From the Earth always revolving around the Sun, to Mount Everest being the tallest on our planet, to the 7 colors of the rainbow or zero gravity in space, many things we think of as absolute truths are slightly more nuanced or false simplifications.

Some of them are:

The earth revolves around the sun

It’s something that recently came back into the public eye after a poll released last month found that 35 percent of Russians believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Although it is unlikely that the respondents made such a distinction, strictly speaking, the Earth revolves around the center of gravity of the solar system, for which researchers use the more scientific name “barycenter.”

This is the point of equilibrium around which the total mass of every object in the solar system is evenly distributed, and given the constant motion of the planets, this point is always somewhere else. But since the mass of the Sun is more than 99% of the total mass of the Solar System, its barycenter is located near the surface of our star, and sometimes even inside the Sun.

But when the barycenter is outside the Sun, our planet, like all other objects in the Solar System, revolves around an empty point in space.

PHOTO: Pixabay

Scottish bagpipe

There is none. Although they have been associated with Scotland for centuries, their origins probably lie much further east. Ancient references to the bagpipe were found in Turkey and Egypt. In Anatolia, Hittite reliefs have been discovered dating to 1000 BC, some time after the fall of their empire, which appear to depict bagpipes. However, not all archaeologists are sure of this.

A somewhat more substantial reference to the use of bagpipes made from dog skin and bones in ancient Egypt was documented in the 5th century BC by the Greek playwright Aristophanes in his comedy The Acharnians. But the first known fan of the bagpipe was the Roman emperor Nero, who minted a coin depicting him playing the instrument.

He believed he inspired his soldiers before battle by playing the bagpipes, just one of his many quirks that eventually led to his inglorious demise.

Several theories attempt to explain how bagpipes actually made their way to Scotland, where they were first created, the most popular (and plausible) being that they were taken to the British Isles by Roman troops when they conquered them.

PHOTO: Caledonian Sleeper

Mount Everest is the highest on Earth

With a height of 8,850 meters (plus/minus two meters) from base to summit, Mount Everest is generally considered the tallest on Earth. But it depends on what you mean by “high”. If, for example, you consider it “closest to the moon”, then the honor goes to Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.

The fact is that the Earth is not a round sphere, it is “hit” in the middle. From the base to the top of Chimborazo is 6263 meters. But it is located on a larger “bulge” of our planet than Mount Everest, that is, it rises 10,920 meters above the center of the Earth.

And if you define “tallest” as the tallest mountain from its base to its summit, the prize goes to Mauna Kea in Hawaii: it’s about 10,000 meters tall from its base in the Pacific Ocean to its summit. The measurement is not 100% accurate, but it is still significantly higher than Everest.

PHOTO: Zeljkokcanmore, Dreamstime.com

Gravity 0 from space

We all know the images of astronauts aboard the International Space Station floating around, so it’s easy to believe that there is no gravity in space. But gravity exists everywhere in the universe – without it, most cosmic structures would collapse.

The reason that astronauts aboard the ISS appear to be weightless is that both the space station and themselves are in continuous free fall to Earth. Since objects fall at the same speed regardless of mass, the space station and astronauts fall together, creating the illusion of zero gravity.

Fortunately, despite being in a state of continuous free fall, neither the space pioneers nor the station they use fall to Earth, because the ISS orbits our planet at a speed of 27,600 kilometers per hour, enough to , to stay in orbit.

PHOTO: Flickr

A rainbow has seven colors

ROGVAIV is a lie that comes from Sir Isaac Newton and his unscientific beliefs. However, unlike most of his contemporaries, Newton believed that pure white light consisted of the entire spectrum of colors. He famously demonstrated this in the 1660s by conducting a series of experiments with a prism he used to refract sunlight.

At first, the British scientist saw only 5 colors. But he believed in the theory of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras about the harmonious universe, in which the number 7 is magical, connecting all kinds of natural phenomena, starting from the heavenly bodies (the ancient Greeks knew 7 – the Sun, the Moon and 5 planets), to the musical series.

So when Newton published his color disk in 1704, he added orange and indigo to the colors he had already identified. At the same time, what we call colors are actually the perception of our mind. The spectrum of light is a continuous distribution—and thus an infinite number—of colors that we perceive depending on how much red, green, and blue the photoreceptors in our eyes see when stimulated.

Therefore, the colors of the rainbow can vary from person to person, as you may have noticed when you were looking at one with someone else and started arguing about how many colors it had.

PHOTO: HotNews.ro.

Source: SciTechDaily.