Ask yourself right now, why is the sky blue? For the vast majority of us, we might have to think for a moment, recollecting those memories from middle school science classes. The truth is, we often know a lot less than we think about the world around us.
The “Fake Science” Twitter page is dedicated to creating “vintage-style” posters with, you guessed it, scientific facts that seem like they could be real but are actually as fake as a unicorn. So get comfortable before you scroll through, be sure to upvote your favorites and comment your thoughts below.
More info: Twitter
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With any luck we'll go extinct before we can ruin the whole universe.
Have you ever heard of Eben Buyers? For way too long he drank way too much of radium water and eventually got lost of an anatomical structure called "mandible"...
Reminds of the Doctor Who 2 part episode "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances". Also, 23-29 it looks like they are yawning.
Yes but this is over time, not over one day, 36 hours is a day and a half
Load More Replies...21 looks like somebody trying to hold a poo which is coming out fast
An “interesting” development in the modern world is the abject rejection of science by a certain segment of society. Take flat earthers for example, people who have decided to reject evidence dating back to the 5th century BCE. It’s important to note that even the ancients had some understanding that the world was not just a disk and took measurements to try and get a better picture.
For example, multiple Greek philosophers and mathematicians, including Pythagoras (you may remember his theory for triangles,) Aristotle, and Ptolemy all did measurements and took observations of the natural world and concluded that the earth must have been round.
Can confirm. I have successfully trained my cat to sit on my keyboard whenever she feels like it, which is usually when I'm trying to do some work.
And this isn’t just limited to ancient Greece, Vedic texts from roughly the same time period actually assumed the earth was spherical when developing timetables and charting astronomy. Despite some common history myths (it seems humans can have a wrong understanding of most things) the Romans and even the early Christian church, all believed in a spherical model of the planet.
The origins of this myth, a true “fake science” fact of the past comes from American writer Washington Irving’s belief that early opposition to Christopher Columbus was from the church that believed his ships would simply go over the side of the earth. Seeing as the church had no such belief at the time and there is no record of this, Washington Irving may have founded the entire flat earth movement on a lie.
Of course, even people who are wholly on the side of science will often spout falsehoods about our world. Let’s take the seasons for example. In the northern hemisphere, winter is cooler and summer is warmer. Many a parent has told their children that this is a result of the (spherical) Earth being closer to the sun, but the real “culprit” is Earth's 23.4-degree axial tilt.
And on the topic of space, there is an often repeated anecdote that NASA spent millions developing a pen that would work in space, while the Soviet Union just used a pencil. Except that the graphite in a pencil is conductive and its shavings could be an electrical fire risk. The bottom line is that this joke is simply false. Additionally, the pen NASA did use went for $6 a unit and the USSR actually bought some as well.
People do love a good story, which is probably why the anecdote stuck. Similarly, and this might shock some people, lemmings do not commit mass suicide. The 1958 Disney documentary film “White Wilderness” presented this idea as a fact, while in reality it was completely fabricated. Even worse, the documentary wasn’t even original, as there were legends from the 19th century about lemming suicides.
And on the topic of cartoon producers lying to us, mice have no special love for cheese. Certainly, they will eat it, but in reality, most mice prefer sweet food items. This myth may have been a side effect of people storing cheese outside before indoor refrigeration was common. Unsupervised, outdoor cheese would have been an easier picking for an enterprising mouse.
Take your butter (low in sugar), and dip it in sugar (low in fat) and enjoy your low sugar, low fat snack!
Unfortunately, other pop science facts, like the housefly having a lifespan of 24 hours, are false. In reality, the buzzing pest can live up to thirty days, most of which are spent ramming headfirst into a window. This is positively an eternity compared to some forms of mayflies that can reach stunning maximum lifespans of up to five minutes. So next time you are browsing Spotify, try to see what songs could fit into a mayfly's entire life.
Some Australian magpies will. They grab the front of your clothing with their claws for support while pecking at your face, even though you supply them with pre-pecked eyes. But don't worry, these most troublesome of magpies have been mostly relocated out of Brisbane now, to Canberra.
Similarly, cockroaches are quite resilient, but not to the degree that they would be the sole inheritors of the earth. First and foremost, they would simply not survive direct exposure to a nuclear blast, nor the ensuing destruction of most of the food chain. While they might not get incinerated, the cereal they steal from your cupboards would. Additionally, they are not the only creature out there that has some innate methods to resist radiation.
All in all, one has to sit down and wonder if they really know anything about the world at all. Because it’s not enough to know that these posts are false, since most of us won’t actually be able to explain the real science behind the ideas mentioned. If you have kids, you have probably already had to make up some fake science to not break the illusion that adults know everything. If not, best start learning. And if you want to see more “fake science” posters, Bored Panda has got you covered, you can find our previous article here.
"Everything will kill you eventually". Absolutely true. Even carbon dioxide, a very significant component of soda.
Applied science. Ya gotta love it. Ever tried comparing head lice to pubic lice?
Actually ... yes! A major contributor to the death of the dinosaurs, probably more significant than the asteroid, is the Deccan Traps in India. This spewed thousands (if not millions) of cubic kilometres of lava onto the surface of the Earth, releasing volcanic glasses carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide in such huge quantities as to poison the whole of the Earth's atmosphere and most of the oceans. Killing everything that couldn't fly away, hibernate, or head for the deep ocean. The carbon dioxide from the lava would have turned the oceans into a delicious soda.
Gets to be a difficult calculation when those strands are inside chromosomes of different sizes.
Mammals - popcorn of the Cretaceous. You don't need teeth to eat popcorn.
I wonder, there must be scientific treatise out there about which rocks make the best weapons. A rock high in arsenic for poison, etc.
Wish it was true. Polar bears are the blondes of the bear world, and all that that implies.
Get a new face! The monkey will remove your old ugly face for free!
"I smoke because I'm hoping for an early death and I need to cling to something."
Cripes. I've done all three of those. I gained 10 kg weight when I replaced my bathroom scales. The diet involving raw wheat I call my whole-food diet, you have to eat the whole plant. As for the periodic table, well, who doesn't.
I like to bend spoons in restaurants by shaking them up and down.
I once calculated that miniature copies of all the species of the Earth's biosphere would together weigh less than one kilogram. Miniature copies of the entire Earth's biosphere could easily fit in a rocket payload.
QI says the cow in the shadows is lying. Roosters crow all the bleedin' time.
Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane Jane plays with W***y, W***y is happy again Suki plays with Leo, Sacha plays with Britt Adolf builds a bonfire, Enrico plays with it
Aww, Martha. Check out this new thing. It's called the internet.
And - Mythbusters take note - and it can tell you if your rocket will fly straight or tumble unpredictably.
Easy, Billy. Be very quiet. You don’t want to spook that steak milkshake as you go in for the kill.
... or you work in my workplace. Yes. One of my work projects was growing algae in a tank.
The scientific fact behind this cartoon is that there's no scientific difference between a moth and a butterfly. A moth tends to have branched antennae and fly at night. A butterfly tends to have smooth antennae and fly during the day. But there's a fair bit of overlap.
Take note Bored Panda. We notice when the picture doesn't match the text. ;-)
Not only did the ancients greeks know the earth is round, a mathematician called Eratosthenes mesured the circumference to 45.000 km. To day we say 40.092 km, so he was not that far off.
Where was all this science when I needed it? Those 40 years of school would have gone a lot smoother
Not only did the ancients greeks know the earth is round, a mathematician called Eratosthenes mesured the circumference to 45.000 km. To day we say 40.092 km, so he was not that far off.
Where was all this science when I needed it? Those 40 years of school would have gone a lot smoother