Popular Science Myths | MythMania#1

 Popular Science Myths

Science is constantly evolving as society as a whole continues to embrace and learn from proven facts. Society assumed that the Earth was the center of the solar system before Copernicus proposed that the sun is at the center, and society accepted that diseases were caused by “bad air” before Louis pasteur paved the way for germ theory.

Sometimes even after a theory is disproved by science, it will linger in popular culture. Have you ever heard that humans only use 10% of their brains? You may still believe it 50 years later, even though neuroscientists today call the very notion laughable. As a result, many popular adages and widely followed rules actually have little basis in reality.

Inspired by lists of many such myths from Popular Science and Business Insider, I investigated the gap between science and culture to compile some  of the most common now-disproven scientific hypotheses that many peoples still believe today. Which ones fooled you?

You can see the great wall of china from space.

It has become a space-based myth. The Great Wall of China, frequently billed as the only man-made object visible from space, generally isn't, at least to the unaided eye in low Earth orbit. It certainly isn't visible from the Moon.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who spent five months aboard the International Space Station in 2012-2013, reiterated the facts about the Great Wall’s visibility from space.

“The Great Wall of China is not visible from orbit with the naked eye,” Hadfield said via Twitter. “It’s too narrow, and it follows the natural contours and colours [of the landscape].”

Additionally, when China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, went into space in 2003, he said that he couldn’t see the structure of the Great Wall from out his capsule window.

People only use 10% of their brains.

For almost a century, it’s been one of the biggest myths about intellectual potential, with everyone from Albert Einstein to psychologist William James supposably citing the idea that we only ever use 10% of our brains.

Hollywood has even weighed in on the topic, with Scarlett Johansson’s blockbuster movie, Lucy, based entirely on the premise that humans only use one-tenth of their cranium’s capability. Morgan Freeman, who plays a neurologist in the film says, ‘It is estimated most human beings only use 10% of their brains' capacity. Just imagine if we could access 100%.

This statement is “so wrong it’s almost laughable,” though, according to neurologist Barry Gordon of Johns Hopkins: "It turns out though, that we use virtually every part of the brain, and that [most of] the brain is active almost all the time.”

All dinosaurs went extinct by an asteroid hitting earth.

The truth behind the demise of the dinosaurs may never be fully resolved, but a growing body of evidence has convinced many scientists that at least one of the culprits was a seven-mile-wide asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago near what is now the Yucatan peninsula. Exploding on impact, the monster rock produced a crater more than 180 miles wide, continent-drowning tsunamis, and winds far more powerful than any hurricane. In addition, dust kicked up by the explosion would have completely darkened daytime skies for months, devastating plant and animal life across the globe.

A research also found that six major groups of dinosaurs were slowly going extinct over the 10 million years prior to the crash. The impact's consequences — mile-high tsunamis, raging fires, and a choking cloud of thick dust and sulfur that blotted out the sun — were merely a nail in the dinosaurs' coffin.

Gravity is a of attraction between 2 objects with mass.

This is a concept that has been accepted by the scientific community for a very long time, thanks to one of the greatest physicists of all time, Sir Isaac Newton. But, as another physicist came by the name of Albert Einstein, this view was proven to be wrong. Einstein showed through the use of complex mathematics that gravity is not a force per se, but a consequence of the curvature of spacetime. Einstein discovered that massive objects bend the spacetime around it, and we perceive of this bending of spacetime as a force.

For the Newtonian view of gravity, light would not be affected by gravity, because it does not have mass. But for Einstein’s General Relativity, light will also be affected by gravity, and that is confirmed specifically by an experiment led by Sir Arthur Eddington. They measured the real and apparent positions of stars behind the sun during a total solar eclipse. The difference between these measurements was exactly predicted by Einstein’s General Relativity.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

We’ve all heard this saying, from our parents, friends, or from doctors themselves. “An apple a day” is an easy way to eat healthfully, and the phrase has a satisfying ring to it. However, the fruit doesn’t  to keep people out of the doctor’s office.

A 2015 peer-reviewed study that collected nutrition data from 753 people who ate an apple every day failed to find evidence of a link between apples and reduced doctor’s visits. Apples are still healthy, though; they contain a high amount of water, pair well with other healthy foods, and are high in potassium and fiber.

The sun is yellow.

The color of the sun is white. The sun emits all colors of the rainbow more or less evenly and in physics, we call this combination "white". That is why we can see so many different colors in the natural world under the illumination of sunlight. If sunlight were purely green, then everything outside would look green or dark. 

We can see the redness of a rose and the blueness of a butterfly's wing under sunlight because sunlight contains red and blue light. The same goes for all other colors. When a light bulb engineer designs a bulb that is supposed to mimic the sun, and therefore provide natural illumination, he designs a white bulb, not a yellow bulb. The fact that you see all the fundamental colors present in a rainbow (which is sunlight split by mist) and no colors are missing is direct evidence that sunlight is white.

Water is a conductor of electricity.

It is a common belief that water conducts electricity and you might get a shock if a wire is left open in contact with water. This is also a misconception as well. Water in its purified or distilled form is not a conductor of electricity at all. The reason why we often get a shock while touching the switches with watery hands or coming in contact with wire in water is due to the impurities or minerals present in water. It is these impurities and minerals which conduct electricity and not water. So hopefully next time you won't blame water for your carelessness.

That is all for today, we are going to continue this series in the upcoming posts as well. Till then tell me in the comments which myth you liked the most😁.