Crazy Science Misconceptions

Have you ever heard something so believable and the person who told it to you was so convincing and sounded so scientific saying it that you just believed it and adopted it as truth? Yeah, these are those types of things that have kept people confused for a very, very long time. These are things that many believe to be true when, in fact, something very different is what’s actually going on. This is CRAZY Science Misconceptions!

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6. Not a Brontosaurus!
Alright, so here’s a fun fact, but you need to brace yourself for it. The Brontosaurus we all know and love never existed. Yes, a paleontologist discovered a fossil and named it a Brontosaurus when in all actuality, it was an already identified dinosaur known as an Apatosaurus. We guess one thing that came out of this was that Apotosaurus’s (Apotosauri?) now got to have a synonym for their name. What we’ve known about history, or what we’ve thought we’ve known for over a hundred years is all a lie, and it’s due to a dumb rivalry between two paleontologists! The man responsible for all of this mayhem and madness is Othniel Charles Marsh, who misidentified the fossil in the 1880’s and apparently caused a lot of confusion throughout the years.

5. Goldfish Memories
Everyone believes that goldfish only have memories of just a few seconds, right? Well, that’s not true, not true at all and has been debunked for a long time actually. A 15-year-old-boy did his own experiment in 2008 and found that it was untrue for himself. Rory Stokes used a small tank of goldfish, a red lego, and some food to test his theory that fish had longer memories than mere seconds. He’d feed the fish next to it every day, and while at first, they were nervous and timid around the child’s toy, they’d quickly encircle the block and wait for their food within three weeks. Then, he skipped the experiment for a week; when he brought the lego back out seven days later, they remembered it perfectly well, and it proved that the goldfish could not only remember things for a good chunk of time, but they can also recall that info later on when they need it!

4. Pruned Up
Okay, so we know that a lot of people know why our fingers prune when we keep our hands in water for a bit too long, but there are some that don’t. For a long time, science didn’t quite understand it either and attributed the phenomenon to osmosis. They thought that sebum was washed away from the surfaces of our fingers and then flushed out a bunch of compounds from the outer layer of skin and left behind some parched, pruned-up skin behind, but we now know that’s not the case. It’s because our fingers get better grip underwater when our skin prunes and it’s actually an evolutionary function to help us out! Well, back in the times when our ancestors had to gather vegetables and other foods from wet areas and walk through streams barefoot and really needed the extra help. We’re glad it’s not what they initially thought.

3. Great Wall of China
No, the Great Wall of China is not the only human-made thing or structure that can be seen from space. And really, it all kind of depends on your definition of space… if you can see the wall from “space,” you can see other structures, and if you can’t see it, you can’t see other structures. Like from the Moon, for example, you’d only be able to glimpse some lights on our planet and would never dream of being able to see the Great Wall of China. But we’re just saying, there are other human-made things that can be seen from space, and that right isn’t reserved for the wall!

2. Chewing Gum
We’ve all heard it—the age-old warning against swallowing your chewing gum because it will stay in your system for the next seven years. But is there any truth to this? No, no there is not, and if you know anything about digestion, you probably already know that. Yes, some small components of the gum get digested, like the sweeteners and such, but most of the gum and what it’s made of is indigestible, and it just passes through the system and comes out. It is thought that considering its consistency and resilience, gum might take a bit longer to travel entirely through the body and out, but it should pass within a week or so. Seven years? More like “seven days.”

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