Like having great, authentic, existential conversations?
Perhaps you’re in a phase of your life where you’re questioning everything around you and looking for a sense of meaning or purpose. Maybe you like to think deeply and talk about those things with others. Maybe you’re just looking for some good fun.
Whatever the case, there are some pretty interesting facts and bits of information out there that can lead to some amazing conversations with those around you.
Our culture is all about shallow relationships. But that doesn't mean we should stop looking each other in the eye and having deep conversations.– Francis Chan
Here are five interesting facts to bring up the next time you're trying to get to know someone or you're simply sick of small talk and want to have a more meaningful chat:
1. We have more than five senses.
The idea that we have only five senses is a pretty old one. For some time now, we’ve been aware of many more human senses including, but not limited to:
- Balance
- Temperature
- Pain
- And the many sub-senses of interoception, such as hunger
What other senses might we have that we aren’t aware of? We’ve just begun to learn about the power and function of consciousness, so we might even discover more senses related to our ability to think and connect with conscious matter.
2. In 1965, a Senate subcommittee predicted that by the year 2000, Americans would only be working 20 hours a week.
Why are we here? What is our purpose? And why exactly do we work so hard? What are we trying to acquire? And why do we never seem to get it?
This might not at first appear to be a good opening to a deep conversation, however, if you follow the breadcrumbs, it can lead to a great talk about what our purpose is and how we should spend our life.
3. If an intelligent race 65 million light-years away looked at Earth from a telescope, they’d see dinosaurs.
We can only view the universe based on the finite speed of light.
In other words, what we’re viewing now is based on light that has reached us from a particular point in the universe. If that thing is ten billion light-years away from us, we’re viewing what it looked like ten billion years ago. If you think about it, we’re viewing all different points in history just by looking up at the night sky.
Even the light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth. So, if you look up at the sun at some point today, that’s technically the sun of eight minutes ago. Mind-blowing, right?
4. Matter can neither be created or destroyed. So, in a way, you’re just as old as the universe.
“Matter can neither be created or destroyed (only repurposed).” Remember that law of physics from high-school? Turns out, it’s a pretty significant fact to think about.
Technically, we’re made up of the matter of stars billions of light-years away, and those stars are all ancient. While our form may be 20 or 30 years old, everything that makes up our physical body, from our skin to our bones and even brain matter, has existed in the universe for billions of years. Think about that for a while.
5. We can only view a very small percent of the known universe– and have very little clue of what lies outside of that.
We have very rough maps of the universe (which takes some creative liberties, mind you), however, our ability to view the content of individual solar systems and planets only stretches out from Earth to a small area of the universe.
In fact, there are areas that may remain impossible for us to view, particularly beyond 60 billion light-years away. Acting as a sort of event horizon, anything beyond this point is completely unknown to us– and might stay that way. We have no way of knowing what lies beyond these horizons...
