Thanks to many inquisitive researchers throughout our world's history, many of life's greatest phenomena have been solved and explained.
But even with the plethora of resources available at our fingertips detailing how things work or why they came to existence, some scientific facts remain baffling.
Curious to hear examples of what makes our planet so unique and astounding, Redditor rambojambo11 asked:
"What is a cool scientific fact that you know that sounds unbelievable?"
Our unique environment still holds great mysteries.
Superior Body Of Water
"Lake Superior can hold all of the water from the rest of the Great Lakes combined with room to spare."
"This is more geography, but it always blows my mind when looking at a map that the continent of South America is almost entirely east of the United States."
– Marty_Eastwood
Infrared Light
"Infrared light was discovered all the way back in 1800. By accident. With a thermometer."
"William Herschel (who also discovered Uranus) was experimenting with a prism. He wanted to see if different colors of light had different temperatures. So he had the room completely dark except a beam of light hitting a prism and casting a rainbow onto the table. He had placed thermometers in each color band to see if there was a difference. As a control, he had an additional thermometer past the end of the light below the red band."
"Except when he compared his readings, he got something strange: the control thermometer was reading the highest temperature of all. This didn't make any sense. Was his thermometer faulty? He tried a few more tests with more thermometers in other places and came to an inescapable conclusion: there must be an additional invisible "color" below red that carried more heat than any of the visible colors. He named it infrared, which just literally means 'below red'."
– sharrrper
Who's Our Guide?
"GPS tracking is not the satellites tracking the object, but the object tracking the satellites."
– UnethicalFood
Making Waves
"The first radio signal broadcasted by humans to (unintentionally) escape the Earth's ionosphere was Hitler's opening address at the 1936 Summer Olympics."
– jx3z_o
All creatures great and small are miracles of earth.
The Ultimate Pre-Dator
"Sharks pre-date trees."
– Suuperdad
Sentient Prick
"because of evolutionary caution of being eaten by the larger females, male octopus can detach his penis and quite literally throw it at his woman."
"and if that is not even impressive weird enough, that detached penis has a brain on its own, programmed to stalk the female like a f'king terminator until she is inseminated!"
"these creatures are next-level mental!"
– Lord-Legatus
Safe Licking
"Giraffes’ tongues are black and purple to prevent sunburn while they’re feeding up high."
– aprilmayjunejuly21
This Is Hard To Swallow
"A species of fruit fly holds the record for the biggest sperm cells. Drosophila bifurca has sperm that are 5.8cm long. The body length of the males is about 3mm long."
– Salvelinus_alpinus
Burning Passion
"Female ferrets die if they don't find a partner to make with. Since they don't leave "Heat" Until they're mated with, the Oestrogen overload leads to Anemia, and death."
– TheEyeOfLight
Biology is fascinating.
Tiny Organ
"Some people have extra spleen or liver that are pea sized."
– iremovebrains
Home Invasion
"The immune system does not encounter viruses and formulate an antibody that matches its shape. Instead, the immune system pumps out random antibodies that sometimes happen to match a virus it comes into contact with, and then begins to produce more of that specific antibody."
– davilambic
These impressive scientific facts are just the tip of the iceberg. There are still many more out there that are jaw-dropping.
With so many scientifically proven facts approved and accepted by the scientific community, the most confounding fact remains that there are communities that deny proven data and information–especially ones that are capable of benefitting mankind.
