Common Misconceptions Debunked

#1 Meteorites Are Hot When They Hit Earth

We've all seen the cartoons where a meteor falls to Earth (at which point it becomes a meteorite) with a red-hot tinge and smoke blowing off it in all directions. In truth, small meteorites are cold when they hit Earth in fact many are found with frost on them. A meteorite has been in the nearabsolute zero temperature of space for billions of years, so the interior of it is very cold. A meteor's great speed is enough to melt its outside layer, but any molten material will be quickly blown off, and the interior of the meteor does not have time to heat up because rocks are poor conductors of heat. Also, atmospheric drag can slow small meteors to terminal velocity by the time they hit the ground, giving them time to cool down.

#2 Lemming Suicide

There is a widespread myth that lemmings throw themselves off cliffs in order to commit suicide in a bizarre natural method of keeping the populace under control. This is entirely untrue. The myth came about because of the Disney film White Wilderness, in which lemmings were filmed throwing themselves off cliffs. What really happened is the film crew used brooms to push the lemmings off the cliff.

#3 “Just Desserts”

‘Just desserts'? Does that even make sense in context? The correct phrase is actually ‘just deserts', and don't worry if you didn't know that because you're not alone, and the chances are that someone much more intelligent than you didn't know it either. The reason for this misunderstanding comes from the rarely used noun form of the verb ‘to deserve'; something which is deserved is a ‘desert' (pronounced dessert). It's hard to tell when the usurpation of the original word was made, but it probably had something to do with witty restaurateurs naming their businesses ‘Just Desserts' as a pun, and the phrase catching on as the original is forgotten.

#4 Chameleons Change Color to Match Their Surroundings

While chameleons can be perceived to change their colour to match their background, a chameleon's colour change is actually the expression of the physical and physiological condition of the lizard. Chameleon's are already naturally camouflaged to match their surroundings, and change their colours depending on their mood, and sometimes a sign of communication. A chameleon that is frightened, for example, will turn black.

#5 Humans Use Only 10% of Their Brain

This is utterly false. No one really knows how this myth started but what we do know is how it has been perpetuated for so long.

When people first began making this false claim, psychics "decided" that this explained why some people had paranormal abilities and others didn't: paranormal powers were unleashed in people who had developed the use of more than 10% of the brain. They believed that some region of the brain, if tapped, could provide psychic abilities. This certainly helped their bottom line as thousands of books have since come out aiming to "teach" people how to develop this power.

So, the truth of the matter? Humans use 100% of their brain that is why it is there! Here is a case in point: a hemispherectomy this is the surgical procedure that removes an entire half of the brain. When this surgery is performed, the patient becomes paralyzed in half of their body.

#6 Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation Freed the Slaves

In fact, it freed little or no slaves because the emancipation proclamation (1862) declared the freedom of all slaves in the confederate states that is, the states over which Lincoln and the Union government had no control. Furthermore, it did not free slaves from any of the states that were already under union control. This would be (in a sense) like Australia trying to declare a law binding on New Zealanders when they are two separate nations. The emancipation proclamation was, effectively, worthless. It was not until the Thirteenth Amendment (December 6, 1865), that slavery was officially abolished in full.

#7 Shaving Makes Hair Grow Back Thicker or Coarser

The reason that so many people believe this is that uncut hair ends up developing a taper or split ends both of which feel softer than freshly cut hair. It is for this reason that a man's beard feels soft, but stubble feels rough. Of course, if this myth were true, every man going bald would simply get a hair cut in order to make his hair grow back thicker true also for women with thinning hair.

#8 Plants Turn Carbon Dioxide into Oxygen

I suspect this will come as a surprise to most people, but while plants do produce oxygen, they do not do it by converting carbon dioxide. The process by which this all happens is called photosynthesis and is a relatively complex process, but to put it simply, plants convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrate precursors and water (fuel for the plant). This is a light independent process it doesn't need light to perform this task. It uses a light dependent process this requires light. It takes the light and converts it to potential energy the byproduct of this process is oxygen.

#9 Danish Pastries Come from Denmark

Arguably the world's most misleadingly named food, Danish pastries actually originated in Austria, inspired by Turkish baklava. Their name comes from Danish chef L.C. Klitteng who popularized them in Western Europe and the United States in the early 20th century, including baking it for the wedding of US President Woodrow Wilson in 1915. In Denmark and much of Scandinavia, Danish pastries are called ‘Viennese Bread.'During the Islamic cartoon controversy of 2006, Danish pastries were renamed ‘Roses of the Prophet Muhammad' in Iran, due to its association with the offending country.

#10 Mary Magdalene was a Prostitute

The Bible makes no mention at all of Mary Magdalene being a prostitute. Before her seeing the risen Jesus, the only other mention besides the listing of her name is the mentioning in Luke 8:2 that she had been possessed by seven demons.

#11 Hair and Fingernails Continue to Grow After Death

Contrary to popular belief, hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after a person dies. The most likely cause of this myth is shrinkage in the skin after death which gives the false appearance of growth of the nails.

#12 72 Black Eyed Virgins

Muslim martyrs will not go to heaven and marry 72 black eyed virgins. This idea stems from a mistranslation: the Quran says martyrs going to heaven will get "hur," and the word was taken by early commentators to mean "virgins." But in Aramaic, hur meant "white" and was commonly used to mean "white grapes," which the Quran compares to crystal and pearls, and contemporary accounts have paradise abounding with fruit, especially white grapes.

#13 Water Spins in Different Directions

Another bane of cartoons. Toilet water does NOT spin in a given direction due to being in a particular hemisphere of the Earth. That phenomenon only occurs in weather patterns of hundreds of miles in size like hurricanes, due to the rotation of the Earth. So there.

#14 Paul Revere's Ride

Paul Revere was not the only American colonist who rode to warn the Minutemen of the British before the battle of Lexington and Concord of the American Revolutionary War. The story of Paul Revere is largely based on the poem "Paul Revere's Ride", written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1860.

Check out Sybil Ludington, Israel Bissell, Samuel Prescott,and William Dawes for a history lesson.

I can't chance you not researching Sybil so here's a little tidbit to get you curious: She was 16 and her ride was twice as long as Revere's!

#15 Male Member Enhancement

It is widely believed that you can extend your penis or widen its girth with special devices or medications. This is patently untrue and the source of millions of spam emails sent around the world every day. Vacuum pumps, pills, stretching techniques: none of them make one iota of difference to the size of your manhood. The only way to enlarge your penis is to have enhancement surgery. This is, obviously, extremely expensive, extremely painful, and extremely gruesome or so I am told!

#16 Goldfish Have a Three Second Memory

Goldfish are often thought of as having very short memories usually up to a few seconds at the most. In fact, goldfish have been trained to navigate mazes, and after a few months it can recognize its owner.

#17 Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is Bad

First off, MSG is a naturally occurring substance found in things like tomatoes, mushrooms, and seaweed. It was first isolated and presented in pure powder form in 1907 and 1909 respectively. MSG is a flavor enhancer that excites the fifth taste sense umami (the others being salt, sweet, sour, bitter). MSG is to umami, as sugar is to sweet. Another term for umami (and a relatively good description of it) is "savory".

When you add MSG to a bland soup or stock, it can greatly increase the flavor and add a roundness that can not be obtained elsewhere. Most fine chefs will use natural MSG when possible through the inclusion of tomatoes or mushrooms, but many will also use the powder directly. It is a myth that MSG makes you ill thanks to media scares around the world, people have an great horror of MSG, but those self-same people have no problems scoffing chips and other fast-food and pre-packaged foods, almost all of which contain it.

#18 The North Pole is North and the South Pole is South

Actually, in terms of physics, the North Pole (while geographically in the north) is actually a south magnetic pole, and the South Pole (geographically in the south) is a north magnetic pole. When your compass is pointing north, it is actually pointing to the south pole of Earth's magnetic field. 780,000 years ago, this would not have been the case, as the magnetic poles of the earth were reversed (this is called a geomagnetic reversal). Oh and just to complicate things further, the poles drift around randomly they are not in a fixed spot. This is most likely due to movements in the molten nickel-iron alloy in the Earth's core.

#19 Half, or more than half of all humans ever born, are alive today

This is a myth probably perpetuated by eugenicists and other people who believe the planet should be saved by population control of the human species. This is not a new myth either: in 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth would surpass the world food supply by the mid 1800s.

The Population Reference Bureau estimate that the earth has held over 106 billion humans throughout history. With a current world population of over 6 billion, that means that roughly 6% of people ever born are alive today. A significantly lower number than that given by population explosion alarmists.

#20 A Duck’s Quack Doesn’t Echo

Sounds ludicrous right? Well this rumour somehow worked up a cult following on the Internet who protested its factuality with an almost religious fervour. It got to the point that a respected scientist actually decided to take valuable time out of his day, when he could be curing cancer or something else unimportant, to test this theory. Trevor Cox, of the University of Salford, England, confirmed what all us logical people knew all along a duck's quack DOES echo.He placed a duck in a reverberation chamber and tested its quack. Sure enough he concluded that a duck's quack does echo, though the sound that comes back is very soft due to the fading nature of the actual quack.

#21 Bats are Blind

A common misconception perpetuated by its use in metaphors and similes, bats actually have fairly normal eyesight, although they are very photosensitive and often dazzled by excessive light. However, bats do often use echolocation in situations where their eyesight fails them, such as times of darkness.

#22 Worm Cloning

Many people believe that if you cut a worm in two, it will continue to live as two worms. In fact, a worm can survive being cut in half, but only one half can survive the operation; the other half dies.

#23 Specific Taste Buds Taste Specific Tastes

Try saying that five times fast! Different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue, contrary to the popular belief that specific tastes correspond to specific sites on the tongue. The original "tongue map" was based on a mistranslation by a Harvard psychologist of a German paper that was written in 1901. Sensitivity to all tastes occurs across the whole tongue and indeed in other regions of the mouth where there are taste buds (epiglottis, soft palate).

#24 Hitler was an Atheist

"We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."

Adolf Hitler, Berlin, 1933

One of the most damning criticisms of Hitler and of atheism in general is that Hitler, as an atheist had no morals and thus could kill freely without care or feeling. Well Hitler was certainly not an atheist; he was born a Roman Catholic, although how religious he actually was is debatable. It is clear though that Hitler was an evil man, and that his religion was irrelevant to his malevolent personality.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote fondly of his experiences in Church festivals, and as leader of the Nazi party made many references to the glory of Christianity in his speeches. Including making references to Jesus' death at the hand of the Jews in an attempt to rile up anti-Semitic sentiment in his mostly religious audiences. He adopted many aspects of Catholic hierarchy, liturgy and symbolism, though he was very critical of Catholicism in private. In fact, Hitler favoured Protestantism, due to it being open to interpretation. He also ridiculed occultism and neo-Paganism that was relatively popular in Germany at the time.

Strangely enough, Hitler greatly admired the Muslim faith and tradition saying, "the Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

#25 Black Hole Nonsense

The gravity of a black hole is slightly less than the gravity of the star that caused it. Black holes are not "cosmic vacuum cleaners"; objects can settle into stable orbits around them just as they would around any other mass in space, including stars.

#26 A Mirror Image Reverses Left and Right

When we look in a mirror, our left and right sides appear to be reversed left is right and right is left. In fact, what has really happened is that the mirror has inverted us front and back. The reason that we think it is a left-to-right reversal is that we are used a person's left and right being reversed when they face turn to face us. So what is the mirror doing? Imagine a person with their back to us doing a handstand to face us, rather than turning around their right and left remain the same but their top and bottom swap. Looking in to a mirror has the same effect: nothing reverses in the mirror not bottom and top, not left and right.

#27 Humans Evolved from Monkeys

One of the most common misconceptions about Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is that Darwin claimed we evolved from chimpanzees. Darwin never actually said this, nor will any respectable biologist. This myth was actually spread by religious zealots during the 19th century in order to try and discredit Darwin and promote anti-evolutionism among the religious. Humans and chimpanzees are actually cousins (we share about 94% of our DNA with them) and both evolved from a common ancestor, thought to be Sahelanthropus tchadensis, around 7 million years ago.

#28 Napoleon was Unusually Short

Much of the reason for the rumours that Napoleon was a short man (and thus had to compensate by invading countries and becoming ruler of Europe) comes from the confusion between old French feet and Imperial (British) feet. Measured shortly after his death in 1821, Napoleon was recorded at 5ft 2in in French feet, which corresponds to 5ft 6.5in in Imperial feet, or 1.69m. This makes him slightly taller than the average Frenchman of the 19th century. Napoleon's nickname of ‘le petit caporal' has also perpetuated the rumour, with non-francophones interpreting ‘petit' to refer to his height, when it was actually a term of affection referring to his camaraderie with ordinary soldiers.

#29 CCTV Cameras Deter Crime

There is actually little evidence that CCTV security cameras deter crime; the most measurable effect of CCTV is not on crime prevention, but on detection and prosecution.

#30 Glass is Actually a Very Slow Flowing Liquid

First of all, this is not true. Secondly, the reason many people believe it is due to the nature of old panes of glass in which the bottom appears to be thicker than the top suggesting that the glass is "melting" and pooling at the bottom. The reason for this distortion in the glass is the method of manufacturing in the past. You will notice that you don't see this "melting" behavior in modern glass windows. Glass is actually an amorphous ceramic