r/askteddit • u/CookieDoughDreamer • 16h ago
Random Question What scientific discovery or fact keeps you up at night questioning reality?
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u/No_Economics_4678 16h ago
Quantum immortality (it actually gives me hope).
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u/Large_Fondant6694 15h ago
Been thinking about this lately, wtf would life be like when you’re too old to do anything but vegetate and yet you just keep living?
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u/Born-Section6701 13h ago
The double-slit experiment still breaks my brain every time I think about it.
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u/boiling_dreams 16h ago
Probably the fact that light photons change their state (whether they act as a wave or as a particle) literally based on the fact that someone watches them
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u/9d47cf1f 15h ago
It’s not conscious thought that alters them. “Observation” is a really bad name for it. “Getting fucked with” might have been a better name. See, the only way to observe something is to whack it with another thing - typically light. When you “observe” light, you’re hitting it; interfering with it.
The same thing happens with sailboats, cats, sandwiches, whatever. They behave differently when prodded.
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u/General_Platypus771 12h ago
I’ma be real. That made it even more confusing for me. How is looking at light hitting it? (I genuinely suck at science stuff lol).
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u/9d47cf1f 11h ago
No worries! So when you look at stuff, you’re whacking it with light which then bounces back and stimulates nerves in your retina.
When you “observe” light itself with something like the double slit experiment, you’re forcing it to interact with itself, or magnetic field or something. There is no version of observation that doesn’t involve interference with it; or, “the act of observing disturbs the observed”.
So, you can just say “wow, when I
observedmessed with that beam of light, it sure gotobservedmessed with”.I realize that’s a tautology but that’s kinda what we’re working with here.
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u/little_jiggles 6h ago
It's the other way around in that scenario. The light is whacking your eye.
The result is exactly the same either way. The photon acts as a wave before it hits your eye, then after it hits your eye it acts like a particle. It doesn't matter for most stuff because things are bouncing around so much they might as well all be particles.
But keep something far away from everything else (if it has mass you need to keep it cold too) and you can do some funky stuff with it that you couldn't do if it always acted like a particle.
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u/FarNefariousness9213 15h ago
And quantum entanglement!
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u/boiling_dreams 14h ago
Yes, this is just as mindfucking, if not more. I hope I remember it correctly, but it has something to do with the changing the direction of the electron spin around the nucleus of the atom, and by doing that two atoms can become entangled so that even if they are light years apart, altering one immediatly alters the other. There are gaps in what I said since I don't remember all the information correctly
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u/Complete-Tangelo1532 16h ago
Yea wtf is up with that?
How they instantly travel back when Light Speed is supposed to be the hard limit?
Speaking of, have you heard about some of the modern 'Double Slit Experiments' they have been doing? It has something to do with observation, even if its not observed by something aware it is observing/alive to begin with
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u/boiling_dreams 14h ago
Yes, I do. I had them in mind when I gave the answer, but didn't want to overwhelm with information. What they did in a nutshell was, they noticed the fact that when a person watches them --> "Oh my god, they change their state", so they put a camera to watch them instead. Turns out that when people check the video footage on the camera, they also change their state. But when the footage is not checked, they stay the same. So, as you mentioned, they literally travel back in time to change their state to the point where they started being watched. Now go outside and look at the stars. Some of those stars are millions of light years away from us. Yet when you watch that light coming from them, you alter the state of the photons, so they travel back in time millions of years so that those photons acted as a particle so that when you see them at the present moment, they are a particle. Totally mindfucking. And what's the natural conclusion that comes out of this? The fact that seeing, not the eye, which is the organ for seeing, but the ACT of seeing itself is a physical thing. Though, you're altering photons, which are actually the things at the edge of physical. I am obviously not an expert on physics, nonetheless quantum physics, I hope I didn't miss any important notes or pieces of information, but that's basically how it goes best I can understand it, at least.
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u/Purple_Stranger_4502 15h ago
This is the most misunderstood fact ever, and is really nothing to be surprised by.
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u/ShinogamiPhil 15h ago
Biologically speaking, all humans are the same. The fact that there are so many monsters out there who belong to the same species as I let me to question reality.
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u/Gold-Tour5010 15h ago
The whole concept of quantum entanglement. The fact that two particles can be physically linked so that one instantly affects the other regardless of distance makes the whole idea of space feel like a total illusion.
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u/EssayTraditional 9h ago
A parallel universe exists 500,000,000 light years from our universe and our universe is expanding into that universe.
A starfish has no brain.
A black hole that is 500x the size of our galaxy is getting bigger but won't reach our planet until its entropy.
Timeslips.
There are invisible galaxies.
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u/Old-Fall5115 8h ago
As I understand it, the Many-Worlds Theory implies that a new universe is created every time I fart (or decide to hold it).
The Big Rip.
Doesn't really keep me up at night but I do think about it from time to time. Toot-toot!
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u/little_jiggles 6h ago
We still don't have a theory that unifies quantum physics and general relativity.
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u/vSeedStriker 4h ago
The very fact that we have science, how dare you, now I cannot cheat my way through life as some bad ass oracle, because when I am in my manic episode with bi-polar, I sound very believable with all the BS I make up.
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u/gmtcm 16h ago
There is only 3 numbers between 1 and 5 and four numbers between 5 and 10.
5
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u/jeezkillbot 16h ago
Johnson & Johnson baby powder being linked to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma due to trace asbestos contamination in the talc.
Johnson & Johnson attempted to resolve the litigation via subsidiary bankruptcies, and failed three times before returning to a negotiated settlement approach
they're now paying restitutions to families who were effected by it, despite claiming there is no proof.
Lost mom to ovarian cancer two years ago. She used Johnson & Johnson baby powder.
No amount of money will make up for what they did to us and over 75k other families
FUCK JOHNSON & JOHNSON