10 Weird Science Facts to Keep You Up at Night Archives

By Renée

Science is the study of how our world works. This week, thebirdonfire.org is looking at Science. Most of us interact with the world, and science, on a daily basis. The reality of the world can be kinda weird, but you might not be aware how weird it can be. Here are some mind-bendingly weird science facts.

Women are less likely to be struck by lightning. It’s just science. A study by the National Weather Service explains that many of the top leisure activities that expose people to lightning strikes feature mostly male participants.

The average human body carries ten times more bacterial cells than human cells. So, you’re never alone!

Members of the crow family can recognize human faces and can even hold grudges. Ravens have been shown to share their grudges with subsequent generations of ravens. The crow below remembers. . . .

On average, it takes 10g to kill a human. Surprisingly, it’s difficult to calculate the G-force that would kill a human, but the consensus is 10g experienced for at least a sustained minute will kill you.

You are better off surviving a grenade on land than underwater. Why? Water is in-compressible. This means not only is the blast wave not dissipated, as it would with the air on land, but the blast pressure also forces itself right through your mostly liquid body. Leaving you thoroughly dead. So, if you must sustain a blast, try to do so on land–not water.

10kgs of feathers have the same weight as 10kgs of lead. Yes. It’s true. 10 kilograms will always equal 10 kilograms. I know; it’s shocking.

Humans and chickens share at least 60 percent of the same DNA. Apparently, we all come from the same place. “The chicken genome fills a crucial gap in our scientific knowledge. Located between mammals and fish on the tree of life, the chicken is well-positioned to provide us with new insights into genome evolution and human biology,” said National Human Genome Research Institute Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.

If you inject female frogs with the urine of a pregnant woman, they will ovulate within twelve hours. This used to be the only reliable and practical pregnancy test before the 1960s. Prior to using frogs, female mice and rabbits had been used, but these had to be dissected and carefully examined for ovarian changes. Frogs lay eggs, meaning they can be checked for ovulation without killing them. Therefore, frogs were reusable and could be conveniently kept in aquariums, which made pregnancy testing practical on a larger scale than before. What a world.

If the world’s spiders took to eating humans rather than insects, they’d consume the world’s human population in about a year. “The total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 287 million tons. Even if you tack on another 70 million-ish tons to account for the weight of kids, it’s still not equal to the total amount of food eaten by spiders in a given year, exceeding the total weight of humanity. In other words, spiders could eat all of us and still be hungry.” People actually calculated this.

A liquid can boil and freeze at the same time. Lauren Davis over at the io9 online science journal explains, “As the liquid boils, high energy molecules leave the liquid as gas, lowering the temperature of the liquid left behind and causing it to freeze. This process of boiling and freezing continues while the substance remains at this pressure and temperature.”