Science stuff that blew your mind when you first heard of it

[Quaxar]

How hard evolution is to some people? How hard is it? The Pichu get's happy and evolves to a Pikachu and give it a thunderstone and it evolves to Raichu, it's not that hard people!

But if Pichu evolves into Pikachu, then why are there still Pichus? Your move Athiests

Because evolution doesn't happen for a species but for a population so if the happiness for a group of Pichus in an area rises they adapt to it by turning into Pikachus, the other population in an unhappy area won't evolve because there is no evolutionary pressure.
Classical trainer fallacy.

 

[Xanadu84]

Snip

>.< I work with numbers. You know I'm going to be seeing this ALL DAY now, right? I hope you're happy.

I am

 

[Subscriptism]

One thing that I found fascinating...

You can walk in space without a suit and live.

You'd think it would be very cold in space, but it isn't, that is to say, not as cold as some of the coldest places on Earth.

There's nothing in space, ergo, nothing to take heat away from your body. So you can, in theory, hold you breath and walk in space for a few moments, unscathed.

[sub]I heard this somewhere, so if I'm wrong, do tell me.[/sub]

You might pop, pressure and all that.

For me it's that they use the conservation of angular momentum to stabilise ships from rocking.

 

[Tropicaz]

The fact that if you were to put every single human, all 7 BILLION+ of us, standing shoulder to shoulder, we would take up less space than the city of Los Angeles. Also, if all humans were to live with the population density of New York City, we could still all fit in an area the size of Texas. So plenty of space to go around!

Also, quantum mechanics. All of it. My mind is constantly blown when reading about physics.

In a similar mould to this; I heard if everyone on Earth moved to South Africa then the population density there still wouldnt be as high as Tokyo's is right now.

Also learning about resonance was pretty cool, the reasoning on why stuff like this happens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAXVa__XWZ8

 

[Proeliator]

What actually kills you in space quickest is the lack of air pressure. That lack of pressure causes the various gasses in your blood to boil free causing extreme damage in the process.
It isn't an instantaneous process by any stretch but it will certainly cause your death more quickly than heat, cold, or suffocation.

I think the tread decided that it was suffocation, mostly based on the following page graciously given to us by NASA: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html
Note the experiment where an astronaut lost suit pressure in a vacuum chamber.
Also they touch on how the human body is (predicted to be) strong enough to hold everything together (for at least a few minutes) and keeping your blood at pressure (and from boiling), but your saliva, urine, stomach contents, and poop might not be as lucky. Some unfortunate small mammals and primates were tested to find this out...

 

[Eddie the head]

In Quantum mechanics I read somewhere that some atoms are disappearing and reappearing at seemingly random. So there is like a small, small, small chance that you could disappear and reappear anywhere else in the universe. Or that there is a chance that if you tap a wall your had could go through it, just by the way the atoms aline.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I remember reading 2001: A Space Odyssey and having my mind blown. My favorite was that you didn't need to maintain speed in space, because you can't slow down. You start going and you don't stop until you hit something or slow the nose of your spacecraft.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Non-Newtonian fluids. Not particularly revelatory as far as science goes, but I was young and shown a way I could run across a swimming pool full of custard without getting my feet more than damp. It was like a cartoon come to glorious life

 

[xshadowscreamx]

black holes always fascinate me,tidal forces,singularity, amazing.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Black holes: more specificity: Hawking Radiation, wherein tiny particles are continuously escaping from black holes. Black holes aren't growing infinitely larger, they're actually continuously loosing mass, and they eventually disappate into nothing

 

[Joccaren]

Damn, ninja'd by the OP, when I saw the thread title I immediately thought "uncertainty principle"

You and me both =P
I'll take the cheat's method and just extend this to nearly anything to do with Quantum mechanics. First hearing about it my mind was completely blown. Made no sense, until you started to understand in, and even then its just mind boggling in what it implies.

 

[Redingold]

Black holes: more specificity: Hawking Radiation, wherein tiny particles are continuously escaping from black holes. Black holes aren't growing infinitely larger, they're actually continuously loosing mass, and they eventually disappate into nothing

Of course, there's more to this than meets the eye. The temperature of the radiation emitted by any black hole larger than the moon is colder than the cosmic microwave background, and thus the black hole absorbs more radiation than it emits, and grows larger. The universe would have to expand for a loooong time to cool down enough to allow any realistically sized black hole to evaporate.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Time Dilation.
You travel through time at a different rate to someone else depending on where you are, and how fast you're going.
THAT IS INSANE! We have to reset satellites every day because they're atomic clocks (very VERY precise clocks) are out of syncing with ours, due to being in a lower gravitational field.

This! To this day I can not believe it is real yet proof has been found with every rocket launch. It has not only given me a greater appreciation for science, but has given me a fascination with time itself.

 

[Avdutch]

What I personally found really cool is that hydra (small, multicellular aquatic organisms) appear not to undergo Senescence (biological aging, i.e. they do not get 'older' and will not die of old age).

When I first read about it I thought 'awesome', and maybe the key to prolonging life, or at least staving off the effects of old age can be found within these creatures.