12 misconceptions about the world around, in which everyone somehow believes

1. Water conducts electricity well

Everyone knows that if you throw electrical wires into a pool of water, people there will get an electric shock. Does this mean that water conducts electricity?

In general, this is not entirely true. Pure or distilled waterAfter Centuries, Scientists Have Finally Figured Out How Water Conducts Electricity, Water conductivity itself is a very mediocre guide. The current is conducted not by the liquid itself, but by the minerals and suspended particles contained in it.

Another thing is that a truly purified distillate is unlikely to be found outside laboratories. So you don't have to stick your hands in puddles next to sparking wires.

2. Oil is made from dinosaurs

People who are not particularly versed in how the world works around us sincerely believe that the oil came from the remains of extinct animals. And since dinosaurs - the largest creatures ever trampled on our unfortunate planet, then the most oil was produced from them.

In fact, there may be particles of them in oil, but their number is so small there that they can be neglected. According to modern estimates, 80% of the Earth's biomass isAmerican and Israeli scientists have conducted a biomass census on Earth. The human share is only 0.01% plants, 13% - bacteria, 2% - fungi, and only the remaining percent - the animal world, including people.

In addition, given that most of the oil-forming reservoirs were formedPetroleum Geology and Resources of the West Siberian Basin, Russia between the end of the Jurassic period and the beginning of the Cretaceous, and the mass extinction of dinosaurs happened in the late Cretaceous - early Paleogene, their remains could not get into oil.

Dinosaurs that accidentally ended up in the wrong layer due to tectonic shifts, we do not take into account.

In fact, oil turned outOil Comes from Dinosaurs - Fact or Fiction?, Explainer: Where fossil fuels come from from dead marine microorganisms and algae, covered with tons of silt and sand. The temperature rose under tremendous pressure, and they began to decompose into hydrocarbons and other organic compounds.

And this myth may have appearedBackstage Pass to North Dakota History because of the symbol of the oil company Sinclair Oil - a dinosaur named Dino. The company has demonstrated in every possible way that the best oil comes from rocks that date back to the time of the dinosaurs, 80 million years old, and the public has a strong association.

3. The real model of the solar system looks like a vortex

Various GIFs and videos have been walking on the Internet for a long time, on which our solar system depicted as a vortex or spiral. The fact is that its traditional representation with planets in circular orbits does not take into account the rotation of the Sun around the center of the Galaxy.

But such a vortex of planets supposedly better reflects the real shape of the orbits, when the Sun moves forward like a comet and "drags" the planets behind it. This animation was created by a YouTube user DJSadhu.

But actually the animation is wrong. The fact is that the plane of rotation of the planets around the Sun (it is called the ecliptic) is not perpendicular to the direction of its rotation around the center of the Galaxy, but is inclinedNo, Our Solar System is NOT a “Vortex” by about 60 °.

That is, the star does not "pull" the planet strictly behind itself - during the movement they sometimes "overtake" it.

In addition, the Sun does not move in a straight line at all (as in first model) or spiral (as in second model). Its trajectory is curved: it moves away from the plane of the Galaxy, then returns to it under the action of the forces of attraction. That's how looks like the real orbit of the sun.

Astrophysicist Reese Taylor contactedThe Solar System Is Not A Vortex, But It Might As Well Be with the author of the video and pointed out the mistakes, and he released new version models. The trajectories of the planets and the Sun in it are more like real ones.

But even with the new video, not everything is smooth. For example, at the end of the Sun meets with some kind of asteroid belt of such monstrous density that Star Wars never dreamed. Apparently, this is an attempt to show the Oort cloud.

In fact, the average distance between comets in the Oort cloud isThe fundamental role of the Oort Cloud in determining the flux of comets through the planetary system several tens of millions of kilometers.

4. The order of letters in a word does not matter

On the Internet, you can find one old story: supposedly English scientists found out that the order of letters in words does not matter if the first and last letters are in place. The person still reads fluently textbecause he perceives the words in their entirety. For example, like this:

The reader sees this gibberish, understands it and admires it: here, it turns out, how it happens! Only in fact, this trick rollsAoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe, The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition with English, and even then not always. In Russian, everything is more complicated. One programmer once wroteAbout how we write the text an algorithm that randomly shuffles all letters except the first and the last. It turns out something like this:

It's not so easy to read, is it? This is because the words in Russian are longer than in English. To maintain readability, you need to not only leave the first and last letters in place, but also limitAbout how we write the text the distance between the rearranged characters is three letters. Otherwise, the word will be incomprehensible without context - for example, as "mornozhadny".

5. You can turn gray with fear overnight

This incident is often described in the literature. The hero spent the night in a gloomy mansion with haunted, and the next morning ...

... his hair is white as snow. He does not tell anyone anything about what he happened to see. This is too scary.

Jerome K. Jerome, "Haunted Revel"

TellCan your hair turn white overnight? also that when Marie Antoinette ascended the scaffold in 1793, her hair was snow-white: a 37-year-old woman turned completely gray overnight while waiting for the guillotine. Hence the name - Marie-Antoinette syndrome.

But really the hairCan your hair turn white overnight? cannot change color so quickly. Yes, people do turn gray from severe stress, but it takes weeks. The tips of the hair, already painted with pigment, will remain so. And for the gray hair to appear, the hair needs to grow back.

There is, however, another possible explanationMarie antoinette syndrome Marie-Antoinette syndrome - a phenomenon called canities subita. For some people, hair consists of strands of different colors - light and dark. Under severe stress, accompanied by immune-mediated disease, dark hair can begin to fall out quickly, while light hair will remain in place. This creates an illusion that a person turns gray in a couple of days. But this happens quite rarely.

6. Glass is liquid

It would seem that glass is a solid body. Don't believe me - touch the nearest one window. But some people persist in saying that glass is actually a liquid! And they cite as an example the windows of medieval European cathedrals, in which the glass is thickened towards the bottom. This is because they flow down, just very slowly - over the centuries.

Hence the name "glass" - in the spirit of Zadornov. Glass is an extremely viscous liquid! Quite reasonable, right?

No, nothing like that. From the point of view of physics, glass is amorphous solidFact or Fiction? Glass Is a (Supercooled) Liquid body.

Glass can become liquid if meltedGlass meltingheating up to 1,500 ° C. With steel at this temperature,What is the Melting Point of Stainless Steel? the same - but this is not a reason to assert that steel is also a liquid. Bodies change their state of aggregation when heated and cooled, but glass in a window, if not melted, will not be considered liquid.

Contrary to myths, glass does not flowDOES GLASS FLOW?, Using 20 ‑ million ‑ year ‑ old amber to test the super ‑ Arrhenius behavior of glass ‑ forming systems. Their viscosity is so high that fluidity will not appear at room temperature. Relaxation timeIs glass really a liquid? How can this be? glass is comparable to the age of the universe.

But why, then, are the glasses in medieval cathedrals thicker from below than from above? The point is that then the glass blowersFact or Fiction?: Glass Is a (Supercooled) Liquid they could not cast perfectly flat products, and the craftsmen, when installing, placed them with their more massive part down - for stability.

7. The plane can be landed with a glass of water

In 2010, at an abandoned airport in Izhma, he performedThe pilots of the emergency Tu-154 miraculously landed the plane on a glass of water, Accident: Alrosa Mirny T154 at Izhma on Sep 7th 2010, loss of electrics and landing on helicopter platform emergency landing aircraft Tu-154M. After that, stories began to spread on the Internet that the pilots, when they stopped working normally attitude indicator, poured water into a glass, put it on the dashboard and landed the plane, determining the roll by inclination liquids.

Now people who are trying to show that they understand aviation are smartly talking about such a “old-fashioned method” that applied 30 years ago. In practice, if you try to land a plane with a glass of water, you will crash. This experiment was carried out by numerous pilots.A glass of water instead of an artificial horizon, AN-30 AGAINST TU-154 repeatedly.

Due to centrifugal force, the water in the glass will always remain stationary, even if the plane makes a turnA glass of water as an artificial horizon.

Without the ability to determine the roll, you will not be able to keep the wings horizontally, the plane will enter the so-called death spiralGraveyard spiral, Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and falls to the ground. And up to this point, the water in the glass will show that the horizon is even.

So if you are learning to fly an airplane, your main and reserve artificial horizons have failed, and visibility is zero, do not try to use this method.

8. Sharks attack humans by mistake

It is believed that sharks actually attack people, mistaking them for seals, which are usually hunted. And when the fish realizes that it was wrong, it just throws the person.

But this is not the case. The behavior of sharks when attacking pinnipeds is markedly different from their actions when attacking humans. R. Aidan Martin, director of the ReefQuest Shark Research Center, saysGreat White Shark Attacks: Defanging the Myths:

This is completely wrong. I spent five years in South Africa watching over a thousand great white sharks attack sea lions. If they attacked people in the same way as pinnipeds, they would fly to the surface and simply tear the victim apart. But they approach people leisurely and naturally.

R. Aidan Martin

Shark do not confuse people with seals and sea lions, they attack deliberately. They are generally curious and tend to taste everything unfamiliar they see, even if the object is inedible.

But they don't like people. So forget about shots from horror movies: a real shark will not torment you, tearing you to pieces, but will throw you away, barely biting. Therefore, most people survive after a shark attack.Great White Shark Attacks: Defanging the Myths. For the entire 20th century, for example, sharks made 108 attacks, but only 8 people were killed. 100 survived.

9. Swimming after eating is dangerous

By the way, something else about sea bathing. It is believed that swimming on a full stomach is dangerous. Perhaps people think that food in the stomach will pull them to the bottom, or the process of digestion will cause blood to flow from the brain to the stomach.

But it really doesn't matterFour Summer Health Myths Debunked, Summer myths, such as one shouldn’t swim for 30 minutes after eating, are bunk, Unintentional Drowning: Get the Factswhether you ate before the swim or not. Swimming on a full stomach has no consequences. Naturally, if you overeat, you will be uncomfortable, but this applies in general to any physical activity, not only water.

But if you swim drunk, you run the risk of drowning: according to statisticsUnintentional Drowning: Get the Facts US Coast Guard, up to 70% of water accidents are associated with this.

Perhaps a myth aroseThe Truth About Swimming on a Full Stomach thanks to the old 1908 book "Scouting for Boys". At that time, it was believed that exercise in water after eating caused such cramps that a person loses the ability to swim and drowns. That's just not so, and there are no paralyzing spasms from food.The Truth About Swimming on a Full Stomach, Monday's medical myth: wait 30 minutes after eating before you swim.

10. Sitting close to the TV is unhealthy

Surely your parents told you: "Don't sit close to the TV - you will plant your eyesight!" or "Radiation is coming from the screen!"

Perhaps this is partly true for old TVs with picture tubes, because they really createdTelevision Radiation, The Claim: Sitting Too Close to the TV Is Bad for Your Eyes X-ray radiation. Here are just more or less noticeable fluorescent devices were last produced before 1970. And your flat TV, even if it is already 10 years old, cannot in any way fonder.

If you sit close to the vehicle, you may have get a headachebecause you have to strain looking at the whole picture, but your vision will not deteriorate and you will not be exposed to radiationCan sitting too close to the TV damage your vision?. Unless, of course, you are still watching TV, inherited from your grandfather.

11. Capital of Australia - Sydney

When asked what the capital of Australia is called, many people will confidently say: "Sydney!" The same Sydney with its famous opera house and Harbor Bridge. But in fact, the capital of Australia is Canberra.

Australians have long argued which city would be the main one in their country - Sydney or Melbourne. Finally, in 1913, they decided to find a compromise and builtTHE NAMING OF CANBERRA, 1913 third city, Canberra.

12. You can drown in quicksand

In the movie, a person trapped in quicksand will inevitably be completely consumed unless they find a way to escape. Just imagine how awful it is!

However, in reality, quicksand is too dense.Can a person drown in quicksand?, Will Quicksand Really Kill You? and cannot tighten the person completely. Maximum - up to the waist.

By itself, it is generally safe, and if you do not panic and move slowly and smoothly, it is quite possible to get out without assistance. If you find yourself in quicksand, do not ask your friends to pull you out: they will rather tear your hands off, because the sand holds tight. ClingQuicksand Science: Why It Traps, How to Escape for the branches over your head is also useless.

Quickly reset insteadHow Quicksand Works a backpack and other heavy things so that you are not pulled down. Then lie on your back to release the pressure from your legs, after which they can be gradually released. If you cannot lie on your back, lie on your stomach and row on yourself. When your legs are free, do not try to get up or crawl - roll sideways to solid ground.