38 Fascinating Facts About the Human Body Most People Don’t Know

The human body is totally amazing!

I’m constantly in awe when I read about it and learn how complex we really are. It’s kind of a miracle, don’t you think?

I sure do!

What are facts about the human body that a lot of people don’t know about?

AskReddit users shared their thoughts.

38. Triple threat!

“The chance of a natural pregnancy with identical triplets is 1 in 200,000,000.

My friend had identical triplets.

It was her first time making whoopie and she got pregnant with triplets. I didn’t know it was so rare.”

37. Stripes.

“Humans have stripes, we just normally can’t see them. They’re called Blaschko’s lines and form along the paths of embryonic cell migration.

The stripes are sort of U-shaped down our front, V-shaped on our back, wavy on the head and face and we have basic, simple stripes on our extremities.”

36. Smart stomachs!

“Your stomach is surrounded by more brain cells (half a billion neurons) than the brain of a cat contains in total.

It’s your enteric nervous system. It controls digestion, operates autonomously, has its own memory, can handle its own reflexes, it has its own senses even.

It’s thought to have come about because of the blood-brain barrier and the main brain being locked away in the skull, a spinal column and nerves away from the critical action of nutrition.”

35. I did not know that!

“The eyeball is the fastest healing part on your body.

Let me put it in a ‘simpler’ version if you don’t believe me. The eye ball has a cornea.

Now, cutting the cornea will result in much pain, but since this part doesn’t contain blood, but only gets a supply of oxygen, it is the only fastest healing part of your body that can heal in only 24-36 hrs.

Believe me now?”

34. Ahhhhhhh!

“X-rays of children’s mouths are nightmare fuel.

The second set of teeth to replace baby teeth are already grown and lodged in their skulls. So you’ll see two rows of teeth and its freaky looking.

They don’t grow in when the old ones fall out, they are already loaded in the chamber waiting to get launched.”

33. What?!?!

“Chickens in the eggs develop a tail and teeth, but those stops growing after some time. Its probably what’s left from the first birds, which had a long tail and teeth.

Scientists think that, with the right timing, you could make it so they dont stop growing and have a “chickenosaur” out of the egg, with small teeth in the beak and a long tail.”

32. Nuts!

“Humans are bioluminescent and glow in the dark, but the light that we emit is 1,000 times weaker than our human eyes are able to pick up.”

31. Did you hear that?

“Some women can feel the exact moment an egg is released from the ovary during ovulation.

Feels like a little pop just on one side.

Pretty neat.”

30. For a reason.

“The reason it’s so easy to break your collar bone is because its designed to break.

The way it was explained to me is that its like a circuit breaker.

It breaks there to stop the shock of impact getting to your spine.”

29. Oh, boy!

“Pineapple contains bromelaine, an enzyme that ingests proteins.

Your meat parts are mostly made of proteins, so when you’re eating pineapple, it’s also eating you.”

28. All you need.

“You don’t need those detox tea or whatever detox products your high school friend and your aunt are selling.

Your liver is all you need.”

27. Wow.

“Alzheimer’s disease isn’t just gradual loss of memory. It physically exists in the brain. It’s a physical plaque substance that attacks the brain.

Like, if you were able to open the skull of a person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease to take a look at their brain, you would actually see this sticky, fibrous, grey physical matter overtaking their brain.”

26. Keep that in mind.

“Every 7 years, every cell in your body will have completely replaced itself. Different cells divide at different rates, however.

You need a new stomach lining weekly and a new skeleton every 7 years.”

25. It’s down there.

“You have a big flab of tissue that hangs down from under your stomach which covers your intestines. It’s called the greater omentum, it’s almost always removed in any basic anatomy drawing so most people don’t know it’s existence! It stores quite a bit of fat but it carries out some unusual roles.

In an abdomen infection it sometimes can wrap itself around it, hence giving it the nickname the “policeman of the abdomen.””

24. Painful.

“95% of the sensory fibres in the human ear are used to transmit sound. Until recently, the function of the other 5% of fibres were not known.

We now know that under certain conditions, these remaining fibres can become sensitized, leading to a rare condition known as hyperacusis, where everyday sounds cause the sufferer immense pain.

It is debilitating and often leads to people giving up their careers, relationships and homes, isolating themselves indefinitely in sound-insulated rooms.

Source: I am one of these people.”

23. Interesting…

“When loosing weight, fat isn’t lost through heat, p**p or sweating. Nearly all fat is lost through simple breathing.

If you lose 10kg of fat, precisely 8.4kg comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6kg turns into water.”

22. I did not know that!

“Infants are born with approximately 300 bones, but as they grow some of these bones fuse together.

By the time they reach adulthood, they only have 206 bones and teeth are considered part of the skeletal system, but are not counted as bones.”

21. Bypass.

“Our bodies have the ability to perform there own bypass procedures. My grandfather went in for a scan and it showed a 100% blockage in one of his major arteries.

The image also showed a new portion of the artery starting .25” before the blockage and then rejoining the artery .25” after the blockage completely bypassing the obstructed portion.

He had never had surgery before this discovery.”

20. No one likes it.

“You don’t like the sound of your recorded voice because it’s missing the low frequency you’re used to hearing.

When you talk, you hear your voice as it goes to the air and back to you ear. It also goes through your skull to your ear, and this bone conduction mechanism transmits the low frequencies better than air does.

Your recorded voice only has the air transmitted sound. That causes the dissonance between what you think your voice sounds like, and what it really does. It’s also why your voice will (almost) always be higher pitch than you think.”

19. Not just chillin’.

“The appendix is not a vestigial organ. It actually protects good bacteria in the gut.

You can live without it, but it’s not just chillin’ in there.”

18. Full circle.

“Migraine pain can lessen from vomiting.

Vomiting can cause dehydration.

Dehydration can cause migraines.

The human body is funny.”

17. All about arteries.

“We all have a major artery called the ascending aortic artery that runs down the center of our abdomen. Another artery, called the superior mesenteric artery, branches off of that.

There is a gap between the arteries that is kept open by a pad of fat, and the start of our intestines, called the duodenum, passes right through the gap between the two arteries.

Very very rarely something can happen to shrink the fat pad, and then the arteries act like a clamp and pinch the duodenum closed. This prevents anything, solid or liquid, from passing from the stomach into the intestines.

This is called Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome, and I had it. It is so rare that it took 2 months of doctors excluding everything else for them to diagnose me.

I couldn’t keep anything down, and went from 120 to 90 lbs. I had to have where my intestines were connected to my stomach moved to another spot, and have about 6 feet removed in the process.

This was almost 7 years ago now. Other than having to eat more than I used to in order to maintain my weight, I’m okay. That is only one of the weird, and very rare, medical conditions that I’m living with, but you’d never know by looking at me.”

16. Uh oh.

“That the body’s ph is 7.35 to 7.45 and if any of those scam products that promise to “change the PH of your body” actually worked, you’d be d**d.”

15. Can’t see it.

“Each one of your eyes has a blind spot where the optic nerve exit your eye into your brain.

You can’t see it because your brain tricks you not to see, it covers the spot with some made up image of what it thinks fits better with the rest of it.”

14. Well, that’s odd.

“Humans are one of a few species of mammal that oddly don’t produce their own vitamin C due to lack of a certain enzyme.

Other mammalian species who exhibit this mutation are those contained in the main primate suborder Haplorhinni (monkeys, apes, tarsiers), as well as bats, capybaras, and guinea pigs.

All other mammals produce vitamin C in the liver.”

13. Only about 20%.

“Apparently about 20% of people have a bony ridge on the roof of their mouth. Most people’s palates are smooth with a very slight ridge.

The 20% like me have an exaggerated and more pronounced ridge. Apparently it’s most common in women and Asian folk, and I’m neither so that’s neat.

I always thought it was totally normal.”

12. Blood stuff.

“Positive blood type women can have positive and negative blood type babies without issue.

Negative blood type women require a shot with antibodies to prevent the mothers immune system from attacking the fetus if it is a positive blood type.”

11. It adapts.

“When you get conditioned to physical activity, your circulatory system adapts — more blood, more vessels, more blood cells. But your lungs really don’t.

This is because no matter how much blood your heart is able to deliver to your lungs, the lungs still have no problem oxygenating it.

This is why your oxygen saturation doesn’t drop during exercise (unless you have a heart defect.)”

10. Creepy.

“Your brain continues to try to revive the body long after the heart has stopped.

In some cases, there has been found brain activity trying to make repairs to bring the body back 30 hours later.

This is used to indicate time of death in m**der victims.”

9. Ouch.

“Babies can break their collarbone during delivery. It happens quite often, but heals quickly.

My teacher told me that (if it happened to you ofc) you may feel a slightly higher spot on your collarbone, called the callus where the fracture grew back together.”

8. A little bit different.

“Humans have, on average, just as many hairs on their body as chimpanzees.

Human hair is just a lot shorter and finer.”

7. The King.

“When you have a bowel movement, your heart rhythm shifts temporarily due to a vagus response.

The reason Elvis d**d on the toilet was because his heart was beating 200+ bpm and the quick rhythm change caused a myocardial infarction. People with low heart rates have been known to pass out on the toilet because their bodies can’t handle the shift.

It’s also why EMTs will absolutely not let you use the bathroom before getting on the ambulance. Especially if the bathroom is a standard 5’x8′.”

6. Amazing!

“A pregnant woman that has a mild heart attack will be healed from the baby’s stem cells, leaving virtually no tissue damage.”

5. Survival instinct.

“If you faint at the sight of your own blood you may have an oversensitive vasovagal response.

The theory is that this developed as a survival mechanism, kind of like an opossum playing d**d.”

4. I believe it.

“Humans feel less satisfaction when they don’t gain anything from an interaction.

In other words, you get less dopamine (or whatever feel good chemical) when you do something that basically has an equal cost and reward. This has lead me to believe that free food DOES really taste better.

It never made sense to me why cupcakes only tasted good when kids brought them in for their birthday. Whenever I’d buy them on my own they tasted worse. I guess it’s because my brain knows I spent money on them.”

3. Strength.

“Your brain regulates how strong your muscles are. If your leg muscles were to contract at full strength, they would snap your femur.

Its why people in emergencies on adrenaline can lift cars off children. Your body is capable of great strength, but it could also severely damage you, so your brain keeps you a weak, soft bag of jelly.”

2. You need that sleep.

“You will sooner d** from lack of sleep than lack of food.

You can live, depending on your current body fat and health level, for months without food.

Estimates are you that you will d** from lack of sleep within 2 weeks”

1. Pretty incredible.

“Your eyes have a separate immune system from the rest of your body.

On a lot of occasions if your body’s immune system finds your eyes, they will assume they are a foreign body and blind you.”

Do you know any interesting facts about the human body?

Please share them with us in the comments!

We’d love to hear from you!

The post 38 Fascinating Facts About the Human Body Most People Don’t Know appeared first on UberFacts.

Go Ahead and Follow These 11 Facts Straight Down the Rabbit Hole

Is there anything better than that moment you read something you’ve never heard before and you hear your brain sort of take off, chasing down all of the other little bunny trails left by the million follow up thoughts and questions that arise?

I think not – rabbit holes might be time sucks, but if you ask me, it’s time better spent than scrolling your social media feeds.

Again.

If you feel the same way, brace yourself for the deep dives that follow these 11 random facts.

11. This man was struck by lightning 3+ times.

Image Credit: Wikimedia

They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but Major Walter Summerford would disagree – he was struck three times while he was alive…and then his tombstone was struck by lightning after his death.

No fooling, y’all.

10. The Zodiac Killer really tried to help the police catch him.

The Zodiac Killer continued to send letter and ciphers to San Francisco newspapers a decade after his last (purported) killing, but more than 50 years later, his crimes remain unsolved.

Recently, though, his ciphers have started to be unraveled.

A team of cryptologists solved one that the FBI later confirmed, and a French engineer claims to now have solved the final two – one of which reveals his identity at last.

Here’s what the first one revealed:

“I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASN’T ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADISE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADISE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADISE DEATH”

The second two are very short and lack context, which has made them tough to solve, but French engineer Faycal Ziraoui claims he’s finally done it – and here’s what they say:

“LABOR DAY FIND 45.069 NORTH 58.719 WEST”

“My Name is KAYR.”

Experts believe the second is meant to say KAYE and is a typo.

One of the primary suspects in the case was Lawrence Kaye, who lived in South Lake Tahoe. Harvey Hines, one of the lead detectives on the case, was convinced Kaye was the killer but they never had enough evidence to arrest him before his death in 2010.

Is it solved? You decide!

9. Another serial killer was once a contestant on a dating show.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Rodney Alcala murdered 7 women in the 1970s, and in 1978 he appeared on The Dating Game as Bachelor Number One.

Backstage, he told Bachelor Number Two “I always get my girl,” but even though Alcala was chosen by bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw, she never went on a date with him,

According to producers she backed out, saying “I can’t go out with this guy. There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable.”

He was arrested a year later.

8. Space has a very distinct smell.

Image Credit: Pexels

You can’t just stick your nose out and take a big whiff, but astronauts have confirmed that the smell clinging to their spacesuits is very distinct.

That said, they also say it’s “hard to describe,” but say it’s “metallic, like the fumes of a welding torch,” or even like a “seared steak.”

I guess most of us will never smell it for ourselves and it doesn’t sound like something that will be made into a candle anytime soon.

7. African elephants have three times the neurons of humans.

Image Credit: Pexels

The average elephant’s brain has 257 billion neurons – our own look pretty puny in comparison!

6. Harriet Tubman led troops into battle.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

You know she led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad, but you might not have been taught that she also led a successful raid on Combahee Ferry during the Civil War, freeing 700 slaves in one go.

She also worked as a spy for the Union, and was referred to as “General Tubman” by John Brown.

Tubman was a shrewd and careful strategist whose work was eventually recognized with her induction into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

5. Adolf Hitler and J.R. Tolkien battled each other in WWI.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

They fought on opposing sides at the Battle of the Somme (or the Somme Offensive), one of the largest and deadliest conflict in the first World War.

Other veterans of the battle include Otto Frank, Harold Macmillan, and Ralph Vaughn Williams, all of whom were lucky to survive – close to a million others did not leave the battlefield.

4. The moon was terrifyingly made.

Image Credit: Pexels

The most widely-accepted theory on how the moon was formed is called the “giant-impact hypothesis.”

It posits that a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth, shooting huge chunks into space, and forming the moon as we know it in the process.

3. The Ferris Wheel was meant to be a giant middle finger.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel built the Eiffel Tower as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, and nearly 2 million of the attendees came just to see that one attraction.

When the 1893 World’s Fair rolled around, Chicago held an open competition for architects and designers to try to beat its success.

The winner was George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., an engineer from Pittsburgh, and the rest is history.

2. One headless rooster survived for a full 18 months.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This might be the most bizarre fact on the list – a rooster named Mike (later Mike the Headless Chicken) was beheaded (presumably ahead of dinner) on his Colorado farm in 1945.

He failed to die for the next 18 months, during which he was fed a liquid diet straight into his esophagus and paraded around the country as a minor celebrity.

America is so weird, y’all.

1. The International Space Station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes.

Image Credit: Pexels

It moves at 5 miles per second, which means it doesn’t take long for it to take a spin and enjoy the view.

I just hope anyone taking a ride doesn’t get motion sick.

I’ll see you later – I’ve got some research to do.

Which of these are you going to follow first? Tell us in the comments!

The post Go Ahead and Follow These 11 Facts Straight Down the Rabbit Hole appeared first on UberFacts.

Radioactive Diamond Battery Can Practically Run Forever

I’m being a little bit hyperbolic with the title of this article, because the diamond-powered battery in question can only run for around 28,000 years, not forever forever, but when we’re talking about the framework of a human lifespan, well…forgive me.

Basically, if it started powering something today and humanity went extinct, there would still be evidence that humans existed far, far into the future.

The offering comes from U.S. startup NDB (Nano Diamond Battery), and is a “high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery” that gives devices “life-long and green energy.”

Also? They say it could become a reality in homes everywhere within the next couple of years.

They built the nano diamond battery by combining radioactive isotopes from nuclear waste with layers of paneled nano diamonds. Diamonds have a good heat conductance that moves heat away from the radioactive isotope materials quickly enough to generate electricity.

Image Credit: NBD

Basically the layers and layers of diamond and radioactive waste panels equal higher total amounts of energy.

It uses less energy, uses nuclear waste, lasts for years, and only requires the smallest of diamonds…is there a catch, though?

If there is one, it’s to do with logistics. It will require a huge number of batteries in order to power even regular-sized devices, for one, and the other revolves around the safety of utilizing a battery that runs on nuclear waste.

NBD, though, thinks they have the answers we need, right on their website.

Image Credit: NBD

“The DNV stacks along with the source are coated with a layer of poly-crystalline diamond, which is known for being the most thermally conductive material also has the ability to contain the radiation within the device and is the hardest material, 12 times tougher than stainless steel. This makes our product extremely tough and tamperproof.”

NBD believes these batteries will soon power huge things like spacecraft and satellites, as well as regular things like our many, mane LED displays, and be able to be passed down through generations with no loss in efficiency.

Expect to see a working prototype by 2023, people.

And prepare to be amazed.

The post Radioactive Diamond Battery Can Practically Run Forever appeared first on UberFacts.

Radioactive Diamond Battery Can Practically Run Forever

I’m being a little bit hyperbolic with the title of this article, because the diamond-powered battery in question can only run for around 28,000 years, not forever forever, but when we’re talking about the framework of a human lifespan, well…forgive me.

Basically, if it started powering something today and humanity went extinct, there would still be evidence that humans existed far, far into the future.

The offering comes from U.S. startup NDB (Nano Diamond Battery), and is a “high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery” that gives devices “life-long and green energy.”

Also? They say it could become a reality in homes everywhere within the next couple of years.

They built the nano diamond battery by combining radioactive isotopes from nuclear waste with layers of paneled nano diamonds. Diamonds have a good heat conductance that moves heat away from the radioactive isotope materials quickly enough to generate electricity.

Image Credit: NBD

Basically the layers and layers of diamond and radioactive waste panels equal higher total amounts of energy.

It uses less energy, uses nuclear waste, lasts for years, and only requires the smallest of diamonds…is there a catch, though?

If there is one, it’s to do with logistics. It will require a huge number of batteries in order to power even regular-sized devices, for one, and the other revolves around the safety of utilizing a battery that runs on nuclear waste.

NBD, though, thinks they have the answers we need, right on their website.

Image Credit: NBD

“The DNV stacks along with the source are coated with a layer of poly-crystalline diamond, which is known for being the most thermally conductive material also has the ability to contain the radiation within the device and is the hardest material, 12 times tougher than stainless steel. This makes our product extremely tough and tamperproof.”

NBD believes these batteries will soon power huge things like spacecraft and satellites, as well as regular things like our many, mane LED displays, and be able to be passed down through generations with no loss in efficiency.

Expect to see a working prototype by 2023, people.

And prepare to be amazed.

The post Radioactive Diamond Battery Can Practically Run Forever appeared first on UberFacts.

Wow! There’s Mounting Evidence for Anyons, a Third Kingdom of Particles.

For a long time (but not in a galaxy far far away) physicists believed there were only two types of particles in the universe – fermions and bosons.

Now, though, they’re finding the first examples of a theorized third particle kingdom – the anyon.

Anyons don’t behave like fermions or bosons, but fall somewhere in between, and the recently published paper in Science explains the evidence they’ve uncovered.

Image Credit: iStock

“We had bosons and fermions, and now we’ve got this third kingdom. It’s absolutely a milestone.”

Understanding quantum kingdoms can be complicated, but the bottom line is that even though there is only a small difference between the final states of fermions and bosons, there are profound physical differences in how they affect the world around them.

Fermions are the basis of all chemistry and the variety of the periodic table, while the more social bosons give us things like photons (and light rays).

Anyons exist in two dimensions, and are sort of everything that the other two families of particles are not. They’re in between, and make up “everything else,” which can make them hard to pin down (for physicists).

Image Credit: 5W INFOGRAPHICS

Frank Wilczek, a Nobel prize-winning physicist from MIT, explains the experiment that has physicists everywhere so excited.

“The topological argument was the first indication that these anyons could exist. What was left to find was physical systems.”

In 1984, Wilczek and two of his cohorts, Daniel Arovas and John Robert Schrieffer, cooled a bunch of electrons (fermions) to absolute zero and then put them next to a strong magnetic field. That they observed was a “fractional quantum Hall effect,” and believed the resulting quasiparticles were anyons.

They were not, however, able to observe the behavior of these particles, or to document what made them unique.

Image Credit: iStock

This new study, though, allowed those same three physicists to set up a tiny particle collider in two dimensions and smash anyons together to observe what happened – which turned out to be exactly what they theorized, confirms uninvolved physicist Dmitri Feldman.

“Everything fits with the theory so uniquely, there are no questions. That’s very unusual for this field, in my experience.”

As for Wilczek and his friends, they couldn’t be more thrilled.

“There’s been a lot of evidence for a long time. But if you ask: Is there a specific phenomenon you can point to and say the anyons are responsible for that phenomenon and you can’t explain it in any other way? I think is pretty clearly at a different level.”

Which is all to say, congrats to everyone involved. It sounds like a pretty big deal.

And listen – any time absolutely everything goes your way in the disordered world of science, it’s clearly time to celebrate.

The post Wow! There’s Mounting Evidence for Anyons, a Third Kingdom of Particles. appeared first on UberFacts.

People Share Scary Science Facts That Most of Us Don’t Have a Clue About

The study of science and the findings that researchers discover about our planet and beyond are always evolving.

And if you’re not a scientist by trade or an armchair enthusiast, you probably don’t know THAT much about what’s really out there…and it can be downright creepy.

Are you ready to get scared?

What are some scary science facts that most people don’t know about?

AskReddit users shared their thoughts.

1. Soil problems.

“Soil science-adjacent researcher here.

We are degrading, polluting, and losing our topsoil at such a rate that we may not be able to produce enough food to feed everyone within 50-60 years, let alone what impacts climate change may bring to bear on our food supply.

And the US government’s crop insurance programs and incentives all reinforce the bad practices, while discouraging regenerative practices. These bad policies are extremely hard to change because of lobbying from the major agribusiness companies, who make money off of these short-sighted policies.

Our food supply is further threatened by our agricultural over-dependence on aquifer water, which is not being replenished, making it an unsustainable source of water. If the aquifers are over-drawn, depleted, or polluted, we hit a hard wall of water scarcity, and we will have no back-ups to address the problem with.

The drawdown of the aquifers also causes land subsidence, which causes costly infrastructure and building damage.

The general public does not realize the impending crisis that will be caused by the confluence of these factors.”

2. Solar event.

“There’s a solar event known as a CME, or a Coronal Mass Ejection, it occurs very frequently on a cosmic timescale, every few decades to centuries there’s a decent size one.

Why are they scary?

A CME is a massive burst of radiation, easily able to fully envelope the earth in its path, and it’s the equivalent of a non-stop EMP barrage. The last time a big one hit earth, was when we had telegraph lines for communications and they spontaneously caught fire.

In today’s world, with everything running on electricity, when the next big one hits we’ll have at most a few days warning, and it’d be a literal apocalypse movie scenario, with planes going down due to their whole electrical system frying, nobody’s vehicle starting, untold billions in fire damage would wreak havoc everywhere, and the machines we depend on to help would be similarly fried.

Some stuff would be unaffected, being parked in deep, concrete roofed parking garages and the like, but our entire infrastructure would be useless for years, it’d literally send us into a mini dark age while people tried to get things working again, recovery would take decades to centuries.”

3. The fog.

“Farmers spraying crops with anhydrous ammonia.

There are tanks of it on every highway.

If one ruptured it would be a toxic fog that would k**l you very painfully.”

4. Pretty scary.

“Antibiotics has been abused and misused for so long, that various bacteria strains have started to get resistance to them. What used to be a treatable infection, might soon become d**dly because we are unable to treat it with the antibiotics we have today.

There is research to try and find other ways to treat antibiotic resistant bacteria, but until then, please use prescribed antibiotics until they are finished (not until you feel better), if unsued do not flush them down the toilet or put them in the bin (give it to a pharmacy so they can discard them correctly), and use antibiotics when necessary (some countries give them willy-nilly while others are more conservative).”

5. Uh oh.

“Humans rely on evaporating sweat to stay cool.

If humidity gets too high, relatively low heat can k**l humans. The equivalent of 95°F/35°C at 100% relative humidity can k**l even healthy humans. This is called a Wet Bulb Event.

By 2050, scientists predict multiple Wet Bulb Events in the North China Plain.

Approximately 400 Million people live in the North China Plain.”

6. Let’s hope not.

“Smallpox is really easy to bring back and it’ll k**l 1/5 of the planet when it happens. Takes some genocidal anger, knowledge tens of thousands have, and about $100K. Here’s all the ways it could happen:

1) US or Russian stocks leaked or used as bioweapon (we keep some intentionally, it’s very secure. This is unlikely IMHO).

https://www.newsweek.com/smallpox-eradicated-40-years-ago-us-russia-stocks-virus-1476932

2) Accidentally bumped into at an old lab, leaked during cleaning or something. Forgotten stocks still occasionally found. Leak spreading very unlikely IMHO.

https://www.nature.com/news/nih-finds-forgotten-smallpox-store-1.15526

3) Intentional release via re-creation. Someone resynthesizes it from scratch via public sequence according to this paper with about $100K in materials. Methods + difficulty identical to what is published here. It’s totally possible, almost simple to do:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/how-canadian-researchers-reconstituted-extinct-poxvirus-100000-using-mail-order-dna

Smallpox powder dropped in envelopes mailed around the world by a disgruntled underpaid PhD student (see Aurora Colorado shooter). Outbreak is out of hand before it’s noticed, billions d**.”

7. Never heard of this one.

“The clathrate g** hypothesis scares the s**t out of me. Basically methane trapped within ice, primarily under permafrost and on the ocean bottom.

It’s kinda like the supervolcano of climate change, not likely but very bad if it happens. Methane is way worse than CO2 and more important it is faster acting, which could cause a runaway affect.

But it’s not likely for a number of reasons, including the stuff in the ocean is buried.”

8. Big problems.

“The government protocol for disposing of nuclear waste is to pack it with kitty litter in barrels and bury it.

If the wrong brand of litter is used it can cause massive environmental problems.

This mistake has been made before.”

9. New Madrid Fault.

“I have an interesting one about the New Madrid fault. In 1812, it faulted causing the Mississippi to flow north for a short time.

When there’s an earthquake in that area that is substantial it shakes the river plain. The river plain is more like jello than solid land. This causes it to come loose resulting in “sand blows”.

If you’re ever in that area you can still see areas of sand that have been pushed up for these. There’s also Indian legends of this fault being active so it’s odd it’s been dormant for so long.”

10. Who’s in control here?

“The corpus callosum, a fibre matrix that connects the left and right hemisphere, is responsible for enabling fluid communication between language ability and spatial ability.

However once severed, either hemisphere essentially become independent of each other, leading to a sense of dual consciousness where the right brain controls the left side of the body and vice versa.

The scary element is not simply that you’re now controlled by 2 independent spheres, but that consciousness is a physical, tangible and divisible part of you.”

11. It’s migrating.

“The Yellowstone caldera has migrated over millions of years due to tectonic plates moving. This has left a giant scar across all of southern Idaho that can be seen from space.

You can see it for yourself on Google earth. It shows you just how big the caldera is and a small idea of how bad an eruption would be.”

12. Keep an eye on it.

“There is a glacier in Greenland that has been melting in an unexpected way, giving it the power to flood manhattan, the Netherlands, LA, Vancouver and other coast cities within months of breaking off.

Climate models suggest up to 10 meters of sea level rise with this sucker.”

13. What a bummer.

“Physical Oceanography.

The world’s climate is driven by the Meridional Overturning Circulation, what you might’ve heard of as the “Global Conveyor Belt”. Essentially, this is the formation of cold and salty deep water masses near the poles (North Atlantic, Antarctica) that sinks to the bottom of the oceans, that then upwells in regions like the Indian Ocean and the subtropical Pacific.

No deep water formation, no upwelling. No deep water formation, no movement of heat on a large scale (theoretically) in the oceans. The heat capacity of the oceans is orders of magnitude greater than that of the atmosphere– if that heat isn’t moving around, the world’s climate rapidly changes.

Thanks to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, there’s going to be a lot fresher water in the North Atlantic.

No salty water, no deep water formation. No deep water formation, no conveyor belt. No conveyor belt, no Gulf Stream, or anything else driven by geostrophic motion.

Climate apocalypse.

Have fun!”

Do you know any super scary science facts?

If so, please share them with us in the comments.

Thanks a lot, friends!

The post People Share Scary Science Facts That Most of Us Don’t Have a Clue About appeared first on UberFacts.

People Share Scary Science Facts That Most of Us Don’t Have a Clue About

The study of science and the findings that researchers discover about our planet and beyond are always evolving.

And if you’re not a scientist by trade or an armchair enthusiast, you probably don’t know THAT much about what’s really out there…and it can be downright creepy.

Are you ready to get scared?

What are some scary science facts that most people don’t know about?

AskReddit users shared their thoughts.

1. Soil problems.

“Soil science-adjacent researcher here.

We are degrading, polluting, and losing our topsoil at such a rate that we may not be able to produce enough food to feed everyone within 50-60 years, let alone what impacts climate change may bring to bear on our food supply.

And the US government’s crop insurance programs and incentives all reinforce the bad practices, while discouraging regenerative practices. These bad policies are extremely hard to change because of lobbying from the major agribusiness companies, who make money off of these short-sighted policies.

Our food supply is further threatened by our agricultural over-dependence on aquifer water, which is not being replenished, making it an unsustainable source of water. If the aquifers are over-drawn, depleted, or polluted, we hit a hard wall of water scarcity, and we will have no back-ups to address the problem with.

The drawdown of the aquifers also causes land subsidence, which causes costly infrastructure and building damage.

The general public does not realize the impending crisis that will be caused by the confluence of these factors.”

2. Solar event.

“There’s a solar event known as a CME, or a Coronal Mass Ejection, it occurs very frequently on a cosmic timescale, every few decades to centuries there’s a decent size one.

Why are they scary?

A CME is a massive burst of radiation, easily able to fully envelope the earth in its path, and it’s the equivalent of a non-stop EMP barrage. The last time a big one hit earth, was when we had telegraph lines for communications and they spontaneously caught fire.

In today’s world, with everything running on electricity, when the next big one hits we’ll have at most a few days warning, and it’d be a literal apocalypse movie scenario, with planes going down due to their whole electrical system frying, nobody’s vehicle starting, untold billions in fire damage would wreak havoc everywhere, and the machines we depend on to help would be similarly fried.

Some stuff would be unaffected, being parked in deep, concrete roofed parking garages and the like, but our entire infrastructure would be useless for years, it’d literally send us into a mini dark age while people tried to get things working again, recovery would take decades to centuries.”

3. The fog.

“Farmers spraying crops with anhydrous ammonia.

There are tanks of it on every highway.

If one ruptured it would be a toxic fog that would k**l you very painfully.”

4. Pretty scary.

“Antibiotics has been abused and misused for so long, that various bacteria strains have started to get resistance to them. What used to be a treatable infection, might soon become d**dly because we are unable to treat it with the antibiotics we have today.

There is research to try and find other ways to treat antibiotic resistant bacteria, but until then, please use prescribed antibiotics until they are finished (not until you feel better), if unsued do not flush them down the toilet or put them in the bin (give it to a pharmacy so they can discard them correctly), and use antibiotics when necessary (some countries give them willy-nilly while others are more conservative).”

5. Uh oh.

“Humans rely on evaporating sweat to stay cool.

If humidity gets too high, relatively low heat can k**l humans. The equivalent of 95°F/35°C at 100% relative humidity can k**l even healthy humans. This is called a Wet Bulb Event.

By 2050, scientists predict multiple Wet Bulb Events in the North China Plain.

Approximately 400 Million people live in the North China Plain.”

6. Let’s hope not.

“Smallpox is really easy to bring back and it’ll k**l 1/5 of the planet when it happens. Takes some genocidal anger, knowledge tens of thousands have, and about $100K. Here’s all the ways it could happen:

1) US or Russian stocks leaked or used as bioweapon (we keep some intentionally, it’s very secure. This is unlikely IMHO).

https://www.newsweek.com/smallpox-eradicated-40-years-ago-us-russia-stocks-virus-1476932

2) Accidentally bumped into at an old lab, leaked during cleaning or something. Forgotten stocks still occasionally found. Leak spreading very unlikely IMHO.

https://www.nature.com/news/nih-finds-forgotten-smallpox-store-1.15526

3) Intentional release via re-creation. Someone resynthesizes it from scratch via public sequence according to this paper with about $100K in materials. Methods + difficulty identical to what is published here. It’s totally possible, almost simple to do:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/how-canadian-researchers-reconstituted-extinct-poxvirus-100000-using-mail-order-dna

Smallpox powder dropped in envelopes mailed around the world by a disgruntled underpaid PhD student (see Aurora Colorado shooter). Outbreak is out of hand before it’s noticed, billions d**.”

7. Never heard of this one.

“The clathrate g** hypothesis scares the s**t out of me. Basically methane trapped within ice, primarily under permafrost and on the ocean bottom.

It’s kinda like the supervolcano of climate change, not likely but very bad if it happens. Methane is way worse than CO2 and more important it is faster acting, which could cause a runaway affect.

But it’s not likely for a number of reasons, including the stuff in the ocean is buried.”

8. Big problems.

“The government protocol for disposing of nuclear waste is to pack it with kitty litter in barrels and bury it.

If the wrong brand of litter is used it can cause massive environmental problems.

This mistake has been made before.”

9. New Madrid Fault.

“I have an interesting one about the New Madrid fault. In 1812, it faulted causing the Mississippi to flow north for a short time.

When there’s an earthquake in that area that is substantial it shakes the river plain. The river plain is more like jello than solid land. This causes it to come loose resulting in “sand blows”.

If you’re ever in that area you can still see areas of sand that have been pushed up for these. There’s also Indian legends of this fault being active so it’s odd it’s been dormant for so long.”

10. Who’s in control here?

“The corpus callosum, a fibre matrix that connects the left and right hemisphere, is responsible for enabling fluid communication between language ability and spatial ability.

However once severed, either hemisphere essentially become independent of each other, leading to a sense of dual consciousness where the right brain controls the left side of the body and vice versa.

The scary element is not simply that you’re now controlled by 2 independent spheres, but that consciousness is a physical, tangible and divisible part of you.”

11. It’s migrating.

“The Yellowstone caldera has migrated over millions of years due to tectonic plates moving. This has left a giant scar across all of southern Idaho that can be seen from space.

You can see it for yourself on Google earth. It shows you just how big the caldera is and a small idea of how bad an eruption would be.”

12. Keep an eye on it.

“There is a glacier in Greenland that has been melting in an unexpected way, giving it the power to flood manhattan, the Netherlands, LA, Vancouver and other coast cities within months of breaking off.

Climate models suggest up to 10 meters of sea level rise with this sucker.”

13. What a bummer.

“Physical Oceanography.

The world’s climate is driven by the Meridional Overturning Circulation, what you might’ve heard of as the “Global Conveyor Belt”. Essentially, this is the formation of cold and salty deep water masses near the poles (North Atlantic, Antarctica) that sinks to the bottom of the oceans, that then upwells in regions like the Indian Ocean and the subtropical Pacific.

No deep water formation, no upwelling. No deep water formation, no movement of heat on a large scale (theoretically) in the oceans. The heat capacity of the oceans is orders of magnitude greater than that of the atmosphere– if that heat isn’t moving around, the world’s climate rapidly changes.

Thanks to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, there’s going to be a lot fresher water in the North Atlantic.

No salty water, no deep water formation. No deep water formation, no conveyor belt. No conveyor belt, no Gulf Stream, or anything else driven by geostrophic motion.

Climate apocalypse.

Have fun!”

Do you know any super scary science facts?

If so, please share them with us in the comments.

Thanks a lot, friends!

The post People Share Scary Science Facts That Most of Us Don’t Have a Clue About appeared first on UberFacts.

Check out This Video That Shows How Fast Bacteria Can Spread “Down There”

Knowledge is power and sure, one of the best and coolest things about the internet is that we can learn just about anything with the click of a few buttons. Some posts, though, leave me wondering if life wasn’t just a bit happier when we didn’t know everything, because some things…I’d be ok maintaining my ignorance.

Because after you realize something, of course, you feel compelled to, you know…take care of it.

Which is exactly how you might feel after watching this TikTok about how quickly bacteria and bacterial infections can spread in the vagina.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

The TikToker, Roxanne Ramsey, is going to use a zucchini, water, and ranch dressing to make her demonstration about bacterial vaginosis really pop, so consider the squeamish among you warned.

She grabs three bowls and names them – Ashley, the bowl of clean water, Ashley’s boyfriend Brandon, the zucchini, and Britney, the ranch dressing, who always wipes back to front.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

“Even though Ashley and Brandon’s relationship is really healthy, Brandon went to the market one day and just couldn’t help himself…”

She goes on to show what Brandon looks like after his experimental dip…and what Ashley looks like after Brandon comes home, sheepish and mum about the whole thing, and dips back into her.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

Ashley gets medicine for the vaginosis, but lo and behold, look what happens in Part 2 of Roxanne’s video…

The vaginosis comes back, even though Brandon has been faithful since that one encounter with infected Britney.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

Roxanne spoke to Buzzfeed about why the topic was important for her to inform others about online:

“I began to notice I would only get it after s^x with my partner. I had been to so many doctor’s appointments searching for answers, but to no avail. Every doctor told me I was suffering because of my soap and detergent. Finally, I decided to participate in a study for bacterial vaginosis because I thought something was terribly wrong with me.”

A doctor in the study told Roxanne that she thought her boyfriend was probably the reason, but that there were little to no tools for diagnosing bacterial vaginosis in men, and no treatment options, because many doctors didn’t believe men could get or pass the infection along.

Roxanne, though, knew it was at least worth exploring, since she’d tried everything else.

“It’s funny because I’ve struggled with BV for so long, I feel like I have a bacterial vaginosis degree… Once I learned information from the specialist, I knew that treatment was a possibility. She prescribed me meds, and I simply gave them to my partner. I was so shocked because it worked! It was such a simple fix that could’ve saved me years of struggling.”

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

She wanted to share not only the visualization of how easily bacteria can spread and her own experience, but the message that we know our bodies better than anyone else, and when you’re talking to your doctor, it’s important to remember to advocate for yourself.

Ask the questions, listen to the answers, but remember that you’re in charge of your body and your treatment, so if you feel like something more needs to be done, don’t stop pushing until you don’t feel that way anymore.

Be safe out there friends, and remember to love yourselves all the way up and down.

The post Check out This Video That Shows How Fast Bacteria Can Spread “Down There” appeared first on UberFacts.

Check out This Video That Shows How Fast Bacteria Can Spread “Down There”

Knowledge is power and sure, one of the best and coolest things about the internet is that we can learn just about anything with the click of a few buttons. Some posts, though, leave me wondering if life wasn’t just a bit happier when we didn’t know everything, because some things…I’d be ok maintaining my ignorance.

Because after you realize something, of course, you feel compelled to, you know…take care of it.

Which is exactly how you might feel after watching this TikTok about how quickly bacteria and bacterial infections can spread in the vagina.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

The TikToker, Roxanne Ramsey, is going to use a zucchini, water, and ranch dressing to make her demonstration about bacterial vaginosis really pop, so consider the squeamish among you warned.

She grabs three bowls and names them – Ashley, the bowl of clean water, Ashley’s boyfriend Brandon, the zucchini, and Britney, the ranch dressing, who always wipes back to front.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

“Even though Ashley and Brandon’s relationship is really healthy, Brandon went to the market one day and just couldn’t help himself…”

She goes on to show what Brandon looks like after his experimental dip…and what Ashley looks like after Brandon comes home, sheepish and mum about the whole thing, and dips back into her.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

Ashley gets medicine for the vaginosis, but lo and behold, look what happens in Part 2 of Roxanne’s video…

The vaginosis comes back, even though Brandon has been faithful since that one encounter with infected Britney.

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

Roxanne spoke to Buzzfeed about why the topic was important for her to inform others about online:

“I began to notice I would only get it after s^x with my partner. I had been to so many doctor’s appointments searching for answers, but to no avail. Every doctor told me I was suffering because of my soap and detergent. Finally, I decided to participate in a study for bacterial vaginosis because I thought something was terribly wrong with me.”

A doctor in the study told Roxanne that she thought her boyfriend was probably the reason, but that there were little to no tools for diagnosing bacterial vaginosis in men, and no treatment options, because many doctors didn’t believe men could get or pass the infection along.

Roxanne, though, knew it was at least worth exploring, since she’d tried everything else.

“It’s funny because I’ve struggled with BV for so long, I feel like I have a bacterial vaginosis degree… Once I learned information from the specialist, I knew that treatment was a possibility. She prescribed me meds, and I simply gave them to my partner. I was so shocked because it worked! It was such a simple fix that could’ve saved me years of struggling.”

Image Credit: Roxanne Ramsey

She wanted to share not only the visualization of how easily bacteria can spread and her own experience, but the message that we know our bodies better than anyone else, and when you’re talking to your doctor, it’s important to remember to advocate for yourself.

Ask the questions, listen to the answers, but remember that you’re in charge of your body and your treatment, so if you feel like something more needs to be done, don’t stop pushing until you don’t feel that way anymore.

Be safe out there friends, and remember to love yourselves all the way up and down.

The post Check out This Video That Shows How Fast Bacteria Can Spread “Down There” appeared first on UberFacts.