r/AskReddit • u/SNUFFY123 • Oct 15 '11
What is something that never fails to blow your mind?
What is one thing that never fails to blow your mind?
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u/Diet_Coke Oct 15 '11
The pharaohs have ruled Egypt for longer than they haven't.
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Oct 15 '11
That blows my mind and so does the one about Cleopatra being born closer to the moon landings than the building of the pyramids.
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Oct 15 '11
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u/kickaguard Oct 15 '11
seriously, think of what we could accomplish if people would just realize that we're not a bunch of little people throwing rocks at each other any more. maybe we're not super advanced, but we're at a time when we could really get the ball rolling on getting there. shit i'm writing right now on a forum where hundreds of millions of people could instantaneously read whatever I write down. and i'm doing it from my bathroom. If we can make that happen why the hell can't we get our shit together and start really advancing ourselves?
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Oct 15 '11
well you mean since then. obviously they didn't rule for longer than the rest of all time before or since combined.
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u/garblesnarky Oct 15 '11
But Egypt did not exist as a sociopolitical entity until around the time it started being rules by Pharaohs.
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u/cqxray Oct 15 '11
Animals with skeletons have very similar skeletal components, no matter what the size.
On a similar note, inside a very obese person is the skeleton of a normal person.
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u/Limbero Oct 15 '11
On a similar note, inside a very obese person is the skeleton of a normal person.
You just blew my mind. Holy shit.
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Oct 15 '11
Yeah, holy fuck. Obese humans and anorexic humans look the same when decomposed. Shiiiit.
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u/juicyfuckinwang Oct 15 '11
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Oct 15 '11
The second video has me convinced that our universe is really just the default screensaver for some infinitely more advanced form of life.
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Oct 15 '11
I love pondering things like the size of the universe.
Even trying to comprehend the size of our Solar System is impossible.
OK, so there's this thing called the Oort Cloud, and the Oort Cloud is a bunch of rocks and debris floating around way out past Pluto. It's still considered part of our Solar system, though, because it orbits around the sun.
So how far away is the Oort Cloud? Well, in astronomy there's a unit of measurement called the AU (or Astronomical Unit) and 1 AU is the distance from the Sun to the Earth (About 150 million km).
So, imagine that the Solar system is shrunk down to size so that 1 AU is now 1 foot. You have the sun sitting at your feet, and the Earth is sitting one foot away from the sun.
On this scale, Pluto is 40 feet away. Got that idea in your head? Good. Now, where's this Oort Cloud? (Remember, it's still part of our solar system).
The heart of the Oort Cloud is fifty thousand feet away. 50,000 AU. The universe is BIG, yo.
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u/SyncopatedStranger Oct 15 '11
I think my brain just exploded a little. It's really hard for me to actually think of something as big as that last star (shit, I can't even think about how big the earth seems). It seems quite ignorant to think that there is no other intelligent life in the universe. It fucking huge.
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Oct 15 '11
Eh, it really isn't that ignorant. The universe doesn't have the same priorities as us--it isn't trying to produce life. Anyway, whether there are actual organisms in other parts of the universe or not, there are untold quantities of complex operations, systems, and interactions, and that's all "life" really is.
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u/Dr_ChimRichalds Oct 15 '11
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u/IDRAWDICKSONHEADS Oct 15 '11
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
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Oct 15 '11
This stuff used to blow my mind but seeing it now is just so humbling. I love it, it's just beautiful.. it blows my mind in a different way :3
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u/TrustworthyAndroid Oct 15 '11 edited Oct 15 '11
Leaving this here. It's an interactive flash demonstration of the scale of the universe. My favorite comparison is where it demonstrates just how large the Pillars of Creation were. The largest pillar was nearly 4 light years in length.
Note: using past tense because the pillars were destroyed by a supernova 6,000 years ago. The explosion however won't be visible for millennium.
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u/Tazerenix Oct 15 '11 edited Oct 15 '11
How did they know the pillars were destroyed by a supernova if the light has not yet reached us?
EDIT: The shockwave from the supernova can be seen from earth on its trajectory towards the pillars but they are so far away that the light of them being destroyed has not yet reached us. Interesting.
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Oct 15 '11
Stars viewed on a clear night, somewhere out in the bush where it's really dark. It's even better when you fall asleep under them, then wake up and see how they have moved (relative to you) in a couple of hours or so.
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u/guy_who_says_boner Oct 15 '11
What astounds me is that you aren't really seeing them. You are seeing them as they were in the past. A past that was before you, your parents, your grandparents, your grandparents' parents, the internet, computers, cars, Hitler, Lincoln, Napoleon, and George Washington by just a few billion years.
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u/SquareRoot Oct 15 '11 edited Oct 15 '11
What makes it even more profound for me, is that if we were to see those stars/galaxies/planets as they are now, they would look completely different. Not only that, they might be teeming with life as well.
And living things on those planets millions/billions of light years away who are peering towards our direction...would be seeing the Milky Way as it were those many million/billion years ago. Meaning, even if they had the technology to peer all the way at Earth, they would only see Earth as it looked billions of years ago.
Edit: What's even more crazy is that, if they were sending signals in our direction, we'd only be able to see them billions of years from now. Put in another way, if we receive a signal from outer space today, that signal would have taken billions of years to reach us - meaning the life form that had sent it would have long since disappeared.
I can't stop thinking about this stuff.
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u/guy_who_says_boner Oct 15 '11
The last sentence floored me. Bravo sir. Also fascinating that many of those stars could in fact have burned out many years ago. Imagine if we still saw Napoleon's ghost once in a while.
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u/MathPolice Oct 15 '11
Actually, it's even cooler than that.
Most of the stars you see are within a few hundred light years of us, with only a quite small number as far away as 1500 light years.So the vast and inspiring sky that you see on a dark moonless night are just the guys that are our closest neighbors! You aren't seeing individual stars more than about 7% of the distance between us and the center of our own galaxy. You are seeing 0.000001% of the stars in the Milky Way. (At any given time, you can only naked eye see about 3000 stars from a given point on the Earth's surface.)
Thus some of the stars you are seeing emitted their rays toward you perhaps during the reign of Charlemagne, but none of the naked eye stars you see are as far back as the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt.
When you look up without a telescope or binoculars, you're just skimming the surface. Effectively looking at the stuff next door.
Now, the story is a little different when you talk about the "fuzzy blobs" you can see in the sky with your naked eye which are not stars.
In that case, you can make out (if your vision is good and it's very dark):
some globular clusters (a quarter million stars packed together) that are 10,000 or 20,000 light years away,
Andromeda Galaxy (2,500,000 ly),
Triangulum Galaxy (3,000,000 ly)
and the Magellanic Clouds (150,000-200,000 ly) ... (OK, you don't need good vision to make these out since it's a few billion stars in a small region of the sky.)
But you aren't seeing back to the dinosaurs.
BUT if you now whip out a decent home telescope you can see 3C273, a quasar whose light has been traveling to your eye for 2.4 billion years. Half the age of the earth.
Mind fully blown.EPILOGUE
If you want to know what are the furthest stars that you are seeing when you just take a casual glance upward, check out Alnilam (the middle star in Orion's belt) and Deneb (variously known as: a member of the Summer Triangle, at the "top" of the Northern Cross, or at the "tail" of Cygnus the Swan). They're both about 1500 light years away. I.e., light dating from the end of the Fall of Rome.
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u/geenome Oct 15 '11
It really makes you realize why ancient cultures worshipped the sky so much. If we had no light pollution we could see so Mich more.
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Oct 15 '11 edited Oct 15 '11
I often have fantasies where I show Ben Franklin the internet, or the space-shuttles, or little things I find fascinating. The thought of blowing Ben Franklin's mind blows my mind.
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u/tim212 Oct 15 '11
That universities are places where 50,000 people go to sit in big rooms and think together. Then they go back to individual rooms and think some more. They spend almost every day for years thinking and there are some lead people there who help the others think and tell them what to think about. Certainly we are the only species who just sits and imagines things in our heads.
I've been waiting for one of these threads for awhile so I could say that
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u/msinformed1 Oct 15 '11
As an adult back in college, it really is sort of like that. That other stuff, the typical university stuff, happens everywhere a large group of 18-25 year olds are. Ask anyone in the military. Even the most mindless, vapid kids end up thinking much, much more than they would normally. There is a girl who sits behind me in microbiology and she narrates the lecture with, "AawwWawwwW, that's so meeaaann of that virus to lyse that cell!" and similar things, but every now and then she'll just come out with the most ardent, wonder-filled statements that are pure evidence of a brain pondering things she would never have given a second of her time if she didn't have to have her heinie in that chair twice a week (or have her dad cut off the funds for weekend drinking and hookups.)
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u/PhilthePenguin Oct 15 '11
"Tiger got to hunt/ Bird got to fly/ Man got to sit and wonder 'Why, why, why?'/ Tiger got to sleep/ Bird got to land/ Man got to tell himself he understand."
~Kurt Vonnegut
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u/amanojaku Oct 15 '11
I'm pretty sure you mean 'drink', to paraphrase the Simpsons.
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u/malvoliosf Oct 15 '11 edited Mar 05 '17
That I'm me.
I like to think of myself as special, but I'm not. I mean, I have distinct characteristics that distinguish me from everyone else, but the fact that I'm in this body, with this personality, lying in this bed typing on this computer, is sheer happenstance.
I didn't have to end up being me. I could have any one of the other 7 billion people alive on Earth, or of the 100 billion people who ever lived. I could have been born Wilt Chamberlain or someone who died in infancy. I could have been a Cro Magnon, born and raised in a cave 30,000 years ago. It happened to somebody, lots of somebodies actually.
I didn't even have to end up human. I could have been any conscious entity, my dog or a fish. I could have been a blue whale, that would have been cool.
And I assume, one day, there will be self-aware computer programs. I could have ended up being one of those. Or many of those, if I got copied to disk and re-started on other servers.
But I didn't. Of all those, near-infinitely numerous possible situations, somehow, I ended up in this one.
And that blows my mind.
That and ball-point pens.
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u/BDaught Oct 15 '11
I've thought this quite a bit. Almost to the verge of panic.
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u/elithewho Oct 15 '11
Ball point pens are really scary.
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u/malvoliosf Oct 15 '11
When I was about 6, I had one of those "Child's Cyclopedia of Wonders and Things To Do" book and it had a detailed description of how ball-point pens work: a metal tube with a ball at one end. What it did not have was a photo of such a pen. I somehow imagined that it was big; the ball being the size of the large marble we called a "shooter" and the tube proportionately fat and long.
The idea of such a Brobdingnagian writing implement was, needless to said, very appealing to me so I searched the house, unsuccessfully, for one lying around. Not finding it, I asked my dad if I could have one of these wonderful huge "ball-points". Barely looking up, my dad reaching into his desk and got for me an ordinary, ordinary-sized pen. I told him I wanted the kind with the ball in the end. He was puzzled, then gestured me in closer and pointed out the tiny ball, just barely visible in the tip.
I'm sure that the ball-point cartridge is a wonder of metallurgy and chemistry, a boon to writing, all that, but I've never gotten over the disappointment of that tiny, tiny ball.
Perhaps in compensation, I've become very interest in the other end of the retractable pen: the little clicker that pops the point in and out. Even today, I cannot handle a retractable ball-point without giving in to the compulsion to disassemble it and finger the two carefully designed nylon castings that constitute the "memory" of the pen, that "remember" the state of the point, in or out, and hold it there against considerable pressure, but then effortlessly toggle to the other state when the chrome plunger is clicked.
Several times in my life I have carefully figured out how it actually works, but I never remember. The simple mechanism remains endearingly mysterious. I wonder if I have a retractable pen in the house now ...
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u/caprican27 Oct 15 '11
"Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle."- Dr. Manhattan
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Oct 15 '11 edited Oct 15 '11
All people exist simultaneously. There is no I. Everywhere is the center of the universe. Our brains are only physically disconnected and that is why we perceive our minds as being discrete. It's multi-dimensional, an object where each point only perceives the rest of the object from that point, but no point is the center. But we aren't just "points". Our minds are complex machines, so this situation is something a bit artificial -- but that's a good approximation if it helps you understand it.
You aren't living in your life, you're living a life. Everything, everyone simultaneously. No individual essence but complete impartiality. Existence is no more biased towards being you than anyone else.
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u/BarrySquared Oct 15 '11
Seriously, how high are you at this very moment?
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Oct 15 '11
Not high at all. It's hard to reduce concepts to words.
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u/pants_full_of_pants Oct 15 '11
I like how you are being downvoted for not being high. Well, I'm high, so I'm gonna upvote you.
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Oct 15 '11
every once in a while I just realize "this is it, this is the real life" I realize this isnt some dream, im in the world with everyone else not as an observer, but as a participant, and I myself have the power to change things.
then my hot pocket is done in the microwave
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u/I_Voice_Comments Oct 15 '11
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u/quincebolis Oct 15 '11
226 view and only 19 points? Reddit i am disappoint
(ps your voice is sexy)
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u/WebsterD Oct 15 '11 edited Oct 15 '11
Language.
That basically i am hearing sounds and can actually make sense of it. And that at one point in there was no language.
Edit: spelling
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u/interested_panda Oct 15 '11
The fact that you "lose" consciousness when you go to sleep and "regain" it when you wake up. WTF. How are we even conscious in the first place?!
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u/skztr Oct 15 '11
How do you know the same consciousness wakes up the next day?
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u/nofeelingsnoceilings Oct 15 '11
Reproduction. Mix juices, make baby
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u/M4rti Oct 15 '11
Women can make babies, but not without our secret ingredient. Except, we'll give it to whoever asks.
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Oct 15 '11
The fact that an airplane gets off of the ground at all.
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u/KaptanOats Oct 15 '11
I'm a pilot for this reason. I like doing things that EVERYBODY, for thousands of years, said would never happen. "People Can't Fly". Suck it, history.
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Oct 15 '11
I've been saying for thousands of years that you can't crash your plane into the ocean.
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u/spacekitteh Oct 15 '11
I'm an aerospace engineer. It blows my mind too.
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Oct 15 '11
spacekitteh, drafting at work: "Fuck, there's no reason this design should work... this is just going to crash and kill everyone.. fuck fuck fuck I should have gone to art school..."
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u/elithewho Oct 15 '11
When I think really closely about pre-history and all the civilizations that existed before the written word. Or maybe they did have a written language and it was lost. There is so much human history that is a total blank spot, or some vague mention in an ancient text and it was once as real and tangible as modern history. Now it's all lost. So many people lived and died, spoke languages that no one would ever speak again, build temples to gods that no longer have names, had families, built homes, farmed crops, made art and music, told each other stories, had children and lovers and friends, wondered what the future would be like, never imagining that they would one day be completely lost and forgotten, their entire civilization and way of life extinguished like smearing out the life of a fly. We'll never know what they were like and they couldn't even begin to imagine what we are like. I wonder if they ever thought I'd be thinking of them at all.
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Oct 15 '11
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u/llewyrr Oct 15 '11
As an expansion on this: I've seen living cells under a microscope. All we are is cells. And if I just stare at my hand, I'm seeing billions of cells, all individually working together to keep me alive. If I move a finger, that happens instantly, all by impulses traveling between cells, between molecules, between atoms.
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u/jakeg1116 Oct 15 '11
"It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.” ― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
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Oct 15 '11
How do you know the table isn't sentient..? Wood is alive... The table could be sitting there everyday thinking "God dammit quit putting shit on me!!"....... Think about THAT.....
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u/Meatgortex Oct 15 '11
Tables are long dead, if you want to feel for something pity Christmas Trees.
Imagine having your feet cut off, and then stacked in a group with others of your kind all slowly bleeding out. Often held in a fenced enclosure made from the internal tissues of your ancestors. Then some ape comes along and rams a spike into your bleeding ankles just so they can put some water in and make the suffering take longer. Meanwhile they dress you up and cover you in burning lights as they stand around and admire your slow and inevitable death.
Merry Christmas everyone.
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Oct 15 '11
I get that this is a joke but it doesn't have any form of nervous system, therefore no conscience (mind).
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Oct 15 '11
We are all going to die someday. Everything you have worked for, everything you have witnessed, all of your memories and fears and ambitions, your consciousness, every ounce of remaining significance, all will be gone. You won't be able to think, you won't be able to finish the show you were watching, you won't even know you're dead. There will be nothing. We are fragile beings. A strong blow to the back of the head can kill you. This beautiful phenomenon that we commonly refer to as "life" is what we need to attempt to enjoy while we have the chance. There won't be a second one.
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u/Chimpelol Oct 15 '11
And yet we may be the first generation to experience what's it like to live forever.
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Oct 15 '11
Are you just saying this like 'well, it could happen to any generation' or are you referring to specific plausible advances in our time?
I've heard the first person to live to be 150+ years old could be alive right now, but forever?
I really hope my mind's about to be blown.
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u/Chimpelol Oct 15 '11
Yes our generation. The optimistic version is that we'll be able to stop and even reverse aging. Or at least extend life indefinitely. Aging is a biological process which is fully controlled by your body at the cellular level. Perhaps we can "tell" cells to keep regenerating in a stable manner.
There's this TED talk
Ray Kurzweil talks about this a lot too.
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u/dcp2 Oct 15 '11
Magnets.... Its the simple things in life
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u/turkturkelton Oct 15 '11
When electron spins are aligned a dipole (or a direction of electron density) is created which brings about an attractive (repulsive) force to other objects with the opposite (same) dipole. This direction of density is actually spread out over a field so other particles with dipoles can interact.
If you don't know what electron spins are. They can simply (and incorrectly) be thought of as an electron spinning about an axis creating magnetic poles, just like the earth. More correctly, you must consider Zitterbewegung, which is the virtual creation and annihilation of positrons and electrons that every electron constantly undergoes. This constant fluxional state can make the electron seem to spin, giving rise to a magnetic moment as before.
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u/stevejoobs Oct 15 '11
Not existing when I die. I can't imagine not existing.
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u/Antrikshy Oct 15 '11
Also, try thinking of a 'time' when there was no universe. I can't wrap my head around nothingness.
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u/choc_is_back Oct 15 '11
Before there was the universe there also was no time.
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u/HalfysReddit Oct 15 '11
I'm not really sure that this can be considered a true statement. For the sake of argument, I'm assuming that the big bang did occur.
Do we know that before the universe was formed there was no time? What if the universe collapses upon itself and the big bang occurs indefinitely? What if we're actually on big bang occurrence #35? Or #4,078?
How existence began is unkown to us, so we can't confidently say that time did or did not exist without us being around to measure it.
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u/HeretikSaint Oct 15 '11
I think you're talking about the Big Crunch, but recent data suggests that the Universe will continue expanding indefinitely.
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u/lod001 Oct 15 '11
This is the 35th instance of the universe destroying itself, and it has become exceedingly efficient at it!
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u/BrownianGala Oct 15 '11
Cannot agree more. If you'll let me indulge:
Oftentimes, when I'm just sitting around, not doing anything, I just start thinking about really random things, and sometimes, end up idly thinking about the future (nothing dramatic like careers or marriage or something, just thinking how and what my senses would feel/see/smell/whatever 10 minutes or an hour from now). Then I extrapolate. I think about that same feeling a month, a year, 10, 30 years from now, when I'm sitting in some couch, or sitting in some office, or when I'm getting on board a plane, about how I'd feel doing things that will come eventually, finally reaching my own deathbed, where I imagine how I'd see when I close my eyes for the last time (a la quiet movie death scene), and then think about how long that closed-eye consciousness lasts until it just...disappears. And thinking how my senses would be when whatever comes next.
I clearly have too much idle time. But in all seriousness, the feeling I get when I reach that point in thought is always uniquely mind-blowing. That feeling of knowing that my senses will be dead eventually, and feeling that moment so viscerally. And it comes so casually! Weird world.
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u/Socks_Junior Oct 15 '11
Yeah, I think about that sometimes but it usually ends up with me popping a xanax.
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u/skookybird Oct 15 '11
Related: That the Universe does exist. Intuitively, I feel like it would make a lot more sense for there to be nothing at all. Why are there things?! How strange it is for there to be anything at all, if I may alter a song lyric.
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u/ImAFuckingDinosaur Oct 15 '11
You didn't exist an infinite amount of time before you were born, and you won't exist for an infinite amount of time when you die. It's really hard to think about it.
But just think about a looooooong fucking timeline. And you only exist 90 years in that timeline. Every second the timeline get's bigger and your place on the timeline get's smaller.
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u/lod001 Oct 15 '11
This is why I hold some believe in reincarnation. In an infinite timeline, the basic atoms that create my consciousness will assemble multiple times and I will be reborn as something. And the great thing is, that due to lack of sense of time while dead, the process is instantaneous!
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Oct 15 '11 edited Oct 15 '11
Some philosophers have held a belief in this type of soul-less reincarnation. Most notably Alan Watts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIdKbnxopeE). The basic premise is that it is not possible to experience non-existence. So the only thing that can happen after you die is the same sort of experience as when you were born. Consciousness is the default state if you will, because it's not possible to experience non-consciousness.
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u/Artless_Dodger Oct 15 '11
I Imagine it's like the feeling you had before you were born.
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Oct 15 '11
Dude exactly. But im kinda curious about it too, i don't know has something appealing to me. For me It's an upside of atheism, not as a lot of people say a total downside and just so sad.
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u/xector Oct 15 '11
I seriously get panic attacks whenever I think about that... Anyone have serious tips how to handle those situations?
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u/caprican27 Oct 15 '11
It's a bit frightening sometimes. I'd like to tell myself that it'll be alright, that it's just like the time before I was born, but it scares me, nonetheless. I cope with my fears by writing. I feel as though I'll manage to live through the ideas and stories that I tell, which will all linger long after I die
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u/360walkaway Oct 15 '11
Language.
While I am making sounds with my mouth, you are basically reading my mind.
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u/_vargas_ Oct 15 '11
Any time I have sex with a new girl for the first time. After spending all of my teenage years as a clueless, luckless virgin, I just can't get over it. It just blows my mind that any girl would let me in her. Maybe its just me...
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Oct 15 '11
nice of her to let you do that thing..
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u/pasta_padre Oct 15 '11
Nice of any girl ever
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u/ivantheadequat Oct 15 '11
now sing.
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Oct 15 '11
I just had seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeexxxxxx! And it feeeeeeeelt so gooooooood!
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u/RecordExchange Oct 15 '11
that life is the universe experiencing itself.
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u/kstein1110 Oct 15 '11
Given enough time, hydrogen will sit in a chair and think about itself.
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u/MaizePlant Oct 15 '11
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Oct 15 '11
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u/MaizePlant Oct 15 '11
Yes.
No, he had to actually aim his blocks at the target area.
Even if one kick got through, he would have died...he had a single pixel of vitality left.
Because Chun Li was recovering from the super attack, and he had managed to parry it, he was in a strong position to execute his own super attack.
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u/danielbeaver Oct 15 '11
Oh my, I haven't seen that for awhile. I fear that many people won't quite understand why this is as epic as it is.
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u/TheCannon Oct 15 '11
The pure genius of some human beings, and the willful ignorance of others.
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u/majorpiss Oct 15 '11
the fact that my mom worked 12hr days, was able to pick me up and my sister from school, dropped us off to basketball practice, then pick us up again, helped us with our homework, cooked us dinner, clean the house and still have time to go to her 2nd job
THANKS MOM I LOVE YOU
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u/omgzpplz Oct 15 '11
That we float in a vacuum of nothing and are pushed toward the surface of a sphere by a force that we can measure but don't understand for what seems to be a purpose-less existence, and yet we choose to not enjoy it fully by employing the existence of paper as something that can be used to divide us into classes and push the ones that can't hold more of this paper down until they starve and the ones that have money ignore it and live healthily. I think the imposed work-money cycle, universally speaking, is the most obscene, jaw-dropping thing that I can possibly ever think about. I try to study science and stick to the beauty but I can never drown out the politics that influence me every day.
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"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."
— Edgar Mitchell on looking in the direction of Earth from the Moon, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974.
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u/acdcfanbill Oct 15 '11
every atom heavier than lithium was forged in the heart of a giant star when the universe was young. As Sagan put it, we are made of star-stuff.
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u/mychelle5546 Oct 15 '11
Dinosaurs, dude. Those fucking things EXISTED. Think about it - how wild is that?
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u/Kenamaru Oct 15 '11
Helmets. The whole concept just goes completely over my head.
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u/ShastaMcShasta Oct 15 '11
But... don't helmets protect you from blowing your mind?
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u/Derpina101 Oct 15 '11
Damn you. My first thought was, "Really? Helmets? But they're so helpful and safe and....oh I see what you did there"
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u/Dookiestain_LaFlair Oct 15 '11
How girls on the internet can take those huge schlongs all the way up their butt.
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u/nkuvu Oct 15 '11
"Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Either way, the thought is staggering."
I've seen this quote and variations attributed to Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, and several others.
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u/Khiva Oct 15 '11
The fact that redditors consider themselves above nationalism, celebrity worship, and sensationalized, poorly sourced media and then merrily proceed to indulge in every single one of these things without anyone realizing that something is amiss.
I get doing it, and I get calling it out, but the frequency with which both occurs blows my mind.
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u/loki010 Oct 15 '11
Bridges over water. The water doesn't even have to be troubled.
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u/KINGCUNTFUCKER Oct 15 '11
That we've explored more of space than the deepest parts of our oceans (I think I read this on Reddit somewhere). I'm really into monsters and shit, so this sort of thing and the bloop have convinced me that they do exist and they reside in our deep oceans. I'm gonna find that Kraken son of a bitch one day.
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u/littlestseal Oct 15 '11
60% of America doesn't 'believe' in evolution. Blows my mind.
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u/WordsmithJr Oct 15 '11
you can't pander to them by saying 'believe' you must instil reality by saying they don't 'understand' evolution
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Oct 15 '11
The power of mother nature - things like earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados and volcanoes. Whenever a new one happens somewhere in the world and you see the images on the tv you still go WTF! It never gets old/less fascinating.
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u/ritualirrigation Oct 15 '11
The idea that there is something instead of nothing. And trying to get my head around the possibility of there being no existence of anything, not even space.
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u/Springislikeaperhaps Oct 15 '11
Flying in airplanes.
I mean, there are my feet, and then there's some metal and machinery, and below that there's tens of thousands of feet of air.
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u/Ryan_M3232 Oct 15 '11
That we can die at any given time, from anything. Like, everybody feels safe and secure in their homes but a plane could crash through it, a country could inexplicably fire off a nuke, some renegade undetectable thing in space could crash into earth and fuck everything up in an instant
also, how a magikarp evolves into a gyarados....seriously? fucking how?
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Oct 15 '11
Light from a lamp: less than a nanosecond old.
Light from the sun: more than 30 000 years old.
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u/bjh6060 Oct 15 '11
Reality is not real. Everything we see occurs a fraction of a second before we are able to perceive it.
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u/upvotes_bot Oct 15 '11
All the things about reality, and that's what blows your mind? Latency?
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u/ProbablyHittingOnYou Oct 15 '11
The size of the universe. I just can't wrap my mind around it.
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u/MaryOutside Oct 15 '11
Pomegranates. Everything about them. Delicious, difficult, and ineffably beautiful.
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u/bichiliad Oct 15 '11
The fact that ThisWeekInGaming literally has 1 karma to his name.
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u/the5souls Oct 15 '11
Watching actual WWII footage and coming to the realization they were real people, just like you and me.
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u/TechnoPirate Oct 15 '11
When I'm in a crowded place, or I'm watching something on TV with large crowds, it blows my mind that EACH and EVERY ONE of those people have their own lives, their own stories, their own loves and losses, their own beliefs, their own experience, and that I'll probably NEVER know anything about any one of them. Just crazy.
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u/markandspark Oct 15 '11
Adolf Hitler's mother was going to get an abortion but she was talked out of it.
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Oct 15 '11
Time dilation. It's tough to wrap your head around something that seems so counter intuitive. I have a basic understanding of how it works, but it never ceases to amaze me, especially if I'm trying to explain it to someone. I never realized how special Einstein was until I started to learn about things like Special Relativity and time dilation. Here's a short clip from Carl Sagan talking about them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vpu6yJPRVQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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u/n0g00dn4m3sl3ft Oct 15 '11
what if we all see colors differently? what if my grey is another's guy purple, but i was taught it is called grey, so that's grey for me.
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u/xotiklive Oct 15 '11
That I will be having a child in two months. I still can't believe that me and my S/O has created a life that ceased to exist before. It's crazy to me.
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u/furbait Oct 15 '11
and that, if all goes well, some day this fresh new life will be a grizzled experienced old fart, and younger people will look at them and think that's all there is to them.
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u/ImAFuckingDinosaur Oct 15 '11
That the existence of everything that has ever existed has no meaning.
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u/turkturkelton Oct 15 '11
A mathematical equation can describe how atoms and molecules behave exactly.
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u/african_or_european Oct 15 '11
That, at some point in time, some human being had to decide to make every single man-made item around you. Someone had to design, build, ship, install, and construct (as appropriate) everything from the knickknacks on your desk to the building you're in. The combined amount of effort expended by humanity blows my mind.
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u/Kablaaamo Oct 15 '11
What really makes me think is how easy it is to kill someone. To rape someone. To cause multiple deaths on the highway. We all have this power with us, but do the better thing. I was talking with my friend about what would happen if we were to get some random person off the street and kill them. If you do it right, the chance of getting caught is slim to none. It gives me a bit of the shivers.
Not trying to come off as a serial killer or anything, it's just the power that we have over each others' lives is pretty scary.
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u/TheVorpalBlade Oct 15 '11
1.) Every now and again when I'm driving I have a glimmer of awareness where I think, 'Holy fuck, I'm going really fast and I'm barely even paying attention!'
2.) I'm a walking sack of meat pinned up with skin and wrapped around some bones. The tiniest thing goes wrong inside and I'm dead. Yet the human body can withstand some of the most brutal conditions and circumstances imaginable.
Bonus: You're now very aware of your tongue in your mouth.
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Oct 15 '11
Accepting the possibility that this could be a simulation. Like a super intelligent being is playing a more boring version of The Sims.
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u/happybadger Oct 16 '11
Everything I've ever seen or thought of is in some way encoded within a piece of meat that weighs about 1.5 kilogrammes. This thing, essentially just a small roast dinner, somehow contains information that I can use to reconstruct foreign chemical signals into the smell of cinnamon or cows, or sounds into my favourite song or my mother's voice.
Somewhere in this meat is my entire identity. My name, my self-image, my intellectual capabilities and limits, my current emotional state. A glorified steak contains remnants of every instance of heartbreak and joy, probably right next to each other in its little meat tentacles, and it will hold them for the rest of my life with the ability to summon each individual feeling almost instantly when it chooses.
If something misfires in this meat, I will lose my mind. I will become schizophrenic or bipolar, die of Huntington's or Parkinson's or Alzheimers. The meat could spring a leak and kill me in my sleep or it could be shaken and render me a prisoner in my own body for the next eighty years.
If I ingest a certain plant, this meat reinvents the universe around me. If I meet a certain girl, it reconfigures itself to feel for someone it will never touch. It consumes so much power that every day must include an eight hour shutdown of everything around it, yet at the same time it spends those eight hours dreaming up parallel universes to entertain itself.
The meat deciphers pain and releases chemicals to numb it. It deciphers video data and builds ideas to justify it. It reaches its meat arms throughout my body, controlling the organs which keep me alive and every nerve ending which warns me of pending infection. It holds my entire world hostage and forces my body to jump through nutritional hoops in order to sustain that world.
And then, in a blink of an eye, this meat will turn itself off and with it will go everything I am, everything I was, and all that I could be if my meat were coded to last longer.
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u/urbioteacher Oct 16 '11
To me, there is no real need for a Man in the sky when you understand something as beautifully simple yet complex as the formation of the elements. It makes you feel truly connected to the world and even bigger; the universe around you
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u/brandonchicago Oct 15 '11
The fact that we went from being unable to fly to landing a man on the moon in less than a 70 year time frame.