Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 2.1% (41 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 6.2% (119 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 5.7% (110 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 5.6% (108 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 0%
• Overconfidence Bias - 26.1% (504 hits)
• Framing Effect - 0.6% (11 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 0%
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0.9% (17 hits)
• Optimism Bias - 3.2% (61 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 0.6% (12 hits)

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70 mind-blowing science facts about our incredible world

The world is a mysterious place, full of strange science and cryptic legends.

This gives Live Science plenty of material for our popular Life's Little Mysteries series that runs every weekend.

We've been writing mysteries since 2004, and we still haven't run out of weird topics to explore.

Each mystery comes with a multitude of facts, like which animals are evolving the fastest and whether we could ever build a transatlantic tunnel.

Honestly, we could go on, but we'd have to link to our thousands of mysteries.

So, for your geeking-out pleasure, we've pulled out 70 of the most impressive facts here.

70.

There have been between 10,000 and 12,195 generations of modern humans since Homo sapiens emerged around 300,000 years ago.

69.

Cuttlefish have W-shaped pupils, and scientists still aren't sure why.

68.

It's unclear whether King Arthur really existed.

On the one hand, he seems to have been invented in a ninth-century text.

On the other hand, it's possible another text drawing from a sixth-century annal is about a real-life Arthur, and many royals from the mid-sixth to mid-seventh centuries in Britain and Ireland were named Arthur.

But even if Arthur was a real person, he would be different from the legends about him, some experts say.

67.

The LHC shuts down for repairs.

66.

It's unclear exactly how strong gravity is, even though we've launched humans and spacecraft to outer space.

65.

Earth has a lot of water, but not all of it has been peed out, some experts say.

That's because our planet has trapped "juvenile water" deep below its surface, and this water has never been a part of the water cycle.

64.

From an evolutionary perspective, humans are equally related to dogs and cats.

But if you look at how DNA strands are organized within chromosomes, we are more closely related to cats.

63.

There are two contenders for the world's deepest cave, and both are in Abkhazia, an autonomous republic in the Republic of Georgia.

62.

Tigers look orange to humans because we have trichromatic color vision.

But to their prey with dichromatic color vision, such as deer, tigers appear green.

61.

Most metals stick together in outer space because there's no oxygen in space, and hence no oxide layer separating them.

60.

The oldest river in the world is Australia's Finke River, which formed between 300 million and 400 million years ago

59.

Emeralds are rarer than diamonds, at least when it comes to what's inside the world's known mines.

58.

You usually don't see your nose because your brain cancels it out.

57.

The largest possible earthquake is most likely around 9.5 magnitude, but there's a very slight chance one could be bigger.

56.

Rainbows are not really arches; they're circles.

You can see the full circle from a high vantage point, such as an airplane or a mountaintop.

55.

It's natural for deserts to form next to oceans, and this can make deserts very foggy.

54.

Until the 1960s, researchers thought people largely dreamed in black and white.

53.

Pumpkins are a type of berry (and a very big one).

52.

Evacuating your bowels stimulates the vagus nerve, which can lower your blood pressure and heart rate — no wonder it feels so good to poop.

51.

Iceland used to be the only country in the world without mosquitoes, but that changed in October 2025.

50.

If a human could fly with wings, they would need to have a wingspan of about 20 feet (6 m) to have any chance of gliding through the air.

49.

Leaving the pit in doesn't technically delay the browning process of an entire avocado; it just prevents oxygen from browning the bit underneath it.

48.

At about 1,300 feet (400 m) below sea level, the banks of the Dead Sea are Earth's lowest point on dry land.

47.

During the adolescent growth spurt, some teenagers can grow as much as 4 to 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) in a single year.

46.

Black holes are dark because they trap light that crosses the event horizon, which means if you were to enter one, it would actually be extremely bright.

45.

Your brain can take 15 to 30 minutes to reach full cognitive capacity after you wake up, a period known as "sleep inertia."

44.

North America and Asia were joined by an enormous land bridge during the last ice age, a similar bridge enabled the ancestors of Tyrannosaurus rex to trek from Asia to North America around 68 million years ago.

43.

The oldest known human in the genus Homo lived in Africa around 2.8 million years ago, but we're not sure which species it is.

42.

The largest known prime number contains 41,024,320 digits.

41.

Frogs breathe and drink through their skin.

40.

A bullet fired from a 223 Remington leaves the weapon at up to 2,727 mph (4,390 km/h) — fast enough to cover 11 football fields in a single second.

39.

A turtle's shell is made of 50 bones.

38.

Despite what you may have seen in the movies, ancient Egyptians did not booby-trap the pyramids.

37.

The world's longest undersea section of a tunnel belongs to the Channel Tunnel, which has a 23.5-mile (37.9 kilometers) underwater section connecting England and France.

36.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Christopher Columbus continued to claim the lands he "discovered" were parts of Asia, likely so he'd get paid.

35.

The primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope is 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter, giving it a total collecting area of more than 270 square feet (25 square m).

34.

As of March 2026, there were 970 known natural satellites in the solar system (depending on your definition of a moon).

33.

There are roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in the observable universe.

32.

It takes five to 10 years for a body in a coffin to completely decompose down to a skeleton.

31.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is a web of ocean currents that loop through the Atlantic Ocean, moving 600 million cubic feet (17 million cubic meters) of water per second and 1.2 petawatts of heat — roughly the same amount of heat put out by a million power plants running at the same time.

30.

The deepest place on Earth is the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which lies about 35,876 feet (10,935 meters) below the surface.

That makes it about 7,000 feet (2,100 m) deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

29.

Researchers have shown that octopuses can be fooled by a version of the "rubber hand illusion," by stroking a real octopus arm hidden from view and a visible fake octopus arm at the same time.

When the fake arm was pinched, the octopus reacted as if its own arm had been attacked — by changing color or pulling back.

28.

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hit Earth at 27,000 mph (43,000 km/h).

27.

Roughly half of all eukaryotic species on Earth are insects.

26.

Mount Everest is only the tallest mountain by altitude, at 29,031.69 feet (8,848.86 m) above sea level.

If you measure Mauna Kea, an inactive volcano in Hawaii, from base to peak, it's actually taller, at 33,497 feet (10,211 m) in altitude.

25.

It's natural for deserts to form next to oceans, and this can make deserts very foggy.

24.

The oldest known boat is 10,000 years old, but humans probably invented watercraft by at least 60,000 years ago on the journey to Australia.

23.

Stomach acid can burn through metal, but it doesn't burn through our bodies because of a thick, sticky layer of mucus in the stomach that's alkaline and buffers the acid.

22.

Cat paw pads, also known as toe beans, are so good at cushioning falls, scientists studied them to create better footwear for paratroopers.

21.

Earth will likely last a total of 9.5 billion years, but most planets orbit red dwarf stars, meaning they'll last much longer — possibly up to trillions of years.

20.

The largest possible earthquake is most likely around 9.5 magnitude, but there's a very slight chance one could be bigger.

19.

Rainbows are not really arches; they're circles.

You can see the full circle from a high vantage point, such as an airplane or a mountaintop.

18.

It's natural for deserts to form next to oceans, and this can make deserts very foggy.

17.

Your brain can take 15 to 30 minutes to reach full cognitive capacity after you wake up, a period known as "sleep inertia."

16.

North America and Asia were joined by an enormous land bridge during the last ice age, a similar bridge enabled the ancestors of Tyrannosaurus rex to trek from Asia to North America around 68 million years ago.

15.

The oldest known human in the genus Homo lived in Africa around 2.8 million years ago, but we're not sure which species it is.

14.

The largest known prime number contains 41,024,320 digits.

13.

Frogs breathe and drink through their skin.

12.

A bullet fired from a 223 Remington leaves the weapon at up to 2,727 mph (4,390 km/h) — fast enough to cover 11 football fields in a single second.

11.

A turtle's shell is made of 50 bones.

10.

Despite what you may have seen in the movies, ancient Egyptians did not booby-trap the pyramids.

9.

The world's longest undersea section of a tunnel belongs to the Channel Tunnel, which has a 23.5-mile (37.9 kilometers) underwater section connecting England and France.

8.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Christopher Columbus continued to claim the lands he "discovered" were parts of Asia, likely so he'd get paid.

7.

The primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope is 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter, giving it a total collecting area of more than 270 square feet (25 square m).

6.

As of March 2026, there were 970 known natural satellites in the solar system (depending on your definition of a moon).

5.

There are roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in the observable universe.

4.

It takes five to 10 years for a body in a coffin to completely decompose down to a skeleton.

3.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is a web of ocean currents that loop through the Atlantic Ocean, moving 600 million cubic feet (17 million cubic meters) of water per second and 1.2 petawatts of heat — roughly the same amount of heat put out by a million power plants running at the same time.

2.

The deepest place on Earth is the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which lies about 35,876 feet (10,935 meters) below the surface.

That makes it about 7,000 feet (2,100 m) deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

1.

Researchers have shown that octopuses can be fooled by a version of the "rubber hand illusion," by stroking a real octopus arm hidden from view and a visible fake octopus arm at the same time.

When the fake arm was pinched, the octopus reacted as if its own arm had been attacked — by changing color or pulling back.

Recent updates:

This list was originally published Jan. 4, 2026, and was updated Feb. 27 and June 30 to include more facts.

Looking for more mysteries?

Here are some more incredible stories from Life's Little Mysteries:

—Do humans and chimps really share nearly 99% of their DNA?

—Why do European cities have milder winters than those in North America, despite being at the same latitude?

—Why does boiling water have bubbles, except in a microwave?