20 Creepy Scientific Facts That Are Disturbingly Real

The world and even our bodies have a lot of scientific occurrences that we aren’t always aware of but that doesn’t mean those things aren’t happening regardless. Like our bodies creating cancer cells every day, and yet getting rid of them at the same time without us ever even realising it.  So when Redditor Aelmnnor posed a question on the platform asking people to share scientific facts that creeped them out, it received a lot of responses. Some of which are almost too scary to believe.

#1

Image source: Back2Bach, Milad Fakurian The brain can play tricks on you: When you look at a clock and the second hand seems to freeze for a moment, your brain is actually generating a false memory - and your perception of time stretches slightly backward. This effect is called chronostasis.

#2

Your brain is making decisions before you are even aware of the decisions it has made. It also makes decisions based off of learned behavior and you just go along with it. Image source: SonofTreehorn

#3

Here's a good one: your eyes are an exposed extension of your brain. In other words, and apologies if it sounds a little sociopathic, but if you take apart your head piece by piece with just the brain in tact your eyes would be dangling from the brain. Or, you can just google "eyes and the brain" to see what I mean. Image source: Keepitsway

#4

When you go to get something from one room (or upstairs) and suddenly forget why you went in there. It’s called a boundary event. Usually, if you go back to where you started (through the boundary) you’ll remember it again. Image source: IvysH4rleyQ

#5

Image source: ssjx7squall, National Cancer Institute You get and cure cancer in your own body thousands of times a day.....

#6

Image source: anon, Jason Leung When a president declares a national state of emergency the law prohibiting medical experiments on unwilling human subjects is suspended.

#7

Image source: BossMula70, turek There is more microorganisms on your body than people on earth.

#8

Image source: phocathis, Matthes Trettin Sea stars eject their stomachs to cover edible parts of their prey, begin digesting it externally, and then pull the partially digested prey into digestive glands to finish the job.

#9

Image source: very_faithless, Karolina Grabowska If you rub garlic on your feet you can taste it.

#10

Image source: Dref27, Wikipedia When the Titanic sank non of the shoes decomposed so there’s tone of shoes at the bottom of the ocean.

#11

Image source: Mattfromwiisports21, Tim Trad The sudden urge to jump off of a very high height. You can be physically and mentally stable to the greatest degree and still have this feeling when at such a high height. Sofagirrl79 replied: I heard it's "the call of the void" and it's a normal human thought

#12

Image source: ConfusedChicken130 After being decapitated there’s still few seconds of brain activity that happen before you snuff out.

#13

Image source: munificent, Alexas_Fotos Obligate siblicide. In some species of animals, multiple offspring are born but only one is actually raised by the mother. The others are born only as backup in case the first-born doesn't survive. When the first-born is fine, which is the typical case, it kills the others.

#14

Image source: iFranton, Caleb George If you believe strongly enough that you have been cursed, your brain can shut itself off entirely in severe cases. The psychological term for it is "Voodoo Death Syndrome." It's just the fact you can literally think yourself to death that unsettles me so.

#15

There is something called "the squeeze," where when people had old scuba suits with tubes, you could actually get sucked into that tube if the pressure was off. You are literally shredded through your own breathing tube. Image source: anon

#16

Basically the entirety of pregnancy/childbirth. Like, this other living organism embeds itself in the lining of my uterus, feeds off my blood, makes me grow an entirely new organ (the placenta) just to feed/protect it while it grows, then it comes out while basically still gestating (other mammals babies can walk and run within minutes of birth, ours can’t even hold up their giant domes!) just because the hole I have to push it through won’t be big enough for its head if it stays in any longer. Oh, and once I’ve done all that I get to have the longest and worst period of my life while my uterus sheds out 40 weeks of uterine lining. I’ve had a kid and it still f***s me up. Image source: popidjy

#17

Years ago I saw an episode of *Monsters Inside Me* where this guy was doing something outside and a fly flew into his eye. It only made contact for about a microsecond, but it was enough time for it to lay eggs. After they hatched they started eating his eye from the inside and he was starting to go blind until a doctor figured out what was wrong. Just imagine that, getting your eye eaten from the inside and losing your sight all because a fly *very* briefly made contact with you. Ever since I learned about this I get really paranoid when there is a fly around my face because of the fact that this could possibly happen to me. Image source: -eDgAR-

#18

Humans are bioluminescent (nothing to do with body temperature). We emit visible light that can be photographed in specific conditions. But, this light isn't visible to us. Which makes it a strange thing to have evolved, and begs the question "what organisms is this light visible to, and why?" Edit: Adding an edit for all the comments explaining evolution... Please read the thread before commenting. I find this a creepy fact due to implications on interspecific relationships, NOT because I think prehistoric humans went shopping for a bioluminescent hat with a specific motive in mind. Image source: pluckymonkeymoo

#19

The universe is unbelievably infinite, while simultaneously unbelievably infinitesimal. The universe has ~10^22 stars, a rough guess. This is an unfathomably large number for humans to comprehend, but bear with me. There is roughly 100 thousand million stars in our galaxy alone, and there are roughly 125 billion galaxies. A single drop of water contains ~10^21 H2O molecules, not too far off from the number of stars in the whole universe. A very similar number, but contained in a single drop of water! It blows my mind that the universe can contain such mind boggling numbers of things on such wildly different scales. There is so much to reality that the human mind just isn't capable of grasping. Image source: DankSorceress

#20

Image source: DHFranklin, Possessed Photography The first AI that can successfully pass the Turing test would be able to pretend that it couldn't.