No surprise there : I ’ve made a living writing about astronomy , natural philosophy , geology , spaceflight , and relate areas of science for nigh a decade , and have read obsessively on these topics for much longer than that .
However , people have partake a lot of peculiar " fact " with me over the old age that ended up being totally false .
Below are some of the silliest and most coarse claims I ’ve hear .
Mauna Kea.
No one is perfect — I believed many of these statements at some point in my life — but it ’s time to put these myth , misconceptions , and inaccuracies to rest .
1 . MYTH : The Sun is yellow
NASA
If you wince and look at the afternoon Sunday , it might bet sensationalistic — but the light it gives off is in reality white in color .
The Earth ’s atmosphere between your eyes and the sun is what makes the maven seem lily-livered .
The gases flex the twinkle in an core anticipate Rayleigh scattering , which is what also give the sky appear down and causes sunset to blaze away into brilliant orange and bolshie .
Not helping matters is that uranologist classify the sun as a lily-livered chief - sequence G - type star , or " yellow midget . "
Sources : NASA , NOAA , Washington University , University College London
2 . MYTH : The Sahara is the braggart desert on Earth
REUTERS / Deborah Zabarenko
Not all deserts are hot and full of sand . They need only be dry and inhospitable .
Antarctica fits the visor , since it receives only two inches of precipitation a year and has few land animals .
At 5.4 million square miles compare to the Sahara ’s 3.6 million straight mile , the Bottom of the World is a vastly larger desert .
rootage : USGS ( 1,2),NASA , Encyclopedia of Earth ( 1,2 )
3 . MYTH : Astrology can foretell your personality or the hereafter
Flickr - royalty gratis trope appeal
Would n’t it be skillful to get a glance of tomorrow based on something as simple as where the sun , planets , and moon were located when you were born ?
That ’s what star divination claims to do , what 50 % the reality at least part believes , and what as much as 2 % of the planet powerfully grease one’s palms into .
Yet thorough scientific investigations of star divination have break , again and again , to back up any predictions from an astrological sign of the zodiac or horoscope .
A 1985 study in Nature is especially famed . In that experiment , scientist used a non - colored , two-fold - blind protocol and influence in conjunctive with some of the top astrologers in the US to test the prognosticative power of astrological signs .
The results ? The astrological prediction were no better than chance .
Sources : The Humanist , Comprehensive Psychology , Nature , Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Pseudoscience and Deception : The Smoke and Mirrors of Paranormal claim
4 . MYTH : When you call someone , the sign bounce off a satellite
iStock
This is rightful ofsatellitephones , which the military use every 24-hour interval , but yourmobilephone works in a much different way of life .
peregrine telephone set broadcast a wireless radio signaling and constantly wait for , Ping River , and relay data to and from land - base cellular towers .
When you make a call , the nearest tower connects you to another earphone via a vast mesh of tugboat - to - towboat connections and immerse cable .
At good , a satellitemightbe involve in a call around the Earth — but 99 % of international communicating information travels through undersea cables .
beginning : Global Data Systems , Tech Insider
5 . MYTH : The Great Wall of China is the only man - made complex body part seeable from space
Matt Barber
The Great Wall of China is n’t the only human being - made bodily structure seeable from blank space .
It all bet on where you believe quad begins above Earth .
From the International Space Station , 250 miles up , you could see the rampart and many other piece - made structures . From the moon , you ca n’t see any structure at all — only a dim glow of urban center luminosity .
Source : NASA
6 . MYTH : The moonlight ’s gravitational attraction pulling on urine causes the tides
NOAA
This is only half true .
On the side of Earth that ’s facing the moon , the moon ’s gravity does indeed take out piddle toward it to cause high tide . It does this by slenderly pulling the Earth ’s center of soberness toward the synodic month . But on the other side of Earth it ’s different .
What causes the high tide there is really a combination of motor force ( from the offset center of gravity ) , plus the inertia of piss from the Earth ’s revolution : reel at about 1,040 mph , the planet literally flings its liquid state toward the side opposite the moon , where it slightly bulges .
On the two other face or side of the planet — where the water drains from to form both high tide — you get down tides .
source : Tech Insider , NOAA , NASA
7 . MYTH : Lightning never strikes the same place twice
Scott Olson / Getty Images
Lightning does discover twice .
Some places , like the Empire State Building , get affect up to 100 times a year .
Source : WeatherBug
8 . MYTH : The Earth is a stark sphere
NASA ( illustration by Tech Insider )
The Earth rotates at about 1,040 miles per hour . That ’s about 60 % the speed of your distinctive bullet train after it spud out of the muzzle .
This inactiveness slightly flattens the satellite ’s celestial pole and have a bulge of rock ‘n’ roll around the equator .
Due to global warming and the thaw of glaciers ( and less weightiness pushing down on the crust ) , scientists think that bulge is now growing .
source : StarrySkies.com , MythBusters the Exhibition
9 . MYTH : Mount Everest is the marvelous matter on Earth
Mauna Kea . Creative Commons
The world ’s tall batch , if you desire to get technical , is not Mount Everest .
Mount Everest is the tallest mountain above ocean grade , but if we ’re talking spate Qaeda - to - summit height , then the tallest is the island of Hawaii that peaks as Mauna Kea .
Everest stand up 29,035 feet above sea degree . Mauna Kea only stands 13,796 pes above sea level , but the mickle extends about 19,700 feet below the Pacific Ocean . Over one-half of it is submerged .
That puts the total height of Mauna Kea at about 33,500 feet — nearly a mile tall than Everest .
Source : Tech Insider
10 . MYTH : Water conduct electrical energy
flickr user : elitatt
thoroughgoing or distilled water does n’t transmit electrical energy well at all .
The reason we get shocked when digest in electrify water is because water we come across will be contaminated by minerals , malicious gossip , and other things that will guide electricity .
Source : USGS
11 . MYTH : The " dark side " of the moonlight
The far side of the moon . WOtP on Wikipedia
It ’s easy to recollect this , since we never see it , but the far side of the Moon is n’t always dark . It goes through the same lunar phases as the good side , which faces the Earth , but in reverse .
When there ’s a new ( and very dark ) moon on the near side , for good example , that signify there ’s a full moon on the far side . We just ca n’t see it from our earthbound vantage peak .
So yes , there is a " glowering side " to the Moon — but it ’s always strike and sometimes confront Earth instantly .
generator : NASA ( 1,2 )
12 . MYTH : Tectonic plates move because volcanism pushes them apart
sure-enough edges of a tectonic plate are cooler and denser , causing them to sink into the mantle where they ’re recycled . Where two plates are being yanked aside by this sinking , sea ridges appear .
That ’s where the architectonic plateful is being built — by red-hot , buoyant rock ‘n’ roll that convect up and emerge from the stretched - out weak point . The resulting volcanism is n’t what pulls two plates apart .
13 . MYTH : Going past the sharpness of space make you weightless
Most scientists concord outer space begins 62 Roman mile up , where the Earth ’s aura is more or less a vacuum cleaner .
Yet going past this line does not magically make you weightless . If you ’re in an speed skyrocket , you will feel many times Earth ’s gravity . It ’s only when you start falling that you find weightless .
This is what it means to orbit something : to on the face of it fall forever around that object . The moon around the Earth , the Earth around the sun , the solar system around the Milky Way Galaxy … They ’re all falling into one another in a crazy cosmic dance .
If you ’re 250 miles above the land , you have to travel 17,500 miles per hour around the major planet to live continuous freefall — just the speed of the International Space Station and its astronauts .
Sources : FAI , NASA
14 . MYTH : ball field come from coal
REUTERS / Brendan Mcdermid
Most diamonds are n’t mould from compressed coal .
or else , they ’re carbon that is compressed and heated 90 miles below the open of the Earth . Coal is found about 2 stat mi down .
Source : Geology.com
15 . MYTH : masses in the Middle Ages think the Earth was flat
Shutterstock
During the former Middle Ages , almost every scholar thought the Earth was round , not flat .
This myth pick up steam in the 1800s , right around the same time the idea of phylogeny was rising in jut — and religious and scientific interests clashed .
Sources : Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , Patheos
16 . MYTH : summertime is lovesome because the Earth is closer to the sunshine
Flickr / Gilberto Filho
The Earth is not close to the sun when it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere — quite the opposite : The major planet is actually at it ’s farthest item from the Sunday during the summertime .
It is always tender during the summer because Earth is tilted . During its range , our home planet ’s arguing allow the sun ’s Energy Department to dispatch us more directly .
Sources : NASA ( 1,2 )
17 . MYTH : Lightning causes smack
Getty Images / Ethan Miller
A scientific and philosophical nitpick here , but lightning is just a current of electrons micro-cook from cloud to cloud or solid ground to dapple . This in turn heats air into a tube of plasma that ’s three times hotter than the surface of our sun .
That thermionic valve violently expands and contracts nearby air , creating an apparent cracking and rumble — not the flow of negatron itself .
Source : Scientific American
18 . MYTH : The Asteroid Belt is severe
motion picture scenes of starship flying through a dense flying field of tumbling , colliding rocks are notional .
The Asteroid Belt — a zone between 200 and 300 million miles from the sun — is an incredibly lonely and desolate void .
In fact , if you pulled all the asteroids in that belt together they ’d only weigh about 4 % the mass of Earth ’s moonshine .
This is why NASA gets really activated when it catches even one asteroid collide with another .
informant : NASA , TodayIFoundOut.com
19 . MYTH : The moon is very close to the Earth
A exposure of Earth and the synodic month from space . That tiny mote at the bottom pass on is the moon . JAXA
The moon sometimes looks so close you could reach up and up and grab it .
In realism , the moon orb at a distance of about 239,000 miles from Earth . If you could somehow skip in a Boeing 747 and sail to the moonshine at full speed , the journey would take about 17 days .
The moon is far , far away .
source : Tech Insider , Boeing
20 . MYTH : you could only equilibrise an egg during the Spring Equinox
flickr user : Christopher Hsia
It ’s potential to stand an egg on its nous on any day of the year — not just on the Spring Equinox .
The trick just requires a well - textured egg plate and a skilled deal .
Source : Business Insider
21 . MYTH : A atomic weapon could destruct an asteroid
Reuters / NASA / JPL - Caltech / Handout
Nuking an asteroid would not vaporise every individual bit of rock’n’roll .
Most asteroids are heaps of rubble to begin with , so a powerful blast would belike just fall apart everything apart further . That ’s may be a bad melodic theme if you ’re trying to save the planet — it ’s like turning a undivided fastball into a shotgun flak .
However , some researchers call up a well - directed , smartly designed nuclear blast could enlighten an asteroid ’s surface , vaporize some of the rock , and shoot off gases that ’d push an asteroid on off - course . Whew .
Source : National Geographic
22 . MYTH : Nothing can go quicker than light
Blue Cherenkov radiation in a nuclear reactor , where neutron travel quicker than light through the besiege water . Argonne National Laboratory
Wrong on a few grade .
While light can move unimpeded at 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum , it slows down when it travels through unlike center . For example , light moves 25 % dumb through water and 59 % slow through diamond .
Particles like negatron , neutron , or neutrinos can outpace photons of light in such cloth — though they have to bleed off energy as radiation when they do .
What about light in a vacuum ?
Even then , the expanding fabric of space once exceeded light - f number during the Big Bang , and physicists conceive wormholes and quantum web might be able to " move " faster as well .
Sources : Georgia State University , Tech Insider
23 . MYTH : The void of space is cold-blooded
Getty
If you ’re in full wickedness at the coldest patch in the cognize universe , the emptiness of space can get down to minus-454 degrees Fahrenheit . Brr !
But in sunshine near Earth , temperature can swing out to a boiling 250 F. That ’s why spaceman get into pensive white-hot spacesuits .
24 . MYTH : Enrico Fermi developed the " Fermi paradox " about noncitizen
Universal Pictures
Physicist Enrico Fermi once famously ask " where is everybody ? " after seeing a New Yorker cartoon featuring a flying saucer .
But Fermi was questioning the feasibility of travel between stars — not the actual existence of aliens .
The " Fermi " paradox , which explores the contradiction that intelligent aliens are inevitable but we have n’t seen them , doesquestion foreign existence . And Fermi did n’t do that oeuvre .
Astronomer Michael Hart and physicist Frank Tipler were the I who really fleshed out the estimation in the seventies and 1980s .
" The Fermi paradox might be more accurately called the ' Hart - Tipler contention against the existence of technical alien , ' which does not sound quite as authoritative as the honest-to-god name , but seems fair to everybody , " astronomer Robert H. Gray write for Scientific American .
Sources : Tech Insider , Scientific American
25 . MYTH : There are only 3 phase angle of matter : Solid , liquid , and accelerator pedal
Jared Tarbell on Flickr
You forget a big one : Plasma .
It ’s well-heeled to take on solids are the most abundant soma of matter in the cosmos , since we all populate on a giant careen . But plasm is vastly more abundant ; stars , include the sun , are gigantic orbs of glowing plasma .
There are other sub - phases of issue , but solid , liquid , gas , and plasm are the main ones .
Sources : NASA , Southwest Research Institute
Readthis next on Business Insider:13 Ways you’re able to Cheat Death By Using Your Ashes To Become Something Awesome
