1.There’s no such thing as a ‘solid’ object.
Or not in the definitive sense, anyway. All objects are made of atoms and atoms are almost entirely empty space. That includes you, your cat, your boyfriend, your brain, your professors- everything. That’s why things like X-rays are able to pass through our skin and look inside us- our skin wasn’t solid to begin with. According to an article in the Telegraph written by
Tom Chivers, all of the matter that makes up the human race could be packed into something the size of a sugar cube.
So why is your world full of solid objects? If you press your hand against the table what you’re actually feeling is the charge between electrons- not the electrons themselves. Despite the fact that we seem to live in a ‘physical’ world filled with solid matter, most what of we experience and observe is simply energy.
2.There is no such thing as biological race.
That’s right. Race is a social construct and it has no basis in biology at all, and science has known that for more than a decade. Humans have been inter-breeding for so long that it’s damn near impossible to find any human being that’s ‘racially pure’, not to mention most of us have some Neanderthal blood and Neanderthals are an entirely different species. What you see as differences in race are just that- what you see. Grouping people by race today makes about as much sense as grouping people by blood-type or cholesterol. In fact, grouping people by blood type would probably be a lot more accurate.
Learn more: http://www.psychologytoday.com…
3.The beauty of a person’s face has more to do with symmetry than their actual features.
The reason you see one person’s face as beautiful and another as not has to do with how easy it is for your eyes and brain to translate all the visual data into a coherent image called ‘face’. So the next time someone says you’re pretty, you can just say ‘thank you! My parents gave me very symmetrical genes!” (I’m kidding, people will really think you’re strange if you say that; I would know).
Learn more: http://www.livescience.com/19553-samantha-brick-beauty.html
4.According to quantum physics, you never actually touch anything.
This one isn’t so different from number one. What you actually physically feel is the electrical force emitted by positive and negative electrons repelling against each other, not the atoms of an object themselves. Your fingers are actually hovering fractions of a millimeter above the keys on your keyboard. You never literally touch them.
Learn more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBZr1qmsQ0U
5.There is nothing that separates the molecules in a living being from those in an inanimate object.This one seems obvious, but really think about it. There is absolutely NOTHING in your body that makes you ‘alive’ and a rock ‘not alive’. Not one atom, not one molecule, not one proton of your make-up is living thing or makes you a living thing. Same with the rock, but the rock isn’t sitting at its computer reading about living and non-living things, is it? Consciousness, what it means, where it came from and what it’s ‘made’ of is one of the great mysteries of modern science.
Learn more: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.html
6.The universe is expanding.
So maybe you knew that one, but doesn’t that beg the question ‘what is the universe expanding into’? Think about it. Most galaxies are racing away from us and it isn’t just because they’re flying through space, it’s because the space between us is expanding.
This also begs the question, how can empty space expand? Again I will refer you to A Universe from Nothing, although if you don’t want to read an entire book on it you can always check out this article about the Higgs boson: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-physicist-significance-higgs-boson-discovery.html
7.Time moves faster the higher you are above the earth.
Literally. A clock in space will keep time more quickly than the same clock resting on the surface of the earth. That means that if you spend enough time in space, when you come back to earth you’ll be a fraction of a second ‘forward in time’ as compared to everybody else. This also means that, theoretically, time travel into the future is possible, although we aren’t anywhere near capable of doing it.
Learn more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/24/time-moves-faster-upstairs/
8.Women and men are actually more alike than different.
Read all the Cosmo you want, but the American Psychological Association says otherwise. Besides, most of us know that there isn’t any single trait that all women or all men have, which means that there is no such thing as an inherently’ female’ or ‘male’ trait aside from the ‘plumbing’. If there was, all women or all men would have that trait since it’s inherent in their sex, and no one from the opposite sex would have it. But even biological differences (not to mention gender roles) have been proven ambiguous by hermaphrodites, transvestites, sex-changes and science that is coming up with ever-newer (and sometimes ever-stranger) ways to create a baby. The bottom line? Your partner is an individual and most individuals are complicated and hard to understand, but throwing your hands in the air and exclaiming that you’ll just never understand men (or women) is, aside from being an intellectual cop out, not productive when it comes to forming a healthy relationship.
Learn more: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/02/05/men-and-women-may-not-be-so-different-after-all/51222.html
9.This is just one of billions of universes (according to the standard model of cosmology).
That means there are innumerable you’s reading this article in alternate universes, and innumerable me’s writing it. According to the standard model of cosmology, everything that could ever happen, happens. So who knows? Maybe in alternate universe you’ve achieved your dreams of being a hot crime-fighting super hero with a sexy sidekick and the adoration of the entire world to put on your resume.
Learn more: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-theory-of-parallel-universes.html
10.The cat isn’t alive or dead until you open the box.
Let’s say you’re getting a cat for Christmas. Your 8 year old mind was so excited, and then your parents told you that it has been stuck in the box for multiple days because your idiot older sister got drunk and thought it would be funny to hide the box. Several days later, it was found. Of course you don’t know if the cat is alive or dead, but you assume that, before even looking the box, the cat must already be one or the other- alive or dead. According to the observer-effect the cat is both alive and dead, or neither, depending on how you look at it. You’re observation of the cat once you open the box is what determines whether or not it’s alive or dead. This theory is referred to as Schrödinger’s Cat (you may have heard this reference on the Big Bang Theory), and although this is obviously difficult to experiment on without winding up with a bunch of dead cats (there was an experiment done where poison was put into the box), with subatomic particles it can be more easily and ethically documented.
This theory is most eloquently expressed by the double-slit experiment, which you can read about here. http://theobservereffect.wordpress.com/the-most-beautiful-experiment/
(Author’s note: If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden or the series Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.)