Science is a fascinating endeavor.
Since its first observations in its infancy to its slow growth and current maturity, science’s conclusions have baffled people because they contradicted common sense or challenged established dogma, but spreading the “truth”, as it were.
Along the way, science has made some powerful enemies. Even today some of science’s discoveries are mind-boggling and controversial.
Here are some of the most mind-boggling science facts.
Scallops
This tasty seafood is actually a marine bivalve mollusk.
They have 100 simple brilliantly blue eyes strung around the edges of each of their two mantles like a string of beads.
The Ocean
On average, the ocean is 12,080.7 feet (3,682.2 meters) deep, enough to fit eight Empire State Buildings one on top of the other.
The deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, is about 36,200 feet deep (11,030 m), or 25 Empire State Buildings.
Salamanders
The Central American salamander Bolitoglossa dofleini can roll out its tongue more than half its body length in 7 milliseconds, 50 times faster than you can blink an eye.
The Platypus
The male platypus has a venomous spur on its hind foot capable of secreting a poison that can kill a large dog.
What’s in a Face?
Prosopagnosia, also called Face Blindness, is a disorder in which a person’s ability to recognize faces is impaired.
Congenital problems or injuries to the fusiform gyrus, the area of the brain in charge of recognising faces, can set off this disturbing disorder and leave people clueless about the looks of even loved ones.
Pugilist Shrimps
Also known as “Thumb-Splitters”, and for good reason, the Mantis shrimp can use their armored claws to strike at speeds of 74 feet per second (23 m/s), delivering blows with 200 pounds (91 kg) of force, even though they only measure 4 inches (10 cm) long.
Friendly Bacteria
“If you don’t like bacteria, you’re on the wrong planet.”
Stewart Brand
The human body is full of benevolent bacteria, with organisms on our skin and in our guts helping keep our bodies healthy.
According to a 2013 study, breast milk alone can have up to 700 different types of bacteria.
Heavy Metal
Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at standard room temperature and pressure.
The electrons that go round the nucleus of a mercury atom have weak bonds with other mercury atoms at room temperature, thus keeping the metal in a liquid state.
Hold Your Seahorses
Seahorses don’t have stomachs, only intestines for the absorption of nutrients from food. Food passes through their digestive system very quickly so they need to feed constantly.
They mostly eat plankton and small crustaceans.
And if that weren’t enough, male seahorses can get pregnant.
Corpse Flower
Like something Tim Burton could use in one of his films, Amprophophallus titanium blooms with clusters of flowers that can reach 10 feet (3 m) in height.
But these petals smell so much like rotting flesh that the plant is known as the “corpse flower.”
Its petals emit a pungent odor reminiscent of various unpleasant scents, from rotting fish to sweaty socks, making it a remarkable botanical curiosity.
Analyses of chemicals released by the corpse flower show the “stench” includes dimethyl trisulfide (like limburger cheese), dimethyl disulfide, trimethylamine (rotting fish), isovaleric acid (sweaty socks), benzyl alcohol (sweet floral scent), phenol (like Chloraseptic), and indole (like mothballs).
Weightless Weight
“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.”
Isaac Newton
The moon is just 1 percent the mass of Earth making gravity on the moon a sixth of what it is here.
Thus, a person that weighs 150 pounds (68 kg) on this planet would only weigh 25 pounds (11 kg) on the moon.
Glowing Sharks
The velvet belly lantern shark is bioluminescent, with light-emitting photophores, or spines, that form a pattern over its belly.
These photophores are thought to function in counter-illumination, which camouflages the shark against predators.
No Small Matter
Matter is mostly empty space.
The concept of matter is a paradoxical wonder, for it's mostly composed of... well, nothing but empty space.
The human body is 99.996% empty space so if you took away that empty space between atoms, pushed them together until they were touching, the human body would be compressed to about the size of a pencil eraser.
And since atoms are also mostly empty space too, you could push them together until the nuclei were touching. If you did, the human body would be too small to see.
You Maggot!
Maggots are now being used to treat wounds and infections, although the practice dates back to antiquity. Live, disinfected maggots (fly larvae) are introduced into the non-healing skin and soft tissue wound(s) of a human or animal for the purpose of cleaning out the necrotic (dead) tissue within a wound (debridement) and disinfection and does so with great success.
Maggot therapy, a historical practice, is now a mainstream treatment for wound cleaning.
Today, any physician in the U.S. can prescribe maggot therapy.
There are over 800 health care centers in the United States using maggot therapy, and over 4,000 therapists are using maggot therapy in 20 countries.
Kiss Me, Hardy
“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
Ingrid Bergman
According to scientists, more than 40,000 parasites and 250 types of bacteria are exchanged during a casual French kiss.
Science: always crashing our assumptions
The grand realm of science, where scallops have more eyes than a Hollywood blockbuster and male seahorses are the ones asking, “Does this pregnancy make me look fat?”
From the depths of the ocean that could swallow skyscrapers to the bacteria in breast milk that could populate a small country, science never ceases to amaze, perplex, and occasionally gross us out.
So, the next time you’re about to engage in a French kiss, just remember: it’s not just a romantic gesture, it’s also a microbial meet-and-greet.
Here’s to science, the ultimate party crasher that keeps us questioning, laughing, and occasionally scratching our heads in utter disbelief.
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