20 Disturbing Things Proven To Be Real, Thanks To Science

Humans have come a long way because of our ability to understand science. The various discoveries have helped many people in so many different ways that we can’t even fully comprehend. But what are the scariest things that scientists have proven to be real? This was one Redditor’s question and the online community responded accordingly. We’ve shared some of the freakiest answers below and don’t forget to share your own too-crazy-to-be-real scientifically-proven facts in the comments sections. 

#1

Image source: ma5terbate, Kindel Media

That hearing is the last sense to leave, when dying.

#2

Image source: anon, KoolShooters

Cracking your neck could cause you to have a stroke but its rare

#3

Image source: anon, Matthias Zomer

Ageing. I’m content with death but the idea of my body growing old, frail and eventually falling apart before the end game gives me goosebumps.

#4

Image source: Fuzzwuzzle2, Aditya Romansa

Microplastics found in newborn babies

#5

Image source: keldoged, Skitterphoto

Lead in gasoline may very-well have decreased the human IQ on a global scale while in use.

#6

Image source: petalumaisreal, Anna Shvets

How the brain is literally rewired and chemically altered by childhood neglect and abuse.

#7

Image source: unskilledplay, wikipedia

60% of your poop is made of living and dead gut bacteria. These gut bacteria combine to produce more dopamine and serotonin than your brain can produce. Abundance of these neurotransmitters has a significant affect on the brain. Production of neurotransmitters is far from their only pathway to the brain.

Fecal transplants, used for illnesses, change your eating behavior. Patients who have a healthy weight but receive a transplant from an obese person are highly likely to become obese. Patients who are obese but receive a transplant from a thin person are highly likely to become thin.

In a real sense you can consider yourself to be a servant of your gut bacteria.

#8

Image source: Twat_Waffle_Stomp, Tima Miroshnichenko

Some tumors have teeth, hair and even eyes.

#9

Image source: theinsanegamer23, Milène REL

Imo, that statistically, at least based on the Milgram study, about 2/3 of people will obey authority figures who tell them to hurt or even kill an innocent person. Then when you ask them why they did it, they give answers startlingly similar to “I was just following orders”.

#10

Image source: Time_Succotash, uzumaki anam

More like a theory, the “orangutan paradox”, when we film a documentary on orangutans, they can’t realise that we are observing them, yet they are the most intelligent species of their category, so aliens might be watching us and we are as oblivious as an orangutan

#11

Image source: OneTyler2Many, K. Mitch Hodge

Giant squids. Suddenly the old sailor story’s of krakens wrapping tenticles around a ship and pulling it into the ocean doesn’t seem like fiction.

#12

Image source: OffensiveCabbage, Francesco Ungaro

That we’ve only explored (numbers might not be quite right) 2% of the oceans and that the oceans makes up 78% of the world. I wonder what’s in there

#13

Image source: overheatbelief, Pixabay

The Yellowstone super volcano.

#14

Image source: Puzzled_Ad2563, Melissa Bradley

Climate Change

#15

Image source: dark_n_lovely_qu33n, wikipedia

Brain-eating amoebas

#16

Image source: BobstheBoldore, wikipedia

Zombifying fungi as depicted in games like The Last Of Us exist, and are very potentially even scarier than how they appear in there.

The fungi of the genus Condyceps like to infect insects by scattering spores on them. After a while these insects will start to behave erratically. Eventually they try to reach a high place, like a stalk, where they lock their legs and then die. The fungus then sprouts from their body, scattering its spores below to infect the animal’s brothers and sisters.

A theory currently is that the fungus doesn’t even affect the brain, but rather that it cuts off the brain from the muscles. If this is the case, it means that the brain of the infected animal still functions normally, but its body just doesn’t follow its commands, leaving the animal to die a slow but somewhat conscious death in order to infect more of its kind.

#17

Image source: Swampwolf42, wikipedia

Gamma ray bursts. No warning, no escape, no defense, no survivors.

#18

Image source: OnionTruck, Arnaud Mariat

That things we thought were stars (or fuzzy stars) a century ago are actually entire galaxies. Who knows who or what the F is out there?

#19

Image source: Spookd_Moffun, NASA

Deep time.

The Earth was alive a million years ago. And a million years before that. A thousand million years before that.

Even if our civilization is miraculously successful and we live for 20 thousand more years and colonize thousands of planets like in Dune it’s still nothing. A blink of an eye. The Earth would barely notice.

#20

Image source: The_Quicktrigger, Jose Francisco Fernandez Saura

The scariest thing for me, is that we have scientifically mapped human psychology. We know social habits, and evolutionary survival instincts that we’ve carried over from our ancient past. We have extensive knowledge on how to elicit the exact response out of a human on command. And the scary thing is that corporations use this information to sell things to us.

Everything about a product’s design from it’s shape, to it’s color pallet to it’s odor is specifically and intricately designed to hack our brains and trigger the exact specific response that they want from us.

Once you are aware of how much human psychology goes into advertising, you will never look at an add the same way again.