50 Interesting Scientific Facts Which Will Blow Your Mind

A woman named Jo Cameron with ‘mutant’ gene who feels no pain and heals without scarring has been discovered by scientists. She reported numerous burns and cuts without pain, often smelling her burning flesh before noticing any injury. This discovery could open door to new treatments.

2. In Seattle, Washington, delaying the start time of two high schools by nearly an hour lengthened students' daily sleep by more than half an hour, and was associated with reduced sleepiness and increased academic performance.

3. Studies have found that children as young as age 4 express dislike of and are willing to punish those who freeload off the work of other group members. But kids also make a clear distinction between those who freeload intentionally and those who have good reasons why they can’t contribute.

4. Store-bought tomatoes taste bland, and scientists have discovered that a gene which gives tomatoes their flavor is actually missing in about 93% of modern, domesticated varieties.

5. Scientists have recently found “super corals” in Hawaii’s Kāne’ohe Bay, where a reef is thriving despite development, dredging, sewage, and high temperatures. In the lab, the corals also withstood simulated climate change, including rising acidity and temperatures.

A scientific study found that after taking LSD or psilocybin, 83% of alcoholics no longer met the criteria for the disorder, and 28% credited their psychedelic experience for their lifestyle change.

7. Rich students who have poor classmates become more prosocial, generous, and egalitarian; and less likely to discriminate against poor students, and more willing to socialize with them. These effects are driven by personal interactions between rich and poor students.

8. Bees don't buzz during an eclipse - Using tiny microphones suspended among flowers, researchers recorded the buzzing of bees during the 2017 North American eclipse. The bees were active and noisy right up to the last moments before totality. As totality hit, the bees all went silent in unison.

9. Losing just a couple hours of sleep at night makes you angrier, especially in frustrating situations. A study done by Iowa State University is one of the first to provide evidence that sleep loss causes anger.

10. Human-raised wolves are just as successful as trained dogs at working with humans to solve cooperative tasks, suggesting that dogs' ability to cooperate with humans came from wolves, not from domestication.

People diagnosed with depression are more inclined than healthy people to choose to listen sad music. A new study suggests that depressed people are not seeking to maintain their negative feelings, but rather that they find sad music calming and even uplifting.

12. Insomniacs tend to have a hard time getting past embarrassing mistakes, even when the stressful event occurred decades ago. One study suggests that insomnia could primarily be caused by a failing neutralization of emotional distress.

13. Bones of an ancient teenage girl reveal a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father, providing a genetic proof that ancient hominins mated across species.

14. Police departments that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crimes.

15. The ‘clean plate’ mentality drives us to overeat: New research explores our tendency to overeat when we only have a little bit of food left over. Many of us were raised with a ‘clean your plate’ mentality, stemming from a desire to not be wasteful but this can also lead to overconsumption.

Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination, especially among people who naturally struggle with self-regulation.

17. Overparenting or helicopter parenting is a narcissistic parenting style that may impede the development of young adult independence, and be linked to the development of narcissistic traits, which may be how narcissism can be passed on from generation to generation.

18. Older adults who frequently do puzzles like crosswords or Sudoku had the short-term memory capacity of someone eight years their junior and the grammatical reasoning of someone ten years younger in a new study.

19. Angry people, who have a quick temper, are more likely to overestimate their intelligence.

20. Children who grow up with greener surroundings have up to 55% less risk of developing various mental disorders later in life, emphasizing the need for designing green and healthy cities for the future.

Researchers have created a powerful new molecule named Triazoles for the extraction of salt from any liquid. This has the potential to help increase the amount of drinkable water on Earth. The new molecule is about 10 billion times improved compared to a similar structure created over a decade ago.

22. Air pollution causes a ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence. Impact of high levels of toxic air ‘is equivalent to having lost a year of education.’

23. A 15-minute jog is better for the mind than 15 minutes of calm relaxation, as a brief jog sharpens the mind, boosting attentional control and perceptual speed, in part through a subjective sense of having more energy (in contrast to the relaxation group who felt less energetic).

24. Brains of doers differ from those of procrastinators - Procrastinators have a larger amygdala and poorer connections between it and part of the cortex that blocks emotions, so they may be more anxious about the negative consequences of an action and tend to hesitate and put off things.

25. Dubstep music by Skrillex was found to protect against mosquito bites, with its mix of very high and very low frequencies. Such music, which appears to delay host attack, reduce blood feeding, and disrupt mating. This may help provide new avenues for music-based personal protective measures.