrode. BUT the reason so many Roman structures have collapsed is that they’re unreinforced, so if a big enough earthquake were to come, they fall down.
So there’s really no good PERMANENT and economic solution to this.
Image credits: DreiKatzenVater
#23
If we completely stopped all pollution this instant, the rate of planetary heating would increase and still keep going up (due to no aerosol pollution reflecting the suns energy). In other words, the idea that we can stop climate change is a lie. We are doomed.
#24
Ocean circulation collapse
Amoc weakening
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which drives the Gulf Stream and regulates global climate, is weakening and could collapse as early as 2025–2095 (per recent studies in *Nature*).
#25
Bananas are berries. Learned that in my 40s.
Image credits: LadyVanessaFT
#26
You can't have a panic attack or hyperventilate if you hum. Hmmm. 🎵.
Image credits: PinkOutLoud
#27
Our concept of fruits and vegetables are culinary categories, not biological.
Image credits: Resident-Ad-3316
#28
Cleopatra lived closer to our time than to the time when the pyramids were built.
Image credits: Ok-Stranger-8242
#29
About 8 percent of men in the region of the former Mongol empire, and therefore about one in 200 worldwide, share one single male ancestor – and based on a combination of logic, statistics, and common sense, that ancestor was almost certainly Genghis Khan.
Or, put more simply, in in 200 men is related to Genghis Khan.
Image credits: Madwoman-of-Chaillot
#30
Months were originally called Moonths, and were aligned with the lunar cycle.
Image credits: Fair_Log_6596
#31
Money only has value because we all agree that it does.
#32
That scientists once developed a bacteria for weed control that seemed to work wonderfully. They were set to release it for regular use when one of the scientists decided to cultivate it in normal soil instead of the sterile medium used in all the tests.
Turns out, in unstertiized soil it was super charged and would have flourished unchecked. Potentially killing all plant life on the planet.
We discovered this just days before it caused a runaway disaster.
#33
Every piece of plastic ever created still exists.
#34
If the bees all die, we all die.
Image credits: Affectionate-Lime552
#35
How as the world keeps warming up we are going to see more and more fungal infections. There are currently only four medications to treat fungal infections. Combine that with the fact they reproduce via spores floating around in the air...and it could be bag.
#36
An emf burst from the sun is inevitable. When it comes all cell phones, wifi, most cars, satellites and banking systems will all crash simultaneously. We should still be using landlines and cash money but we don’t. It will be apocalyptic.
#37
The big fallacy is people believe there's going to be some earthwide catastrophic event that announces climate change is here.
The truth is climate change is already here and worsening as far as the effects on humans. The cost to humans will be trillions of dollars as in more than the United States national debt today.
The Earth will be just fine; it will take care of itself. The ability of the Earth to support human life is an entirely different subject.
#38
Over fishing of sharks is a disaster waiting to happen. The shark fin trade is killing off huge amounts of sharks. Sharks are so important for the ocean because they eat the dying fish which are toxic to the sea. A lot of oxygen comes from the ocean and a clean ocean is essential for life. Sharks breed very slowly so over fishing them is going to have disastrous consequences.
#39
There are celestial events called magnetar quakes. They release such an intense burst of gamma rays that if the earth were directly in the path of one, there would be no place to hide to avoid a fatal dose. They would travel all the way through the planet and still be fatal on the other side.
#40
We’re running out of helium, it’s essential for MRIs, not essential for birthday balloons.
#41
Global warming markedly increases the risk of fungi adapting to higher temperatures. Currently they cannot survive within the human body but when they inevitably evolve we will be in trouble.
#42
Jamaica is the only national flag without red, white, or blue.
Image credits: FocusOk6215
#43
Alaska is home to the northernmost, easternmost, and westernmost points of all US states.
Image credits: ShaneRach225
#44
The thing between hard and soft is firm. The thing between hardware and software is called...
#45
Birds don't breathe in and out. Air just moves through them like it's an HVAC system. Their respiratory system is a lot more efficient than us, but also makes respiratory diseases very deadly to them.
We expect dinosaurs to have the same thing going on.
Image credits: immoralwalrus
#46
When you recall something, you are just recalling the last time you recalled it. So a memory is a memory of a memory. You do not actually remember the specific event.
#47
The brain named itself.
#48
Fire is, as far as we know, unique to earth. .
#49
Deep seated. For all intents and purposes. Vacuum. Affect is not always a verb. You can have a flat affect. Effect is not always a noun. You can effect a desired result. Letters in the English alphabet have names that can be spelled out. You use these words every day and probably have never thought of them as actual words. Most of these are two letters long (ef, el, ai, etc.), and you can use them to dominate at Scrabble.
You can drag a file into the window of an open application to open that file in that application. If the application is minimized, you can drag the icon to the application's taskbar button, hover there a couple seconds, and the corresponding window will come up so you can drag your file into it.
#50
Over 50% of respondents judge their IQ to be above average.
#51
If you are in Bristol Tennessee, you are closer as the crow flies to Canada than you are to Memphis Tennessee.
#52
The southernmost part of Canada is farther south than the northern border of California.
#53
Large space objects are dropped into a single spot in the South Pacific called Point Nemo, the furthest point from dry land that there is. It is so out of the way that almost nothing lives there, and the closest to it are astronauts when they pass overhead.
#54
Hitting the delete key deletes letter by letter. CTRL Delete, deletes by the word.
#55
You can eat the outside of the kiwi, it's really very good for you.
#56
The opening of a neck travel pillow. The opening goes on the back of your neck. Not the front.
#57
That we are all related and if you go back 2,000 - 5000 years you would find we share a MRCA ( most recent common ancestor).
#58
Life has been around for 3 billion years, developing untill what we are.
In a few 100 million years our planet will be to hot for most lifeforms.
#59
The Yellowstone caldera could make large parts of the USA uninhabitable. And it's overdue for an eruption.
#60
The atom is 99.99% empty space, so our very existence is questionable.
#61
You live on a thin skin of rock that covers a molten ball of magma. The relative thickness is akin to the skin of an apple.
#62
Antibiotic resistance. We are locked in an arms race against harmful bacteria. We've got the science, the thinking, and some days the will. They've got millions of years of evolution and multiple random mutation mechanisms. As it's thrive or die their entire biology is focused around it.
If we lose, welcome back to the days where minor cuts would get infected and be fatal.
#63
Researchers didn’t know how blood actually flowed through arteries until the mid 1990s when it was modeled on supercomputers. Turned out there were 2 helical flows (known). But that pair moved collectively in a third helical flow (unknown) that essentially scrubbed your arteries. So if you or a loved one got a bypass that didn’t clog prior to then, you/they were in the lucky group. Now doctors know exactly the angles they need to maintain with bypasses in cardiovascular surgeries in order to keep them from reclogging.
#64
The ultimate fate of all living things is extinction.
#65
Prions. That is all.
#66
We are one economic hiccup away from empty shelves in the grocery stores. I don’t mean a world war level event either. A collapse in international relations can drastically increase food scarcity.
There is nothing anybody can really do to prepare for it.
#67
You know how not having any trees around your house makes your house hotter in the summer? Think about how not having trees would heat up the planet. Think about all the forests lost to clear cutting or to the many many forest fires that are burning and how the planet is heating up. All that heat is building up on the surface and then inside the planet itself. Now connect that to the increase in volcanic eruptions there are and earthquakes. Go plant trees. Put them in pots on your balcony if you must, do what you can where you live.
#68
That your brain decides what you’re going to do before you’re consciously aware of deciding it. Free will might just be a story your brain tells after the fact to keep the illusion going.
#69
Scientific fraud in medical journals as well as scientific fraud in reporting the safety and efficacy of prescription d***s.
What makes the news when things are retracted, recalled, or removed from the market is only the tip of the iceberg.
#70
That "leaders" control us by SCARING us, all the time.
#71
1. UFOs are real.
2. Sugar is poison.
3. Plastic courses thru our veins.
#72
It is safer to be alive by every metric we have to track crime, and we have more access to everything that makes life worth living. Crime has dropped so much we can’t even explain it.
Yet everyone is always terrified.
#73
Superman is an alien who sexually identifies as a human male.
Image credits: Bluebourner
