Every meeting with something unusual, unexpected, strange causes surprise. With something that does not fit in the head - even if it is a strictly proven scientific fact.
Evolution is not a gym or an institution for noble maidens. Evolution does not make living things stronger or smarter just for the sake of becoming stronger or smarter, or so that these opportunities will be useful to them sometime in the future. Evolution is the result of the struggle for existence here and now. Species change just as much as they need to compete with other species and survive - right now.
Both the human brain and its ideas about reality have been formed for millions of years in rather limited conditions. We all live on the same planet, in a very narrow temperature range, have more or less the same size, set of physiological needs, and use similar resources. Man in the process of evolution never required knowledge about stars or molecules.
In natural history, the search for any solution has always followed the emergence of a problem: first, tall trees with succulent leaves, then long necks in giraffes. Only with the advent of man began to appear "knowledge for the sake of knowledge", and only with the advent of philosophy and science, the accumulation of knowledge began to anticipate their applicability. First, we explore the proteins of exotic jellyfish - just like that! - and then it turns out that these proteins help treat cancer.
As a result, today there is a tangible gap between our knowledge and our biological capabilities. Cultural progress is much faster than biological. And the more we accumulate knowledge about the Universe, the more we are lost in it: our brain simply cannot perceive all this.
Around the mismatch between "heart" and "mind" even formed its own folklore: all kinds of incredible facts, designed to amaze and dumbfounded. In the vast majority of cases, the "wow effect" is achieved in a simple way: recalculating the scales.
Not a single person in the world has walked to Alpha Centauri. No person in the world has seen an electron. Evolution has not endowed us with such skills. But culture has taught us: we know, for example, that the distance to Alpha - the closest star system to the Sun - is just over 40 million kilometers, or 4.3 light years.
The classic "mad fact" manipulates this completely abstract quantity for us so that it becomes less abstract. He translates it into the ancient "language" with which our thinking still operates. You can, for example, convert the distance to Alpha Centauri to soccer fields or the number of steps, or to the cost of gasoline when traveling that distance by car. Even the very concept of a "light year" is an example of a translation from a completely incomprehensible to a slightly more understandable one.
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But the complexity of the scientific perception of reality is far from limited to lengths, distances and quantities. On the contrary, it is much harder to perceive facts that qualitatively contradict common sense in its traditional, still “monkey” form.
Fact number 1. Time depends on the height
Perhaps the richest source of reliable, experimentally verified and practically applicable, but completely insane facts is Einstein's theories.
If you put a clock on the top of a mountain and the same clock at its foot, and after a while you compare them, then the clock will go differently. The farther from the surface of the Earth, the weaker its gravity, and the faster time flows. These are not just theoretical constructions, but real experimental data, which have been well known for a hundred years. Armed with a clock more precisely, the scientists detected the time dilation, without even climbing the mountain: some thirty centimeters were enough to register the deviation. People on the tenth floor literally and quite literally age faster than those on the first.
Of course, these effects are so small that they play no role in everyday life. But they become critical when the distance from the Earth increases, and the requirements for the accuracy of measuring time grow many times over. The most famous example is GPS satellites: without corrections for "time warp" they would be completely useless.
The works of Albert Einstein not only gave the world the most recognizable physical formula, but also radically changed our understanding of reality.
Wikimedia Commons
It's about gravity. According to Einstein, it is not just a force that needs to be "delivered" from one point to another by a particle or wave. This is the curvature of space-time around bodies that have mass (and hence energy). For example, if you are standing on the ground and throw the ball forward parallel to it, then it is actually flying in a straight line. But since the Earth is a very heavy object, in its vicinity directly means curved. Space and time are inextricably intertwined, and they are distorted only together. Therefore, the mass of the Earth bends not only the trajectory of the ball, it also deforms its motion in time. Falling to the ground, the ball simultaneously "slows down" from our point of view.
Fact number 2. Gravity in the plate
There are a lot of oddities associated with gravity. It would seem that living beings have become accustomed to earthly gravity since the beginning of time. But if you look at it from the standpoint of science, gravity is one of the most mysterious - and essential - phenomena in the universe.
Gravity is also important for humans, and not only on Earth. Have you ever thought that almost all the energy that living organisms use, including us, comes from gravity?.. Indeed, with the exception of some bacteria and archaea, living things receive energy either from the Sun, or by eating those who received energy from the sun. But where does the energy of the Sun itself come from?
The sun is a giant thermonuclear reactor that provides energy to all life on Earth
NASA
The sun is a huge ball of hydrogen and helium. It is so large that gravity compresses it under its own weight. To simplify, we can say that in the interior of the Sun the pressure reaches such values that the hydrogen nuclei are pressed into each other with great force and merge to form helium. A lot of energy is released during this fusion. The core of the Sun is in a state of continuous thermonuclear explosion, which balances the contraction of the star under its own mass - otherwise, the Sun's surface would continue to fall inward and collapse. After many years, radiation from this very long explosion reaches the surface and then reaches the Earth. Here it is captured by the pigments of plants and bacteria, which convert it into chemical energy, that is, into our food.
Fact number 3. We live in the past
The theory of relativity does not fit into the framework of the usual, because life in general and our evolution in particular proceed at very low speeds at which time, space and gravity seem constant and stable.
For example, our sense of the current moment is connected with the same adaptability to low speeds. We do not feel a pause between what is happening around us and the moment we perceive what is happening. Even with a video call to Australia, we tend to blame the latency on poor internet connection.
In fact, the same special theory of relativity imposes a clear boundary on the speed at which anything can move - including, for example, digital data packets or light from an object to our eyes. It's not that the Internet is always bad in Australia - even with instant signal processing, the communication speed is limited by the speed of light. Under normal conditions, this is imperceptible, but at great distances it is quite noticeable.
For traders on the exchange, even a few milliseconds of delay can be critical. The most famous example is communication between the Chicago and New York stock exchanges. A fiber optic cable laid in the 1980s looped from side to side and delivered the signal in 14 ms. Today, the same signal can be delivered in 8 ms with beams of microwave beams, however, access to the transmitters will cost, and a lot.
Half a century ago, trading on the stock exchange was carried out with shouts and gestures. Today's traders are competing at the speed of light
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Likewise, our ability to perceive reality is also limited: no information moves instantly. But a much more significant factor throws us very far into the past - the transmission of a nerve impulse. Compared to light, the signal along the neuron moves at the speed of the cochlea: 0.5-100 m / s. As a result, any signal - from the retina, ear, skin, tongue, nose or muscles - is delayed by a rather noticeable time: about 0.1 s. Our consciousness lives in the past. And he doesn't even know about it.
Fact number 4. In the middle of the review - empty
The brain in general is surprisingly adapted to simplify reality, otherwise life would be extremely uncomfortable. For example, if you connected your eyes right now to a TV screen, you would get an inverted image with a blank spot in the middle. This is really a "raw picture" that the brain receives from the eyes. And having received it, it retouches for your convenience
Evolution improves us as much as necessary. She has no abstract sense of perfection. Our eyes work well - why upgrade them further? For example, why remove the optic nerve to the back of the retina if it's easier to teach the brain not to notice it?
The brain not only retouches the "gaps" in the pictures supplied by the eye. From the optical device of the eye, it is obvious that the image hits the retinal screen upside down. The brain also corrects this technological imperfection. And if you wear for some time a special device that flips the image, the brain will soon adapt again: the image will flip over again and become normal, without bringing any inconvenience. And if you then return to normal vision, then for some time the opposite effect will be observed - the brain will see everything in its original, inverted form.
Monty Hall's problem: two of the three doors hide the goat, one the car. The player chooses door # 1 at random. However, the presenter opens door # 3, behind which there is a goat, and suggests that the player change his mind to # 2. By following the leader's advice, the player will double their chances
Wikimedia Commons
Fact # 5. Math is harder than we think
The brain's simplification of reality does not have to be physical. The person has developed unique abilities for abstract thinking, including mathematical calculations. But "biological arithmetic" is not always accurate. Because of this, strict, from the point of view of science, but "crazy", from the point of view of everyday logic, facts can also arise.
Generally speaking, even plants can “count”. They usually store energy during the day and spend it at night for growth and metabolism. By estimating the amount of stored energy and dividing it by the time remaining until dawn, the plant "calculates" the optimal rate of consumption of the reserves.
Well, our brain is engaged in arithmetic continuously, calculating probabilities, speeds, forces, balance, etc. But over the past centuries, "cultural" mathematics with its numbers and formulas has considerably surpassed such unconscious, "biological".
Statistical paradoxes are a classic example. Imagine, for example, a game TV show. There are three doors in front of the player, behind one of which is a car, behind two others are stupid goats. The presenter asks the player to choose one of the doors at random to find the car. He chooses, for example, the first. But the experienced presenter decides to intensify the passions in the studio even more and instead of the first one opens the third door, showing everyone that there is a goat behind it. And then the presenter asks the player: "Would you like to change your mind?"
It would seem that nothing has changed: the car can still be behind the first and second doors. Why change your mind? - the player thinks. He feels an unshakable determination - during evolution, the brain used to connect it in any difficult situation. Most people will refuse the host's offer.
But a simple mathematical calculation shows: it is paradoxical, but if in this situation you switch to the second door, the chance to win the car doubles! An analysis of the reasons for the Monty Hall paradox is beyond the scope of our article, but you can verify this experimentally - simply by repeating the "game" many times and calculating the frequency of victory in each of the situations.
There are many similar examples. For example, it is very difficult to explain to our mathematically naive brain that if you combine two different groups of data into one, the interpretation of these data can change to the opposite.
Suppose there is an admission to the Faculty of Philology and Mathematics. 80 women applied to the philological faculty, of which 30 entered, and 20 men, of whom 5 entered. 15 out of 20 women and 50 out of 80 men entered the Faculty of Mathematics. If we count all the applicants combined, it turns out that 45% of applicants and 55% of applicants were accepted. There is gender discrimination! By the way, the University of California at Berkeley faced a similar problem in 1973 - the case even went to trial.
The court, fortunately, figured it out: if you look at the data separately, the situation changes dramatically. Philology in our example enrolled 37.5% of women versus 25% of men, and mathematics - 75% of women versus 62.5% of men. Women have done better everywhere than men - but without division into departments, the data looks the opposite.
We analyze, calculate and interpret the world around us every second. Even if something seems completely obvious, we must not forget that for all its merits, our brain is far from perfect.
Fact number 6. Our closest relative is a unicellular microbe
Finally, a separate group of "fried facts" can be based on juggling with familiar, albeit completely artificial, categories - products of our own culture.
Biologists have been arguing about the meaning of the concept of "species" for more than a hundred years. With higher organisms, the problem is somewhat simpler: during sexual reproduction, it is easy to check whether species can interbreed with each other and produce fertile offspring. But what about bacteria and other unicellular organisms that reproduce by simply dividing their own cells?
The answer to this question will never be, because nature has nothing to do with our definition of the species. We come up with definitions ourselves, and then we argue about them when reality does not want to fit into their framework.
In 1951, a sample of uterine tumor cells was taken from African-American Henrietta Lacks. The patient died of cancer a few months later, but her cells continued to live in a test tube - this was the first time that scientists have succeeded in such an experiment (we wrote more about this amazing story in the January 2014 issue, in the article "The Eternal Life of Henrietta Lacks") …
Since then, a huge number of other immortal cell lines have emerged, but HeLa cells continue to live in culture and are used in scientific research by thousands of laboratories. For 60 years, their number has already begun to be counted in tons, they have accumulated a heap of mutations and chromosomal abnormalities (HeLa usually has 76 to 80 chromosomes, compared to 46 in humans), and in general, they have gone quite far from the usual human cell.
Many biologists believe that HeLa cells and the like do not represent a species of Homo sapiens, but other, unicellular species that are very close to us genetically, but exist separately and independently of a person. Others disagree with them: such a species (for HeLa cells, it was dubbed Helacyton gartleri) does not fit into a harmonious evolutionary tree, in which single-celled microbes separated from animals billions of years ago and since then have gone with them different ways. If we recognize HeLa as a separate species, then the appearance of any cancerous tumor will have to be considered an evolutionary event!
HeLa cells
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However, why not? Cancer cells result from mutations that enable them to divide rapidly. In most cases, this is suppressed by the immune system. But some cells manage to "break through" and continue reproducing without looking back at the rest of the organism. Why is this not a natural selection of especially successful rebellious cells who suddenly decided to abandon multicellularity?
Scientific reality can be incomprehensible, strange, contradictory. This is the fault of our own brain: its limitations, conventions, habits and biological "settings". On the other hand, does this make science less fun? Realizing your own limitations is always the first step towards something damn interesting.
Nikolay Kukushkin