Redditor r3tr0gam3r83 wanted to hear about which realizations in life have left people SHOOK, so they asked:
"What is something that blew your mind once you realized it?"
Avocados are not vegetables.
They're fruits, berries to be exact.
Like what?!?!
Colleagues
GIF by Bud LightGiphy"Sometimes it is more important to like your colleagues than the actual job."
"I had shi**y jobs with the most amazing colleagues and had shi**y colleagues and the most amazing job. I'd pick the first every time."
chr989
Star Trekking
"That you could legitimately travel at warp speed through the center of galaxies and never run any real risk of hitting a star. That’s how spread out space really is."
justanotherguyhere16
"Also, galaxies, stars, and even the Universe is constantly moving. I think time travel has been invented, but they can’t figure out the 'space' part of it.
"Yes, they can travel back in time, but relatively speaking, they can’t figure out how to navigate to the part of the planet they want to reach. So when they travel back in time, it’s relative to where they currently are, and end up not moving through space, thus ending up in the middle of an empty vacuum."
theknights-whosay-Ni
Jaws is Old
"That sharks predated the rings of Saturn."
BeardedDominant
"Sharks also developed the immune system that ended up in both dinosaurs/birds and mammals."
csiz
"We don’t know that. We can’t say for certain that the rings are only 100 million years old. It’s still debated."
The_Kek_5000
"I'm pretty sure that sharks are older than trees."
Cayderent
From the Trees
"One day I sat on a tram, passing a river. There was a duck in a tree. I realized I'd never seen ducks in trees. No one else seemed to notice, but I was puzzled. Now whenever I come across something that seems intuitive but I have never considered I call it a duck in a tree."
Ol_Pasta
"This realization happened to me this past year. We apparently have a family of wood ducks in one of the big trees in our yard. Our neighbor said she has seen a duck walking around on a branch. I made it 37 years without knowing some ducks can roost in trees. My wife caught a video of the mama leading like eight ducks into the field next to our house. We aren't even near water."
jwbourne
Artistic Timeline
Confused Eminem GIFGiphy"Pablo Picasso and Eminem were both alive at the same time."
leebon427
"I’d bet a lot of people think Picasso is a Renaissance artist."
editormatt
I admit it. I'm one of those people. Pablo and Marshall, in one lifetime.
New facts are fun.
The New World
Design Loop GIF by xponentialdesignGiphy"They were colonizing the Wild West at the same time as they were building skyscrapers in Manhattan. I always think of them taking place eighty to a hundred years apart. It's wild."
Emilayday
Oh the Power
"Nuclear power plants are just steam power plants that use nuclear reactions to heat the water. There's no fancy magic extracting energy directly from nuclear material. They just boil water and spin a turbine."
RenaKunisaki
"Most electrical generation is spinning a turbine. Photovoltaic solar power is pretty much the only exception, and it's not the only form of solar power. There's solar thermal power, which uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate the heat of the sun to make steam and turn a turbine."
Brawndo91
The Empire
"The Roman Empire fully fell less than 50 years before the discovery of the new world."
South-by-north
"The Romans also had copper wire, magnets, and battery acid. They could have invented electricity hundreds of years before it was actually discovered. But they didn't. The wire was used for jewelry, the magnets as lodestones, and the battery acid was used to clean the rust off of swords."
Kahzgul
"RIP Byzantine Empire. 1453 never forget."
crossbowman44
The Witness
"Owl‘s silent flight. I mean I always knew that but a while ago was the first time I actually witnessed it. Owl came flying towards me and landed only a few feet away and you couldn‘t hear anything. Crazy."
Zealousideal-You-324
"I saw a barn owl swoop down and catch a mouse while hiking at night, and the whole thing happened in complete silence. It gave me a deep sense of unease because it was literally like someone hit the mute button on life."
VulcanVisions
Bad Kermit
Kermit The Frog Meme GIF by IdentityGiphy"Poison dart frogs aren't poisonous in captivity."
"I own 5 of them and anytime I tell someone I own some I always get 'Do you ever lick them' or 'Can you go kill someone with them.' But yeah they get their poison from what they eat, and all I give them is fruit flies."
JMfury
Poison frogs?
That sounds like something Rose would have a story about on 'The Golden Girls.'
"What’s the most amazing thing about the universe?"
Our Brains Are Like The Milky Way
"A single human brain has as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy."
"Around 100 billion."
"Source: a neuroscientist filled with useless facts about the brain."- Afferent_Input
Where Our Deep Uncertainty Comes From
"This is one I thought about recently."
"I believe that Carl Sagan said that we, sentient entities, are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
"With this in mind, when we think about the end of our universe, whether it be through a big shrink, big cooling, or what have you, we get apprehensive."
"We probably will never see this end, many of us will be dead."
"Yet, we still get a cold fear in our hearts."
"We are also a way for the cosmos to fear it's demise."- TheClassyEngineer
A Little Perspective
"If you were on a planet 65 million light years away from Earth and had a really good telescope, you could see the dinosaurs."- Swimmergent
lisa simpson space GIFGiphyWhat Got Us Where We Are
"That every single random event since the dawn of creation."
"The birth and death of stars, planets and galaxies, the very genesis of life has led to you being here right now to ask this question."- Jesus_marley
There's Another World Out There...
"Imagine being transported to a parallel universe that was almost identical to our own."
"Somewhere out in the vastness of that universe, there is a tiny planet."
"This much is true in both universes."
"On this planet, there is a beach, and on that beach, there is a small stone."
"Once again, both universes are alike in this regard."
"Beneath that stone, however, there are several million grains of sand, and while they are all are in precisely the same location in each universe, one of them, a tiny speck of particularly clear quartz, hewn from a larger whole millions of years before, has a single atom that is positioned a fraction of a femtometer differently than its twin in the mirror dimension."
"You may think that such an insignificant difference would label these two universes as being functionally identical, and you would be right."
"In fact, they are so similar that the multiverse has long since combined them into one reality."
"That single atom in that tiny speck of sand on that lonesome beach on a distant planet merely occupies two spaces at once, seeming to an outside observer to vibrate back and forth at a predictable rate."
"That every atom in existence seems to do the same is probably a coincidence."- RamsesThePigeon
Loop Space GIF by xponentialdesignGiphySpeaks For Itself
"That it exists."- phillipsd001
The Age Old Question...
"It must be true that either it didn't exist, then it did."
"Or it has always existed."- realFraaErasmas
What Makes Our Brain Work...
"That somehow all the particles accumulated in a specific way and in specific quantities to give you conscious thought."- Sphyrwa
Stars Glow GIF by Erica AndersonGiphyThe Inevitable End...
That whatever our problems are, big or small, it won’t matter in 1,000,000 years (worst being a nuclear war or something). - Reddit
There are countless things about the universe no one will ever know.
But mysterious and, sometimes, unsettling as it may be, there's something oddly wonderful about the unending exploration and study to learn what is out there.
And all the discoveries we have yet to make.
Redditor jumpjoom wanted to hear some thoughts on who everyone thought might be today's greatest smarty pants.
"Who is the closest person alive to a modern-day Einstein?"
I know I'm not on this list. So easy place to start.
The Unknown
excited genius GIFGiphy"We probably don't know about them. They're probably buried in some pharma, rocket science, technology company and are content to do their thing."
believeTheError
"I know this absolute child prodigy genius of a mathematician that went to Harvard and was easily one of the best there. He’s currently a professor of a 3rd tier state college."
gigawort
Just as good...
"Even at the time Einstein was alive, it wasn't that he had the most powerful brain or best math ability (many surpassed him here). He worked on and solved some of the most outstanding problems in physics at the time. The late 19th/early 20th century was a special time for physics; classical physics was failing apart but how to fix it wasn't known - Einstein (amongst others) offered some ways to fix things."
"Tons and tons of people are just as 'bright' as Einstein by almost any metric but their work essentially can't as impactful. We're too many decimals deep into measurements now."
Jorrissss
"Emmy Noether comes to mind as a contemporary of Einstein who was easily a better mathematician than he was."
CoastingUphill
Impossible
"I’m going to give a weird answer: John Carmack."
"Just go read some of the things he has done and is doing. From inventing some of the math and programming that gave us the modern computer gaming revolution (this is the guy behind the original doom), to running a rocket company trying to achieve orbit and complete propulsive landings similar to what Space X does today, to dropping everything to create the future of VR."
"Now he’s immersed in AI research on top of everything else. The guy is a walking talking genius who sees things on a whole different level. He spent his whole career doing 'impossible' things in software and hardware. Whether you know his name or not, his work has had a real effect on all of our lives, and likely will be even more impactful in the future as we move toward a more virtually-centered life."
Exodi
Advanced Study in Princeton...
"Ed Witten..."
"American mathematician and theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He received his Ph.D. in physics in 1976 from Princeton University. He has made landmark contributions to string theory from the 1980's to the present day, most notably the development of M-theory in 1995. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990 for his contributions to mathematics and mathematical physics"
Heap_Good_Firewater
It's all Relative
Good Witch Smile GIF by Hallmark ChannelGiphy"Thomas Einstein, Albert Einsteins great grandson."
XRomaniaIsInSomaliaX
"That dude is a doctor. Imagine living your life having people refer to you as 'Dr. Einstein.' I'd develop a superiority complex."
blue4029
Those Einsteins. They should do a sitcom.
Math Guy
Confused Thinking GIF by JKGiphy"Grigori Perelman the Russian mathematician?"
OverLurking
"My man solved the Poincaré Conjecture and just dipped. I love math and I tried to read his paper and I did not understand a single word. The surgery thing seems like magic to me."
Lufernaal
Tao
"Terrence Tao."
david_rohan
"Apparently a strategy, if you're stuck on a problem at higher level maths is to get Tao interested in what you're working on."
JVM_
"From his Wiki. His research topics include 'harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, geometric combinatorics, probability theory, compressed sensing and analytic number theory.' Just look down the rabbit hole of any one of those theories or topics and your mind will explode."
KardelSharpeyes
And the family...
"All of the Tao siblings are terrifyingly intelligent. I had the pleasure of playing a concert alongside Terence's brother, Trevor. I perform my set and am feeling pretty good about myself, and then Trevor gets up and performs gymnopedie no 1, which is a pretty difficult piece, but the dude did it while solving a Rubik's cube. Needless i say, I, and all the other performers that day, felt quite upstaged."
Haverwolf
"Trevor Tao is also an international chess master and is one of Australia’s top players."
Askyourdaughter
Thought
"Miguel Nicolelis. He created the theory and proofs of the brain net, basically telepathy. Thanks to this he managed to create a machine that a quadriplegic could walk using the power of thought. And it worked. The power of thought From someone else for this quadriplegic to relearn how to think about walking."
DELAIZ
The One and Only
albert einstein GIF by US National ArchivesGiphy"In some fields, science can be so complex and multi-disciplinary that 100s of people have contributed to e.g. gene therapy, CO2 capture or other major contributions to society. So major discoveries can't be attributed to a single person. And most of this science, if published, generally needs affiliations to academia to be taken seriously."
"Einstein was truly one-of-a-kind from his multitude of publications in 1905. I'm 90 percent sure that he wasn't even affiliated with any university at the time. He did it solo, out of nowhere. This makes his discoveries even more impressive! Einstein experts, please confirm that he did in fact not work at a university in 1905. I believe he worked at a patent office."
TheGhettoKidd
I'm not smart enough for this thread but we applaud this next generation of geniuses!
Do you have anyone you'd like to add? Let us know in the comments below.
Redditor Athompson9866 realized it was time we all discussed and unleashed some truths.
"What is the biggest myth you learned in school that has now been disproven?"
And then... BOOM
Ted-Ed Animation GIFGiphy"This is super specific but I had a biology teacher who told us the human genome was so complicated that they'd never be able to map it and then they did like... 3 years later."
seanofkelley
Identities
"That Dutch people have weird family names because Napoleon forced them to have family names and they chose the silliest ones they could think of."
nondedjuuu
"Nicknames + place names/German names that got turned into Dutch words. For example 'Naaktgeboren' (born naked) is probably from German 'Nachgeboren' (after born), meaning a child that was born after its father died. It also was already in use before the French invasion, like many of the weird family names."
nondedjuuu
Behavior Patrol
"That if you did anything bad it would go on your permanent record."
Kashhvortex
"In retrospect this single lie probably prevents 80% of misbehavior in school, or in my case heavily incentivized avoiding getting caught."
mechapoitier
"As someone who worked in schools on the record side, this is true to an extent- most schools send discipline reports so that admin and counselors at each level could look back at your behavior from however long you were in that district- sometimes they transfer it to other schools if you move too. It doesn’t go to the college level but can impact rec letters and if you are expelled that is technically a legal process and can be shared as well."
KawaiileesiOnTwitch
Revolution!
"Just a few years before the young Einstein completely disrupted physics, the physicists of that time were saying that everything about physics was discovered and understood. That research in physics was dead/dying... Then came in quick successions: general relativity and quantum physics... total revolution!"
PedanticYes
Head Forward
nose tissues GIFGiphy"That you should tilt your head back when you have a nose bleed. Nah bro."
Illustrious_Sir9612
"First time I did that, I vomited. Learned immediately. Never did that again. Whoever suggested that deserves to step on lego for all eternity."
II_Daisy_II
Now that is a dangerous lie... not to mention the taste!
Awake!
College Sports Sport GIF by Sealed With A GIFGiphy"Bears don't actually sleep then entire time they hibernate."
Tac0Gat0r
"Right?! Man, I was taught that any animal that hibernates is just sound asleep through the whole winter. Imagine my surprise when I learned the truth."
Athompson9866
'Lucy'
"I had a biology teacher try and convince a class of 15 year olds that we humans use 10% of our brain. We told her that she shouldn't base her lesson on 'Lucy' and we Googled it to show her that she was wrong. I got kicked out of the class for pulling out my phone. Had a fun chat with the principal."
Jimvlah
Counting Up
"That the metric system would be fully adopted in the US by 1995."
PinkRoseBouquet
"Interestingly enough I learned today that the US measures it’s pools in meters like sane people so today I stupidly assumed they just use metric for swimming and I walked into a 1.76 mile open water swim thinking it was 1.76 kilometres and ended up doing a way longer swim then I expected but it’s ok I got a cool shirt and came like 200th out of like 700 people so that’s cool."
AffectionateAir9071
99 Flavors
"Mine is that your tongue has specific areas that taste only specific flavors. Like there was a spot on your tongue that only tasted sweet, one that only taste salty, one that only tasted bitter, etc"
Athompson9866
"I immediately started experimenting with my tongue during meals after learning that at school. My conclusion was: That's complete bs. Lol."
Friendly-Taco
Wrong!
Special Project Work GIF by ABC NetworkGiphy"One day our High School Physics teacher wrote on the blackboard 'Everything you know is wrong.' 40+ years later I think he might have been onto something, but then again maybe not."
thitherfrom
The more you know. The better life can be.
Do you have similar experiences to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Redditor Dangerous_Mobile9188 wanted to discuss what aspects of life still leave confusion.
"What do you genuinely not understand?"
Life is full of quandaries that I give up on trying to figure out.
Everywhere?
Emoji Corona GIF by BallcomGiphy"Why people can't use a public restroom without literally pooping all over the freaking toilet."
Natural-School5690
Around the grooves...
"How a single needle can run through the grooves on a record and produce a fully layered and 'separated' sound. I mean, I get how it works in theory. But like... how TF does it work?"
LandofRy
"I know how it works, and I understand how it works, and I was gleefully trying to convey this knowledge to a friend when I realized that I am not able to explain how it works, which essentially means that I don’t actually get how it works."
smelllikesmoke
Meow Team
"The thought process of a cat trying to jump on a shelf that is clearly filled with stuff and doesn't have space for it to land safely."
Mikrosarvinen
"The opposite, actually... how on earth does my cat jump on a shelf filled with stuff and somehow always land elegantly with all four paws between all the stuff without dropping a single thing? It surprises me every time."
WanderingArtichoke
"50% of cats have a 6th sense to avoid everything and 50% of cats are clumsy as hell. 100% of cats think they have the skill though."
KneeHumper
Clueless
"How consciousness works."
DarthDinDjarin
"I'm shocked no one has replied to this. Because yea. I haven't the slightest clue and i honestly don't think scientists know exactly how either. Such a complex system that turns into our thoughts and feelings, this is one of those things that REALLY made me appreciate the intricacies of our bodies."
r-Newbiedonthurtme
10/10
So Excited Reaction GIF by OriginalsGiphy"Every time my grandmother sees me, I seem to grow taller and more attractive."
JoeyMMuelle
I love grandmas. They understand everything.
S.O.S
Role Playing Reaction GIF by Hyper RPGGiphy"How people can raise a functioning family at the age of 18 or 19? I can't even hold my own life together."
Radioactivocalypse
Staying Put
"Squatter rights! They confuse the hell outta me."
roomtempcoff33
"Right! So you’re telling me, I can get evicted/foreclosed for missing some payments… but you can’t get rid of squatters who declare a house theirs ? I should just become a squatter then haha."
violet-ack
"Squatting is basically the same. It's not that they just get to live there, but the landlord has to use the proper legal mechanism (eviction) to get rid of them. And sometimes, that can take quite some time."
banality_of_ervil
"Steps"
"How crypto mining works... like what exactly are these huge setups doing and why do GPUs matter so much? I've read several articles about it and I still don't get it."
Tripper-Harrison
"This is an oversimplification, but they're trying to solve a math problem. If they get the answer, they get rewarded with crypto. But the math problem is very very hard. There's no 'steps' to find the answer, it's just guess and check."
"So you need to make as many guesses as possible to see if one of your guesses is right. And it just so happens that GPUs are very good at making these guesses. So if 1 GPU can make let's say 22,000 guesses every second, then two GPUs can make 44,000 guesses every second. 10 GPUs can make 220,000 guesses every second, and so on."
PierogiMachine
I'm Lost
"The wave-particle duality."
FishySwede
"This is the one man. For me this is the biggest mystery. Look, I don't care how the universe came to be. I mean I do, but this is much crazier to me. HOW DOES REALITY REACT DIFFERENTLY BASED ON OBSERVATION ALONE I sear this haunts me at night. Do i even exist man."
yungbandido
"Long story short, observing something at the quantum level is not as benign as observing, say, a runner on a racetrack. In observing something so small, the mere act of doing so affects the behavior/outcome. Imagine having to knock the aforementioned runner over in order to know where they are on the track. That's more or less how it was explained to me."
BaronMusclethorpe
Magic
Ross Mcelwee Photography GIF by FilmStruckGiphy"Cameras, I’ve been explained and seen explanations 100 times. It’s still magic to me."
Salty-Director538
Learning
"Willfull ignorance. Like, never in human history have we had the ability to find correct information so easily and so quickly. I love to Google things and research so I can learn new things every day."
"However, I occasionally encounter people who are proudly set in their incorrect thinking and don’t care to learn the truth about whatever subject at hand. It blows my mind… like, why are you comfortable being wrong and not learning new things? I legitimately don’t understand how someone doesn’t want to learn and improve their knowledge."
I_Like_Thanksgiving
Everyone Sees Me
"The obsession with trying to become famous for so many people."
Tsujigiriforbeer
"Honestly i struggled with this and my music for a long time. I realized over time and I’m sure it is the same for others but I think it’s just a human emotion to want to be adored and being famous can feel like an easy way of feeling constant admiration from others."
bitbbulldoggy
The Evil
"How have we not overthrown Ticketmaster?"
Moose-n-Skwerl
"We need to overthrow Live Nation, who owns Ticketmaster and many music festivals- including Astroworld. Live Nation is evil."
wehadbagels
"It's actually because they're funneling a lot of that money back to the artists but that way people hate live nation and not the artists."
yohannyong
The Machines
Giphy"Computers. Electrical signals allow what amounts to a bunch of glorified rocks to have rudimentary thought. It drives me insane."
wafflesnores
Ok. Whatever.
"Why people get mad when you question someone at work. Like dude, I’m just verifying info to cover my a**, I’m not questioning your competency. I pull wire sometimes and we had a 3 hour drive and needed 1000 feet. They guy that loaded it didn’t do the math to see exactly how much wire we needed and just guessed."
"It didn't look big enough and I asked him how he knew how much wire was on the spool. Dude got mad as hell, saying he knew what he was doing and that I was getting on his nerves. Ok whatever. Three hour drive later and guess what? 300!feet too short. Wasted basically 6 hours of driving and the entire day of work."
Cdchrono88
Pile On
"Where tire particles go. Millions of tires wear down but there’s no giant pile of them somewhere. It HAS to be somewhere as a collective entity."
Locating_Subset9
"I read an article a long time ago that said we eat or ingest a credit card a year worth of plastic per person. A substantial amount of that plastic comes from micro plastics in our water and food chain. A lot of that plastic comes from tires. Here's an article I just found with a search but it's not the article I remember. It's just similar and equAlly as troubling."
seanayates2
Opening Doors
"Master keys... especially for like schools and dorms. How do they open all the doors, but not every key works???!!"
Abject-Action43
"I was an RA in a dorm that had about 400 guys and girls in it. There were only 7 different keys issued to students. If they knew they could walk down the hall put their key in and open 1 in 7 doors, guys floor, girls floor, it didn’t matter."
just4funloving
"The locks have several configurations for the pins to unlock the tumbler. the key specific to the door and the master key. Master keys are just keys that unlock many doors!"
IceFire909
The Miserable
Will Smith Smh GIF by The Academy AwardsGiphy"Narcissists. They will never admit to any wrongdoing, constantly believe the world revolves around themselves, and the butterfly effects are that everybody else’s lives become miserable."
the_spiritual_eye
Maybe there are just somethings we're not meant to understand.