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Scientists on Twitter have been sharing some of the science miscommunications that bug them the most, including things that scientists oversimplify or under-simplify or are just poorly explained in their field.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Science communicator Susanna L Harris kicked things off with her meme-shattering fact that you've been lied to about mitochondria.
Planetary astronomer and communicator James O'Donaghue jumped in with an animation to destroy your favorite planet fact.
This one puts birds in their place.
This one ruins the poetry a little bit, but would it really kill poets to get their facts straight once in a while?
We feel like this one might be a bugbear of just about everybody, not just scientists.
This chart explains evolution much more than the chart used at schools, and it's frankly baffling that this isn't the standard yet.
This one is particularly fun and counterintuitive.
The Sun has a massive gravitational pull, containing 98.8 percent of our Solar System's mass. Despite its massive influence over all the bodies in the Solar System, it's surprisingly difficult to actually head right at it. This is because of our own planet's movement. We're traveling at around 30 kilometers (19 miles) per second, or 108,000 kilometers (67,000 miles) per hour around the Sun.
In order to get to the Sun, you need to cancel out the sideways momentum, which will cost you a lot of energy. This isn't just a theoretical idea, NASA's Parker Solar Probe was designed to do just this (though to skim the Sun's atmosphere rather than roast itself). In order to do so, it had to lose 85,000 kilometers per hour (53,000 miles per hour) of motion through the use of powerful rockets and seven gravity assists from Venus.
Though it lost sideways momentum, by its seventh and final approach to the Sun, the star's gravity will help it become the fastest human-made object ever built, at around 692,000 kilometers per hour (430,000 miles per hour).
Preach.
Prepare to have your mind blown about bees.
Twice.
Another cute "fact" is destroyed.
We're fairly sure it's widely known that not all the dinosaurs lived together, but it's weird to see that T. Rex lived closer to ourselves than to the Stegosaurus.
While we're on the topic, are you aware that a lot of the dinosaurs lived on the other side of the galaxy?
This one will likely ruin a misconception you've had since childhood if the comments are anything to go by.
And finally, a fun one.
The rest can be viewed on Twitter and are well worth your time.
