I'll go first. When I read that it takes a photon over 100,000 years to exit the Sun as visible light, I was completely astounded. Curious what other insights from science people have learned that were completely unexpected to them.
Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
1–10 of 189 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#2Obvious when you think about it, but I didn't realise for ages that all the planets orbit in the same plane.
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#3Average density of the universe is about 1 proton mass per cubic meter
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#4we can see our nose all the time, but our brain filters it out.
if you close one eye and keep the other open you'll suddenly see one side of your nose.
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#5That when we look up at distant stars, nebulas, & galaxies and the like...we are looking back in time. What we see could have been gone for decades, centuries, or longer.
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#6Not science, but Mathematics - That there are more ways to arrange a deck of 52 cards than seconds that have elapsed since the big bang took place.
Thousands of similar questions on reddit for anyone interested- https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=science+fact+site%3Areddit....
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#7Evolution is dominated by genetic drift, not natural selection, most of our genomes are junk, and we are in fact not very optimally adapted to our environments
The microbiome affects the brain, the immune system and is involved in multiple psychiatric/behavioral conditions
The identical ancestors point (in short, everyone is a descendant of everyone who ever lived approx 7000 years ago)
Mosaicism and chimerism - it's not clear "who we are" and it's not even "our genes"
Cancer behaves as though it were a living being of its own, there's evidence it could be a form of regression to unicellular lifeforms, and what's more it does have a microbiome of its own
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#8we can see our nose all the time, but our brain filters it out. if you close one eye and keep the other open you'll suddenly see one side of your nose.
I can see my nose now
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#9Evolution is dominated by genetic drift, not natural selection, most of our genomes are junk, and we are in fact not very optimally adapted to our environments The microbiome affects the brain, the immune system and is involved in multiple psychiatric/behavioral conditions The identical ancestors point (in short, everyone is a descendant of everyone who ever lived approx 7000 years ago) Mosaicism and chimerism - it's…
Most of the facts stated are inaccurate, or at least phrased incorrectly in a pop science manner. What you have written are technical subtleties, not the main ideas that undergird biology. Biology is not an absolute hard science, but it serves nobody to emphasize and blow up the details while rejecting the core ideas completely. For example, if I tell a novice programmer that JavaScript is a compiled language like C, that is a very inaccurate statement. The subtleties of JIT interpreters can be clarified when you already have a clear understanding of the differences between an AOT compiler and a high level interpreter. HN is predominantly filled with people of math and computer science background. Those 'facts' in your comment are at best misleading if you do not already have strong grasp of the central dogma.
Re: Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it?
#10Evolution is dominated by genetic drift, not natural selection, most of our genomes are junk, and we are in fact not very optimally adapted to our environments The microbiome affects the brain, the immune system and is involved in multiple psychiatric/behavioral conditions The identical ancestors point (in short, everyone is a descendant of everyone who ever lived approx 7000 years ago) Mosaicism and chimerism - it's…
Most of the facts stated are inaccurate, or at least phrased incorrectly in a pop science manner. What you have written are technical subtleties, not the main ideas that undergird biology. Biology is not an absolute hard science, but it serves nobody to emphasize and blow up the details while rejecting the core ideas completely. For example, if I tell a novice programmer that JavaScript is a compiled language like C,…
Alright then, let's see you phrase it better instead of just flagging my post with no justification other than a condescending dismissal.
At what point did I reject the core ideas though? And what does any of what I said have to do with the central dogma?