The Ten Most Disturbing Scientific Discoveries

Scientists have come to some surprising conclusions about the world and our place in it. Are some things just better left unknown?

  • By Laura Helmuth
  • Smithsonian.com, May 14, 2010, Subscribe
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Polar bear on melting glacier The consequences of burning fossil fuels are already apparent. We have just begun to see the effects of human-induced climate change.

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    The Ten Most Disturbing Scientific Discoveries

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    Science can be glorious; it can bring clarity to a chaotic world. But big scientific discoveries are by nature counterintuitive and sometimes shocking. Here are ten of the biggest threats to our peace of mind.

    1. The Earth is not the center of the universe.

    We’ve had more than 400 years to get used to the idea, but it’s still a little unsettling. Anyone can plainly see that the Sun and stars rise in the east, sweep across the sky and set in the west; the Earth feels stable and stationary. When Copernicus proposed that the Earth and other planets instead orbit the Sun,

    … his contemporaries found his massive logical leap “patently absurd,” says Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “It would take several generations to sink in. Very few scholars saw it as a real description of the universe.”

    Galileo got more grief for the idea than Copernicus did. He used a telescope to provide evidence for the heliocentric theory, and some of his contemporaries were so disturbed by what the new invention revealed—craters on a supposedly perfectly spherical moon, other moons circling Jupiter—that they refused to look through the device. More dangerous than defying common sense, though, was Galileo’s defiance of the Catholic Church. Scripture said that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy for saying otherwise.

    2. The microbes are gaining on us.

    Antibiotics and vaccines have saved millions of lives; without these wonders of modern medicine, many of us would have died in childhood of polio, mumps or smallpox. But some microbes are evolving faster than we can find ways to fight them.

    The influenza virus mutates so quickly that last year’s vaccination is usually ineffective against this year’s bug. Hospitals are infested with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria that can turn a small cut into a limb- or life-threatening infection. And new diseases keep jumping from animals to humans—ebola from apes, SARS from masked palm civets, hantavirus from rodents, bird flu from birds, swine flu from swine. Even tuberculosis, the disease that killed Frederic Chopin and Henry David Thoreau, is making a comeback, in part because some strains of the bacterium have developed multi-drug resistance. Even in the 21st century, it’s quite possible to die of consumption.

    3. There have been mass extinctions in the past, and we’re probably in one now.

    Paleontologists have identified five points in Earth’s history when, for whatever reason (asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions and atmospheric changes are the main suspects), mass extinctions eliminated many or most species.

    The concept of extinction took a while to sink in. Thomas Jefferson saw mastodon bones from Kentucky, for example, and concluded that the giant animals must still be living somewhere in the interior of the continent. He asked Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out for them.

    Today, according to many biologists, we’re in the midst of a sixth great extinction. Mastodons may have been some of the earliest victims. As humans moved from continent to continent, large animals that had thrived for millions of years began to disappear—mastodons in North America, giant kangaroos in Australia, dwarf elephants in Europe. Whatever the cause of this early wave of extinctions, humans are driving modern extinctions by hunting, destroying habitat, introducing invasive species and inadvertently spreading diseases.


    Science can be glorious; it can bring clarity to a chaotic world. But big scientific discoveries are by nature counterintuitive and sometimes shocking. Here are ten of the biggest threats to our peace of mind.

    1. The Earth is not the center of the universe.

    We’ve had more than 400 years to get used to the idea, but it’s still a little unsettling. Anyone can plainly see that the Sun and stars rise in the east, sweep across the sky and set in the west; the Earth feels stable and stationary. When Copernicus proposed that the Earth and other planets instead orbit the Sun,

    … his contemporaries found his massive logical leap “patently absurd,” says Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “It would take several generations to sink in. Very few scholars saw it as a real description of the universe.”

    Galileo got more grief for the idea than Copernicus did. He used a telescope to provide evidence for the heliocentric theory, and some of his contemporaries were so disturbed by what the new invention revealed—craters on a supposedly perfectly spherical moon, other moons circling Jupiter—that they refused to look through the device. More dangerous than defying common sense, though, was Galileo’s defiance of the Catholic Church. Scripture said that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition found Galileo guilty of heresy for saying otherwise.

    2. The microbes are gaining on us.

    Antibiotics and vaccines have saved millions of lives; without these wonders of modern medicine, many of us would have died in childhood of polio, mumps or smallpox. But some microbes are evolving faster than we can find ways to fight them.

    The influenza virus mutates so quickly that last year’s vaccination is usually ineffective against this year’s bug. Hospitals are infested with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria that can turn a small cut into a limb- or life-threatening infection. And new diseases keep jumping from animals to humans—ebola from apes, SARS from masked palm civets, hantavirus from rodents, bird flu from birds, swine flu from swine. Even tuberculosis, the disease that killed Frederic Chopin and Henry David Thoreau, is making a comeback, in part because some strains of the bacterium have developed multi-drug resistance. Even in the 21st century, it’s quite possible to die of consumption.

    3. There have been mass extinctions in the past, and we’re probably in one now.

    Paleontologists have identified five points in Earth’s history when, for whatever reason (asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions and atmospheric changes are the main suspects), mass extinctions eliminated many or most species.

    The concept of extinction took a while to sink in. Thomas Jefferson saw mastodon bones from Kentucky, for example, and concluded that the giant animals must still be living somewhere in the interior of the continent. He asked Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out for them.

    Today, according to many biologists, we’re in the midst of a sixth great extinction. Mastodons may have been some of the earliest victims. As humans moved from continent to continent, large animals that had thrived for millions of years began to disappear—mastodons in North America, giant kangaroos in Australia, dwarf elephants in Europe. Whatever the cause of this early wave of extinctions, humans are driving modern extinctions by hunting, destroying habitat, introducing invasive species and inadvertently spreading diseases.

    4. Things that taste good are bad for you.

    In 1948, the Framingham Heart Study enrolled more than 5,000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, to participate in a long-term study of risk factors for heart disease. (Very long term—the study is now enrolling the grandchildren of the original volunteers.) It and subsequent ambitious and painstaking epidemiological studies have shown that one’s risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, certain kinds of cancer and other health problems increases in a dose-dependent manner upon exposure to delicious food. Steak, salty French fries, eggs Benedict, triple-fudge brownies with whipped cream—turns out they’re killers. Sure, some tasty things are healthy—blueberries, snow peas, nuts and maybe even (oh, please) red wine. But on balance, human taste preferences evolved during times of scarcity, when it made sense for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to gorge on as much salt and fat and sugar as possible. In the age of Hostess pies and sedentary lifestyles, those cravings aren’t so adaptive.

    5. E=mc²

    Einstein’s famous equation is certainly one of the most brilliant and beautiful scientific discoveries—but it’s also one of the most disturbing. The power explained by the equation really rests in the c², or the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) times itself, which equals 34,700,983,524. When that’s your multiplier, you don’t need much mass—a smidgen of plutonium is plenty—to create enough energy to destroy a city.

    6. Your mind is not your own.

    Freud might have been wrong in the details, but one of his main ideas—that a lot of our behaviors and beliefs and emotions are driven by factors we are unaware of—turns out to be correct. If you’re in a happy, optimistic, ambitious mood, check the weather. Sunny days make people happier and more helpful. In a taste test, you’re likely to have a strong preference for the first sample you taste—even if all of the samples are identical. The more often you see a person or an object, the more you’ll like it. Mating decisions are based partly on smell. Our cognitive failings are legion: we take a few anecdotes and make incorrect generalizations, we misinterpret information to support our preconceptions, and we’re easily distracted or swayed by irrelevant details. And what we think of as memories are merely stories we tell ourselves anew each time we recall an event. That’s true even for flashbulb memories, the ones that feel as though they’ve been burned into the brain:

    Like millions of people, [neuroscientist Karim] Nader has vivid and emotional memories of the September 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath. But as an expert on memory, and, in particular, on the malleability of memory, he knows better than to fully trust his recollections… As clear and detailed as these memories feel, psychologists find they are surprisingly inaccurate.

    7. We’re all apes.

    It’s kind of deflating, isn’t it? Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can be inspiring: perhaps you’re awed by the vastness of geologic time or marvel at the variety of Earth’s creatures. The ability to appreciate and understand nature is just the sort of thing that is supposed to make us special, but instead it allowed us to realize that we’re merely a recent variation on the primate body plan. We may have a greater capacity for abstract thought than chimps do, but we’re weaker than gorillas, less agile in the treetops than orangutans and more ill-tempered than bonobos.

    Charles Darwin started life as a creationist and only gradually came to realize the significance of the variation he observed in his travels aboard the Beagle. For the past 151 years, since On the Origin of Species was published, people have been arguing over evolution. Our ape ancestry conflicts with every culture’s creation myth and isn’t particularly intuitive, but everything we’ve learned since then—in biology, geology, genetics, paleontology, even chemistry and physics—supports his great insight.

    8. Cultures throughout history and around the world have engaged in ritual human sacrifice.

    Say you’re about to die and are packing some supplies for the afterlife. What to take? A couple of coins for the ferryman? Some flowers, maybe, or mementos of your loved ones? If you were an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, you’d have your servants slaughtered and buried adjacent to your tomb. Concubines were sacrificed in China to be eternal companions; certain Indian sects required human sacrifices. The Aztecs slaughtered tens of thousands of people to inaugurate the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan; after sacred Mayan ballgames, the losing team was sometimes sacrificed.

    It’s hard to tell fact from fiction when it comes to this particularly gruesome custom. Ritual sacrifice is described in the Bible, Greek mythology and the Norse sagas, and the Romans accused many of the people they conquered of engaging in ritual sacrifice, but the evidence was thin. A recent accumulation of archaeological findings from around the world shows that it was surprisingly common for people to ritually kill—and sometimes eat—other people.

    9. We’ve already changed the climate for the rest of this century.

    The mechanics of climate change aren’t that complex: we burn fossil fuels; a byproduct of that burning is carbon dioxide; it enters the atmosphere and traps heat, warming the surface of the planet. The consequences are already apparent: glaciers are melting faster than ever, flowers are blooming earlier (just ask Henry David Thoreau), and plants and animals are moving to more extreme latitudes and altitudes to keep cool.

    Even more disturbing is the fact that carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. We have just begun to see the effects of human-induced climate change, and the predictions for what’s to come range from dire to catastrophic.

    10. The universe is made of stuff we can barely begin to imagine.

    Everything you probably think of when you think of the universe—planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, dust—makes up just 4 percent of whatever is out there. The rest comes in two flavors of “dark,” or unknown stuff: dark matter, at 23 percent of the universe, and dark energy, at a whopping 73 percent:

    Scientists have some ideas about what dark matter might be—exotic and still hypothetical particles—but they have hardly a clue about dark energy. … University of Chicago cosmologist Michael S. Turner ranks dark energy as “the most profound mystery in all of science.”

    The effort to solve it has mobilized a generation of astronomers in a rethinking of physics and cosmology to rival and perhaps surpass the revolution Galileo inaugurated on an autumn evening in Padua. … [Dark energy] has inspired us to ask, as if for the first time: What is this cosmos we call home?

    But astronomers do know that, thanks to these dark parts, the universe is expanding. And not only expanding, but expanding faster and faster. Ultimately, everything in the universe will drift farther and farther apart until the universe is uniformly cold and desolate. The world will end in a whimper.


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    Comments (164)

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    What is one evidence that evolution is a scientific fact? Again, nothing but contentions.

    Posted by Zul on May 17,2012 | 10:06 AM

    It is a shame that our Government chooses to lie to it's citizens through it's organ The Smithsonian. The economic results of global warming treaties are designed to hurt the third world more than developed nations. These treaties are political in nature, designed for the control of target populations. One thing the New World Order's Al Gore doesn't mention is that the warming is taking place on the other planets of our solar system as well, the result of a cyclic increase of mean solar output. Carbon dioxide is good for the biosphere. The New World Order is not.

    Posted by Michael on May 15,2012 | 12:16 AM

    I find the knee-jerk rejection of human causes of global warming here disheartening. To agree it is simple science on one side of your mouth while arguing there is no evidence for it on the other- your argument only serves to sow the seeds of doubt in science among laypeople. Worse, it makes the more ideological among us feel off the hook; it's "not proven," so they just ignore the stories of polar bears running out of habitat and mass die off and movements of animals to cooler areas, and early flower blooming, or write it off as some temporary natural cycle that we just need to ride out. EVEN IF THAT WERE TRUE, MEN OF CONSCIENCE SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR WAYS TO LIMIT OUR EFFECT ON THE CLIMATE ANYWAY. Stop arguing endlessly about whether it is manmade or not and do the right thing by your home planet, you cowards.

    Posted by mike s on May 15,2012 | 12:14 AM

    Intelligent individuals cannot argue that man is not contributing to global warming. The thermodynamics of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are trivial to understand. However people can discuss the DEGREE that carbon dioxide is causing the planet to warm. That the planet is warming has been confirmed to 3 sigma. Only with more data can the degree of certainty be increased to 6 sigma, and by that time we may all be dead.

    Posted by john roberts on May 15,2012 | 04:37 PM

    Evolution is an endlessly confirmed scientific FACT and manmade Global Warming is settled science (not to mention the continuing destruction of our ocean and the current man made great die off of the Earth’s fauna). Science is consensual and its findings are not subject for review or modification by credulous, incurious believers in invisible, mythological beings. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” - Friedrich Nietzsche.

    Posted by Sockratease on May 14,2012 | 02:00 PM

    It's true, the mechanics of climate change are not that complex, nor is Chess. It is not the knowing of the mechanics (rules of Chess), it is knowing what pieces are on the board and what they do! The writer of this article knows of only one piece, man made carbon dioxide. that is NOT the only piece, nor is it the most important piece. We can explain only 48% of the heat that exists. We don't know a lot about climate on this planet. Though reporters refuse to report it, the claim of man made climent change has never been accepted by those working in climate studies. The most common critique is that these people do not take into account the cooling effect of human civilization. This HAS BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN, while man made warming has not been! Carbon in the atmosphere is one piece in the climet puzzel, Water Vapor and Methane gas are two much more important pieces. Trees are a major source of water vapor on this planet. The Americans, Europeans and Africans, have devistated the masive forests that used to cover our continents. This deforestration has cuased a significant decrease in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere cooling the earth. Also we've exterminated massive numbers of methane producing animals like the buffalo further cooling the earth. No one has yet to accurately predice global warming. After 50 years, they have always been wrong. The earth is getting closer to the Sun, it has been for 45,000 years. As such, the earth has been getting warmer. If not for the Little Ice Age (1353-1855 A.D.), 80% of the ice on Greenland would have already melted. The Little Ice Age gave the melting of the glaciers on earth a repreive but not a commutation. For the next 15,000 years or so, the earth will continue to get closer to the sun and we will get warmer. The sea will rise 15-20 feet during this time (it did so the last 4 times so it will this time too), and there is nothing we can do about it. That is what scence knows.

    Posted by Wm. Masters on May 13,2012 | 06:19 PM

    > Creationism is a purely American evangelical phenomenon

    Creationism is a LOT older than the United States is.
    The Greeks were the first to go on record as not believing in G-d, and that was after creating and believing in the most well known set of supernatural characters that have ever existed. All earlier ideologies believed in at least one creator.

    > To those here who claim that the Bible doesn't say that the sun revolves around the earth: without that belief, Joshua could not have ordered the sun to stand still for 24 hours (Joshua chapter 10).

    Once someone has accepted a belief in G-d, they have also accepted that he can stop the spin of Earth [without causing mass havoc], can stop the orbit of the entire universe, or can do any sort of optical illusion. The verse speaks in a practical manner - would you expect it to say instead "And G-d caused the myriads of the stars to cease their orbit while in relation to earth..."?!

    Whether someone has found a way disprove G-d's existence or not is subject to another discussion, but try to keep the arguments logical.

    Posted by SamGoody on March 2,2012 | 05:51 AM

    "The climate is changing, it's a fact, we can observe it. We think we're the ones causing that change. ... Even if that were wrong, we would need to make the EXACT SAME CHANGES."

    First two sentence are good (but stress that word "think" -- some humans THINK (or more accurately "believe") that we're causing it. And (they can't prove it and) many of them have an ideological axe to grind -- and are trying to "fix" something unrelated to climate: working for rampant socialism, anyone?)

    The last sentence is completely and dangerously wrong: 90% of solving a problem is CORRECTLY identifying the problem and solving the *real* problem. Making the "exact same changes" to try to fix a problem those changes WILL NOT FIX is both stupid and wasteful! If the SUN is heating up the Earth (as, apparently, it is also doing to Mars: same temperature rise over the same time -- or do you think we're doing that too?), then cutting back on fossil fuel use will do NOTHING. (It may do other useful stuff -- but quit lying that it will stop "global warming"!)

    The biggest problem in the climate-wars is the "scientists" and academics (and politicians) who are pushing for their pet "solutions" are SO far out on their side of the 'risk seesaw' (See Peter Sandman's work: "Games Risk Communicators Play: Follow-the-Leader, Echo, Donkey, and Seesaw"), that they push people who see the *science* on the NON-human-caused "warming" farther and farther out on their side of the seesaw!

    All the screaming about "we have to stop human behavior" (but they rush to add: "in SOME countries but not in other countries") to try to prevent what is clearly UN-preventable leads to us "climate-deniers" fighting against idiot actions trying to solve the WRONG problem!!

    Let's spend our time and resources figuring out how we're going to adjust, not try to prevent the unpreventable!

    (Bravo to the Framingham study *correction*!)

    Posted by Elenor on February 18,2012 | 09:36 AM

    the world is vastly changing into the unknown.

    Posted by taiwo on February 8,2012 | 05:24 AM

    All True! And very frightening. I have grandchildren that I wonder if they will be alive in 2050, and if so, what their lives will be like.

    Posted by Donna M Bosarge on January 25,2012 | 11:21 PM

    Obviously all the comments thwarting these very succinct and proven scientific facts are having a hard time understanding reality.

    Science is not taking sides, only the fools who don’t understand how the scientific methods works have an axe to grind.

    Posted by Lisa on January 1,2012 | 11:45 PM

    Uhmmm...Nazis were mostly Christian (see Pope et al.) but that doesn't mean that all Christians are Nazis.

    Posted by MaxCulpa on December 31,2011 | 11:06 AM

    Evolution is absolutely a farce. The microbiology associated alone with that makes it completely impossible. Check this book out: "Creation vs. Evolution: NO CONTEST!"

    Posted by Stephen on December 29,2011 | 09:46 PM

    Why am I not surprised that you couldn't go three pages without shoving some AGW nonsense down our unsuspecting throats?

    Man-caused "warming" has *NEVER* been "settled science" - and given the ongoing revelations of just how FILTHY the whole mess has become - deliberate falsification of data, the destruction of conflicting data, deliberate collusion to be sure all are telling the same lie... DISGUSTING!

    Whatever "Global Warming" there is has been clearly proven to be a result of the interreaction of the sun, its magnetic field and cosmic rays which drive cloud formation and thus moderate the absorption and/or reflection of solar energy.

    Just Google"cosmic rays clouds global warming" if you want to know more - or just keep drinking the kool-aid...

    Posted by Dedicated_Dad on December 18,2011 | 07:18 AM

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