19 Things We Know For A Fact Are True, But Our Teeny Tiny Brains Just Cannot Comprehend Them
You know that feeling when you ~technically~ know something is true, but it feels so out of your scope of understanding, you never really think too hard about it? And when you do...you feel like you're on the verge of a full-blown existential crisis because WHAT?? Is that just me???
Recently, redditor u/BubblegumCrocodile inquired about those exact kinds of things, asking "What’s something you know is real/proven but still can’t wrap your head around it?" Here are 19 of the most popular, mind-boggling things they shared:
1."How thin Earth's crust and atmosphere are. That we are so relatively close to plunging into a fiery hell of molten rock or being sucked into the vacuum of space."
Earth's crust ranges from being 3 miles to 43+ miles thick. Earth's atmosphere is about 60 miles thick.
2."Bluetooth. You're telling me we start out with rocks and shit and somehow I can hear music from my phone on my headphones without them being connected?"
3."That I’m closer to being a millionaire than Jeff Bezos!"
4."That we are closer to when the Tyrannosaurus Rex lived than it is to the Stegosaurus. The concept of millions upon millions of years is just unfathomable to me."
According to Discovery, the T-rex lived around 67–65 million years ago, whereas the Stegosaurus lived around 156 and 144 million years ago. The time between 144 million years and 67 million years is 77 million years, which is greater than the 65 million years that separates the T-rex from us.
5."That there are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way."
6."How vinyl records work. Not only do they work, but somehow, someone figured out how to do it. What do you mean you pressed some squiggles into plastic and now it makes music when you run a needle across it? Makes absolutely no sense."
"And they can work without electricity. You can literally hear the music coming off the needle."
7."That our bodies are made up of trillions of cells and microbes that replicate and build the construction that is 'us.' We do not control them directly in any capacity, but they are a part of us without being us. Yet, they live their own 'life' in there, ever tirelessly building, repairing, and filtering."
8."That airplanes can fly. I've been in one and everything lots of times, but they're just so big and heavy. I feel like it should take a rocket engine or something."
9."That sharks are older than trees, the rings of Saturn, and Polaris."
Early trees are believed to have appeared somewhere between 350 and 420 million years ago. Saturn's rings are estimated to be no more than 400 million years old. Polaris, aka the north star, is estimated to be about 70 million years old. Comparatively, sharks date back to the Late Ordovician Period, or about 450 million years ago.
10."That we've cloned a sheep. I barely have a solid internet connection, and yet we've cloned a sheep. Make it make sense, people!"
Dolly the sheep was cloned at the Roslin Institute in 1996. You can read more about the experiment here.
11."That the tides are due to the moon."
You can read about how Earth and the moon's gravitational pull causes high and low tides here.
12."Dark matter and dark energy. It encompasses 95% of the universe, and we have no idea what it is. We can't even see it. We just know it’s there."
According to NASA, about 68% of the universe is dark energy and 27% is dark matter. The remaining 5% is everything else.
13."It's pretty wild that the light you see from the sun is around eight minutes younger than the sun actually is."
"Take this a step further. Imagine other beings millions of light years away, observing the light omitted from Earth. They could be seeing a version of Earth many, many years ago that shows zero signs of life, let alone intelligent life. They take one look and think, 'Yup, nothing there, let’s cross it off our list.' Even if our planet has been discovered by other forms of intelligent life, it’s almost impossible that they would know we exist without being much closer to our solar system."
14."The feeling of déjà vu."
If you're not familiar, déjà vu means "already seen" in French and is a phenomenon in which a person feels like they've already lived the situation they're currently in, even though they know they haven't.
15."That gravity impacts the flow of time."
This is called time dilation. You can read more about it here.
16."Wi-Fi. It's everywhere all of the time, and data is all over the place, but things don't get jumbled up. WTF? At any given time, there are about 10 devices using Wi-Fi in my house and probably every house on the street, and it all just works. My stuff isn't accidentally appearing elsewhere, but if I want to, I can make a bunch of different devices immediately start playing the same song at the same time."
17."The number of people in the world. You’re telling me there’s almost EIGHT BILLION people?? And they all have their own lives, names, birthdays, friends, feelings, language, looks, inside jokes, problems, victories, challenges, etc?? I have a hard time with realizing the person I see walking on the street has a life just as complex as mine, if not more so...now times that by eight billion??"
18."Death. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I will be gone forever one day."
19.And finally, "The fact that everything we've made today was always possible to make. The same rules of the universe have always applied, and we have the same materials as people before us did. Gets me wondering what's still possible with the stuff we have that we don't have the slightest idea about."
Now it's your turn! Is there something you know for a fact is real/true but simply cannot make your brain comprehend? If so, tell us about it in the comments below!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and clarity.
