The scientific world isn’t just about inventing new gadgets and discovering new planets and species. Pushing the boundaries of human knowledge can be… very uncomfortable at times. Some of the things that researchers discover can be quite disturbing. Like the fact that human brain organoids can be used to create bioprocessors, which is something almost straight out of a dystopian movie.
The members of the r/AskReddit online community revealed some of the scariest science facts they know. We’ve collected some of the most intriguing ones that you might not have been aware of, Pandas. Scroll down to read up on some things that might make you reevaluate how you see the world. But a word of warning: these might keep you up at night!
We wanted to learn more about pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge, so we got in touch with N. Otre Le Vant, the author of ‘On Progress in Physics and Subjectivity Theory’ and the founder of Inisev. Read on for Bored Panda’s full interview with him.
#1
Trauma can cause structural changes to your brain. PTSD is literally an injury.
Image credits: PsychologicalBend467
Bored Panda asked N. Otre Le Vant, who researches progress in science and uses a pseudonym on purpose, about his thoughts on scientific boundaries that should potentially not be pushed.
“Since the dawn of humanity, discoveries in science and technology have always had two sides: the good and the bad. Nuclear energy can be used to build an atomic bomb, but it can also solve our energy problems. Dynamite can be used in war, but it can also help us access valuable resources by breaking through rock in mining. Even a stone can be used in two ways: to crack open a coconut or to hit someone’s head,” he was kind enough to explain to us in an email.
According to the expert, the way to tackle this challenge is to learn to handle our knowledge responsibly.
#2
50% of insects have disappeared since 1970. Insect population is down 27% in the last 30 years. Declining between 1 and 4% each year depending on the genus.
Image credits: Magoogooo
#3
If you’re exposed to rabies and start to show symptoms, your chance of survival is virtually zero percent.
Image credits: DonkeyTron42
“Stopping science is equivalent to stopping to think. It’s also impossible: if we decide to halt certain scientific pursuits, who determines what type of science is permissible and what is not? This is similar to free speech. While some free speech can cause harm, restricting it raises the question: who decides what can be said, and what cannot? Such restrictions are always prone to misuse,” he said.
N. Otre Le Vant added that there’s no other path forward other than to continue to push science and technology. After all, it’s them that we have to thank for the high living standards we can enjoy in this day and age. “We just have to learn how to handle these advancements responsibly.”
#4
All onions (all veggies in the Allium family) are toxic to dogs. Worst senario then can develop is AIHA, Auto immune hemolytic annemia, whereas the body destroys its own red blood cells. This disease is about 80% fatal. My dog caught it (we are not sure from where) but is was a primary disease (not a result of a cancer). We think he was eating leeks out of the garden. Took a week in the hospital, 2 blood transfusions, and about 6 months of meds to get him back. He started at 45lbs and was down to 19lbs at the worst part of it.
Image credits: crusttysack
#5
Homeopathy does not work and its only proven effects derive from the so-called placebo effect.
#6
I only recently learned that when you get sunburned, the burn isn’t because of skin cell damage. The UV radiation damages the DNA. Then the skin cells decide to commit s***ide and fall off so that the damaged DNA doesn’t produce cancer. I’ll never be mad at my skin peeling again.
Image credits: TheJWeed
Meanwhile, some facts about the world can make people a bit uncomfortable. We asked the scientific progress researcher for his thoughts on how they can deal with this anxiety. He shared a few possible strategies to help with this.
First of all, he pointed out that our brains have evolved to focus on risks and negatives. It’s a survival mechanism that’s hard-wired into us. If we understand and recognize this, we can then reduce our anxiety.
The expert also urged everyone to try to focus on the positives. “Scientific discoveries often lead to beneficial advancements,” he said that focusing on these can help us develop a more optimistic perspective on science and life.
In the meantime, we should all strive to limit how long we dwell on any unsettling facts that we learn about. To put it bluntly, it’s unproductive. “Instead, focus on areas where we can make a positive impact and engage with topics that inspire and uplift us.”
#7
Reverting global warming does not unmelt the south pole.
Antarctica is a giant ice mountain (size of US+Canada, average 1km thick) on top of land that is studded by plates of ice in the sea. Think of a very slow moving pudding held in place by a little edge.
All the modeling suggests that once you lose those plates, eventually all the ice will slide into the water.
To refreeze the plates once they are gone, you need an ice age of about -2C to preindustrial, or -3C to current.
There is a 70m of sea level rise of ice on the south pole. The models swing widely on how long it takes to melt on a bunch of factors, but it could be less than 2 centuries for the first 10m.
So either we geoengineer to cool at least the south pole by a tremendous amount, or to hold the ice in place, or in time all coastal regions are lost.
The plates are still in place, but the warmest one is showing signs of stress and thinning. It is linked to 7m of sea level rise if it fails.
To me this is more threatening than any other climate change catastrophe.
#8
When doing an autopsy they don’t put the organs back where they belong, they are all stored in the belly.
Image credits: Chariatid
#9
So many people will struggle with infertility. It’s not talked about or really discussed in middle school or highschool in health class. When it happens, it’s such a shock to the families and they are completely unprepared. The numbers are going up as well. Statistical 1/4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. Which is pretty high but again, miscarriage isn’t discussed.
Image credits: Doromclosie
Learning more about people, nature, our planet, and the cosmos might be exhilarating, sure. But it can also be downright frightening at times. The more you learn, the more questions you have about how everything works. It’s a humbling experience to realize how little we actually know despite being well-educated.
On top of that, you can uncover a lot of terrifying stuff about how things actually work when your curiosity makes you leave your comfort zone. Whether that’s learning more about climate change, what black holes would do if you were to fall in one (hello, spaghettification), or how the circle of life might be less about balance and more about brutal chaos.
“Some species exclude all others in particular tracts. Where is the balance? When the locust devastates vast regions and causes the death of animals and man, what is the meaning of saying the balance is preserved… To human apprehension there is no balance but a struggle in which one often exterminates another,” wrote British naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace.
#10
That you should never use bleach to clean cat pee.
The combination creates Chlorine gas that is very toxic.
Image credits: younaughtypossum
#11
Scientists don’t know exactly how Acetaminophen works to relieve pain and reduce fever. They have an idea but nothing for sure. But yet it’s the most commonly used pain reliever in the world.
Image credits: anon
#12
Microplastics are revealed in the placentas of unborn babies.
Image credits: SuperfluouslySlims
It’s easy to start getting anxious about all the ways the world could end or how a small accident could lead us to get hurt or worse. Some people develop phobias about certain things in part due to their genetics, and partly due to the environment in which they were raised. For example, if you had a particularly traumatic experience or your parents were scared of something, you might end up developing a phobia related to spiders, deep water, dogs, heights, eating in public, etc.
Dealing with anxiety and moving on from your phobias is a lot of hard work. Often, it’s worth getting in touch with a licensed counselor or psychologist who specializes in handling fears. They might suggest that you try something like exposure therapy and mindfulness techniques to react differently than you usually do when you feel distressed.
#13
Many antibiotics make hormonal birth control stop working. Not just a fact but a warning.
#14
Microplastics in the food and water supplies are crossing the blood/brain barrier.
Shhh.
Image credits: MonsieurReynard
#15
Activated charcoal in foods and drinks can decrease the effectiveness of any medications you take. Those “instagrammable” black foods can end up killing you if you’re not careful.
For example, someone might be scared of deep bodies of water (they develop thalassophobia) because they might have learned something disturbing about them or they nearly drowned in the past. Exposure therapy in this particular case could include looking at photos of the sea and listening to the sound of the waves while the therapist guides the person and reminds them that they’re not at risk.
What is the scariest science fact that you personally know, dear Pandas? Which of the facts in this list creeped you out the most? How do you deal with the anxiety that comes from knowing too much about how scary the world can be? If you have a moment, share your thoughts in the comments section. For science!
#16
I don’t think this is scary, but some tin-foil-hat types might.
The frequency range that 5G utilizes is the shared with the C-Band frequency range, which commercial satellites have been utilizing for the past 50+ years. If 5G frequencies do anything to humans (They do not) then they have been doing it on a global scale for decades.
Source: I’m a senior engineer at a global satcom company.
#17
Approximately 30% (in some reports) of the world’s population have the parasite toxoplasma gondii in their brain. For a long time it’s through to have been a benign presence, but recent statistical research shows that it may have an impact on things like levels of anger and rates of accidents and suicide.
When gondii is on rats it changes their behaviour so that they find the smell of cat urine sexually appealing. So they find cats and get eaten. In the gut of the cat the parasite can reproduce.
#18
Antimicrobial Resistance
The bacteria are getting resistant to the medicine much faster than the rate at which we are producing new medicine.
Soon we will reach a scenario when antibiotics cannot treat simple yet lethal infections.
Image credits: anon
#19
Brain aneurisms can be completely unpredictable and can happen at anytime in your life no matter how healthy you are. A kid who I went to high school with at the age of 16 just did not wake up one morning and his cause of death was a brain aneurism.
Image credits: To_Fight_The_Night
#20
If your dog swims in a lake after receiving a spot on flea treatment – it absolutely decimates the invertibrate population.
A large dog swimming in 8 Olympic swimming pools worth of water soon after treatment will leech enough neurotoxin to kill 50% of the lake’s invertebrate population within 48 hours. I say “after” I mean relatively soon after, within say a day, to have an effect quite this devistating. The leeching does reduce over the month, but it’s still there and the effect of multiple dogs still allows for a terrible buildup of chemicals.
#21
The human body temperature in developed countries is actually declining, and at the same time, global warming is increasing the temperature thresholds for many fungus types.
This is leading to a whole new medical issue of fungus infecting humans and its main source of protection (body temperature) is no longer working.
That body temperature is a large reason for the success of mammals all over the world.. After the K-T extinction the sun was blocked and cold-blooded species couldn’t raise their body temperature to kill off infections in their bodies. There is ample evidence that aft K-T Fungus spread all over the world in massive quantities, which leads many to believe this lead to the ascendancy of mammals on earth.
Image credits: Reverend_Ooga_Booga
#22
The plague is still out there. The Bubonic Plague is endemic in many parts of the world, but cases are very rare because we’ve got it pretty well handled.
If there’s a general breakdown in society like a nuclear war, super volcano eruption or asteroid impact?
It’s out there waiting to come back.
Image credits: gogojack
#23
At any given time the Earth can be hit with a gamma ray burst. We won’t see it coming since it moves at the speed of light and all life apart from deep underground or deep in the ocean will be wiped out in minutes. Although unlikely it can happen at any time.
Image credits: anon
#24
There is a naturally occurring thought in many humans named “The Call of the Void” where, without reason, humans see a way they could die and they wonder whether they should kill themselves, even if they have no real intention of doing so
Edit: Yes, the true term is “L’appel du Vide”, the French term for “Call of the Void”. Also, thanks for the awards! I believe this is my first gold.
#25
The Vacuum Decay death of the universe.
The basic eli5 premise is that it is possible that at some point in the universe , the universe itself started collapsing into a more stable version of itself, and once this started , the ‘collapse’ spreads outwards into all directions at the speed of light. Because it travels at the speed of light , there is no way to know it’s coming.
You could literally stop existing the next second.
Image credits: TheShendelzare
#26
There’s many unknown and forgotten diseases trapped in the permafrost and it’s slowly but surely melting away. There’s been a few cases in Russia (while exploring for oil/gas I believe) of people dying of strange diseases that we have no idea how to treat, because they’ve basically been hidden there since before medicine even existed. Some could be contagious, we just know very little about it.
#27
An electric current of only 20mA is enough to stop your heart and kill you. Under the right conditions, even a nine volt battery can be lethal
Tldr: we humans are incredibly easy to kill.
#28
A lot of people in rural towns with an elevated cemetery around (this happens in Ireland a lot)….there is formaldehyde leaking into the drinking water. But it won’t kill you, but the thought of drinking dead people juice is probably equally bad. Sorry not sorry.
Image credits: PurnimaTitha
#29
Blue whale fart bubbles are big enough to hold a racehorse.
#30
The youngest persons who developed Alzheimer’s were around 25 years old. One lady got diagnosed with it at 31 while pregnant.
Btw, when you get the disease at like 65, it didn’t suddenly begin. It has been creeping up and ravaging your brain for at least 20 years if not more. You just didn’t realise it because our brain is very good at compensating damages until it cannot. Basically, the day you lose yourself in the supermarket, it’s too late, your brain is mostly mush and there is so far nothing you can do.
That mean that if you are 40-60 years old and reading this, chances are that some of you already started to experience the onset of alzheimer’s brain degeneration, it’s just not advanced enough for you to realise it.
Have a nice day !
Image credits: Matrozi
#31
Heart muscle cells don’t reproduce much in adults (roughly 1% per year). If you have an infarction or other stressor that kills those cells, then your heart wont be able to “grow” new cells to replace the dead ones. This is why patients with diseases like heart failure end up needing a heart transplant. Trying to get this process to happen is a major goal for many cardiac researchers.
#32
Farm salmon loses the pink color in captivity because its natural diet consist on krill and shrimp. So there are companies that offer artificial pink pellets that you can feed to the salmon in order to get the ideal Pantone.
Also the salmon is loaded with antibiotics due to farm parasites, yummy!
#33
Bananas could be gone within a year.
We only grow one type of banana tree. If a specific infection occurs that kills that kind of tree, it woult spread like wildfire and we have no alternative…. Appearently this already happened now so long ago.
#34
Politics plays a huge part in scientific research.
#35
How easy it is to create large amounts of high-explosives.
Everyone determined enough and desperate enough can create easy workable explosives.
#36
It’s easier to make gunpowder than it is to bake a cake.
#37
Not sure if this counts but no matter what we do the final result will always be the same. We will all die, the universe will cease to exist eventually and everything will become nothing.
#38
CVS is about to close most of its outlet pharmacies. Which means many small-towns across the US will be without a conventionally available pharmacy, until others replace them.
Not to mention, in most districts, there simply aren’t enough pharmacists to cover shifts to keep stores open. In my district, there’s an average of two stores closed every day due to staff shortage. One store was closed for four days in a row.
People are going to die. There isn’t a solution in sight.
#39
Before the vaccine, the number of people who have had HPV infection, and have had at least one sexual partner, was 85% in females and 91% of males. By far the most common STI.
#40
Magnolia plants are so old that they predate the evolution of pollination by bees. They were pollinated by beetles :).
#41
Limnic eruptions.
There are pockets of Co2 trapped under lakes all around the world that can be released at anytime creating an invisible tidal wave that kills everything in its path. Since it’s heavier than air you will just suddenly start choking and die.
#42
The United States has lost and never recovered at least six nuclear devices.
#43
Late to the party, but here goes:
There are weaponized strains of anthrax which can remain viable and dangerous for 40+ years after release. In 1942, the UK tested an anthrax bomb on Gruinard Island, killing a flock of sheep in days (some died in hours.) Examination showed that the spores could remain active “for decades” and decontamination proved impossible at the time. The project was scrapped.
Fast forward to 1981, an eco-terrorist group smuggled a sample off of the island and threatened the UK government with releasing it if the island wasn’t decontaminated. The spores were still active and deadly. It took 4 years to plan and execute the cleanup, using 280 tons of formaldehyde in a seawater solution, and removing 7 hectares worth of soil to a depth of 3 feet (about 58,000 tons of topsoil) where the concentration was too high for the juice to do the job. The island was confirmed clean in 1990, 4 years after cleanup began.
#44
Anthrax spores can remain viable for decades in the soil or animal products such as dried or processed hides and wool.
#45
If there is a nuclear attack on a city, don’t expect a rescue or medical attention. The area will be so irradiated damaged that red cross will only be able to drop supplies from high altitudes and not let anyone out for risk of contaminates leaving the area.
#46
1 in 3 people will get cancer
#47
You can overdose on water. Basically you dilute the normal chemical balance of your body so much you can cause serious damage, it’s called hyponatremia.
In an EMT class, I heard a story of an old woman who bought distilled nutrient free water, normally used for ironing clothes or something, because it was cheaper, she had to call 911 and it took a while to figure out the problem.
#48
I learned about Ton 618 the other day. My facts here may be mildly incorrect, feel free to google.
It’s a black hole about 10.3 billion light years away, but we can still detect the massive amount of light bending around it. It’s so large, they had to make a new category of black hole for it called “Ultramassive Black Holes”. It’s believed to be the largest “thing” in the universe. It’s diameter is **14 times** the diameter of Neptunes orbit. So it could fit our entire solar system in it 14 times across, side to side. If the black hole replaced our sun, we would be deleted. If it replaced the black hole that is currently at the centre of the Milky Way, within 120 years the Milky Way would be deleted. This black hole doesn’t swallow planets, it swallows entire *Galaxies*.
The idea of this thing freaks me the f**k out.
Edit: Woah I went for a nap and this blew Tf up. Most upvoted comment of all time, les gooo
So yeah I was mistaken a few times here; like if the black hole replaced ours it would take 120 years to destroy *us*, not the entire galaxy. The black hole is larger than I originally said, and true black holes don’t technically give off light, but they are pretty much “surrounded by light”.
I typed this out from memory and sadly my memory is pure garbage, but still I’m glad this encouraged you folks to look more into it and stuff. Space is cool and terrifying, huh?
#49
If my college biology professor wasn’t completely misinformed, most humans have some form of parasite living inside them. Some variety of worm, etc. There are just creepy crawlies in our insides and we might never notice them.
The one that came closest to giving me nightmares was hookworms. Although the thought that you could have heartworms kind of messed with me, too. Evidently, they’re not just for dogs.
#50
Your microwave has several components that can kill you by touch. NEVER OPEN THE INSIDES OF A MICROWAVE!!!!!
#51
Another Carrington Event.
The ‘original Carrington event was in 1859, which was basically an intense geomagnetic storm that disrupted/knocked out telegrams because thats all the technology there was to disrupt back then.
Nowadays we use electricity for virtually everything. If it hit now the effect would be like an EMP, but globally. There’d be no functional technology that involved electrics.
In essence, losing all electrics would in turn stop communications, then logistics and then fundamental infrastructure like food distribution, healthcare and utilities (other than electricity).
#52
Governments around the world have, and are developing, weapons technologies that can easily wipe out all life on Earth.
#53
Neutrinos are a particle that has an extremely small chance of interacting with matter. Like if a rock was dropped randomly from space to the Earth, the chance it would hit a specific target is similar to the chance it would interact with any matter. They have to build huge chambers deep in the earth and wait ~~months~~ *a while* to have the possibility to detect one from the countless that constantly zoom through the Earth from the sun.
If the sun were to go supernova, it would create so many neutrinos that they would kill you assuming nothing else did.
Edit: apparently, they detect more than I expected, several hundred a year.
#54
Airplanes are dynamically stable, but helicopters are dynamically unstable. That means, if an airplane pilot lets go of the controls of a small plane with no autopilot, if it’s correctly trimmed and balanced it will keep flying level until it runs out of fuel. If a helicopter pilot lets go of the controls, in about 2.4 seconds, it will tip over to such a degree that it is unrecoverable. We can let go of one control (the collective) for a little while by frictioning it in place to change the radio, adjust something, scratch our nose or whatever – but it’s friction on, do the thing with the left hand, friction off and hand back on the collective. We fly three seconds away from falling out of the sky all the time.
(But then that’s also kinda the same for bicycles, although they can only tip left and right, not every direction. Subconsciously, you are always adusting your weight and controlling the steering to stay upright – same thing in a heli. You balance on a column of air, and you keep balancing the whole time, just like on a bike. You don’t even notice, you just do it.).
#55
We still have no idea what consciousness is. Worse, we have not many ideas how to think about it. Just some philosophical ideas (Dennet, Chalmers etc).
I mean we don’t know how to build interstellar ship, but we could write books and make movies about it. We could speculate about different approaches and ideas. For consciousness it’s not true. We don’t know why it exists, what is “I”, what is the role of consciousness, how it emerges, how to research it and so on.