25 Scientifically Proven Facts That People Find Hard To Accept As True

As unnerving as it sounds, did you know that skyscrapers sway a lot in the wind? Well, it’s true according to these unliveable fun facts folks have been sharing on a recent Reddit thread. User u/shirofromgame wrote: “What is a scientifically proven fact you refuse to believe?”

#1 As a child I could not grasp that groves in a record could make complicated music when a needle ran over them. Now that I’m older and it’s all light on metal disks or just math (somehow) I have given up even pretending I believe. It’s magic, pure and simple.

Image source: raceulfson, Dorien Monnens

#2 The idea that time can bend and stretch depending on gravity and velocity.

Image source: youronlynora, Renel Wackett

#3 That I’m not one living entity; billions of lifeforms all combine to make one of me.

Image source: Anishinaapunk, Lerone Pieters

#4 That fruits and vegetables do not decay faster when I’m the one paying for them.

Image source: Mildly_Defective, Jacopo Maia

#5 That cold plunges are good for your health. Can’t do it. Not going to submerse myself if freezing water.

Image source: Spiritual_Wallaby_43

#6 Q-tips do belong in my ears and I refuse to believe any doctor saying otherwise.

Image source: Turtlelover73, Jen Theodore

#7 The solution to the Monty Hall paradox. I can even do the math myself. But it still “feels” intuitively wrong.

The scenario: you’re on a game show and the host offers you a choice between three doors. Behind one door is a million dollars. Behind the other two doors, you get nothing.

You make your choice. But before the host opens the door to reveal what’s inside, he opens one of the *other two* doors to reveal nothing behind *that* one. He then offers you a second choice: do you keep the door that you already chose? Or do you switch to the other unopened door? Does it matter?

Intuitively, it feels like it shouldn’t matter, that you have a 50-50 chance of winning whether you switch to the other door, or keep the one you chose originally.

Mathematical reality: you should switch. You have double the chance of winning the money if you switch to the other door, compared with staying put.

Close second: in any random group of just 23 people you will have more than 50% chance that at least two of them will share the same birthday. Again, I can do the math to prove this but it still doesn’t feel right.

Image source: CaptainTime5556

#8 Skyscrapers sway a lot. I refuse to believe a building like the burj khalifa moves 6-7 feet in the wind without issue.

Image source: Crotean, Sean Pollock

#9 That computers work by using combinations of 0 and 1!.

Image source: PiHeadSquareBrain, Michael Soledad

#10 Cold water is just as effective as warm water for washing hands.

Image source: Schmomas, Mélissa Jeanty

#11 I refuse to believe a leopard-moose-camel with a 40ft neck is a real animal and a horse with a horn isn’t.

Image source: StfuJohnny, Sergi Ferrete

#12 That babies’ adult teeth are under their eyes (skeletal).

Image source: killerdramababy, Michal Bar Haim

#13 That the speed of light can’t be broken. They said flight was physically impossible with a machine, then they said breaking the sound barrier was impossible. I just don’t believe that we’re right this time either.

Image source: Chewie83, Etienne Girardet

#14 Women are born with all the eggs already in them and don’t produce those through the lifetime. It is so ridiculous that I still can’t believe it, even though I tell it to the others. Hope for a paper suggesting an alternative to “The egg from which you were born was actually created by your grandma”.

Image source: Ramental, Anthony Tran

#15 Black is absolutely a colour, how else would there be a crayon for it?.

Image source: SonorousThunder, Veronica Lorine

#16 The fact that our eyes see everything upside down and back into our brain we have to flip the image. Just crazy.

Image source: No_Dare_95, Quinten de Graaf

#17 I refuse to believe that ALL snowflakes in the entirety of history are unique.

You mean to tell me, that ALL snowflakes EVER, across the ENTIRE GLOBE, are COMPLETELY UNIQUE?

That can’t be mathematically possible. Like, a single storm that drops 3 inches on my house must be a million flakes. Multiply that by the area of that storm, and the depth of the snow, and that number becomes huge. THEN, add that to every storm in the history of the whole globe.

I just can’t believe that we have seen every snowflake and have come to the definite conclusion that they’re all unique. Scientists aren’t at my house cataloging the snowflakes. How do they know?.

Image source: ProtonSlack

#18 I know it’s true but I still find it hard to believe that viruses are not considered living organisms.

Image source: Raveler_gav, CDC

There are a lot of factors but the two biggest ones I think are the fact that they are inert and do not use energy when not in a host. And that they cannot self replicate without said host.

Hard to believe something capable of so much death and destruction is probably not even conscious.

#19 In a lottery, having a string of consecutive numbers (say 1,2,3,4,5,6) being drawn is equally likely as a string of random numbers being drawn.

Image source: Esqulax, Waldemar

#24 That many living people have Neanderthal DNA. Mostly in non-African ethnicities. My DNA is apparently more ‘Neanderthal’ than 93% of the population tested to date by 23andme. WTF? THat many living people have the DNA of another non-modern species (is that the right word?), the Denisovans (mostly certain Asian ethnicities). How many more non-modern species of DNA do humans carry that we just have not identified? How many others did we interbreed with? WHAT ARE WE?

Image source: vanchica

#21 The fact that t.rex and stegosaurus were separated by millions of years and never existed together. I will always have Stegosaurus battle T Rex when given dinosaurs to play with!.

Image source: FiercestBunny, Amy-Leigh Barnard

#22 That the average time to sleep is 7 minutes. WHO???.

Image source: VanityTheNoLife, Gregory Pappas

#23 The double-slit experiments and all their variations still weird me out. As someone who hasn’t studied the necessary fundamentals, it just seems like the Light particles know whether or not you’re watching and will change their behavior depending on what you’re expecting them to do.

Image source: sinister_shoggoth

#24 Narwhals. Ain’t no way.

Image source: walt_mink, wikipedia

#25 Our stomach acid is strong enough to even dissolve metals over time.

Image source: Moon_Jewel90, gbarkz