Characteristics that make us who we are

It has long been known that there are "amazing" data about the human body. Moreover, from year to year there is more and more new knowledge about the unique structure and functioning of our body. Here are 20 details published by the British "Guardian".

1. Appendix: The appendix is ​​treated as a part of the body that has long since lost its function and that can occasionally become infected and lead to inflammation. However, it has recently been discovered that the appendix is ​​extremely beneficial to the bacteria that help the digestive tract function. They use it to catch a break after doing their duty in the digestive tract, which is also where they reproduce and replenish their numbers.
2. A huge molecule: Practically everything around us is made of molecules. They vary in size, from a simple pair of atoms, such as an oxygen molecule, to complex organic structures. However, the largest molecule in nature is found in our body. It is "chromosome 1". A normal human cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes in its nucleus, each representing a very long DNA molecule. "Chromosome 1" is the largest and contains about 10 billion atoms.
3. Total number of atoms: It is very difficult to understand how small the atoms that make up the human body are, until you see their total number. An adult is made up of about 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.
4. Loss of fur: It may seem hard to believe, but humans have the same amount of body hair as chimpanzees. However, our hairs are useless and so thin that they are almost invisible. Science is not yet completely sure why humans lost their protective fur. This is thought to be to make early humans sweat more easily or to make it harder for parasites such as ticks to attach to humans, or maybe even because our ancestors were amphibians.
5. The evolution of chills: Chills represent the last trace of our evolutionary ancestors. A chill occurs when the tiny muscles around the root of each hair contract, which further strengthens it. While the man had fur, the chill made it even tougher, making it an excellent insulator. However, with the thin hair of people today, chills just make our skin look weird. Also, our hair stands on end when we are scared. Many mammals bristle their fur when in danger in order to appear larger and therefore more dangerous. Humans have also done this in the past, but now that chill effect is also destroyed although we still feel the goosebumps, just not our visual magnification.
6. Space trauma: In science fiction movies, horrible things happen to the human body when it leaves a spaceship without a protective suit. However, that is just a fantasy. In real life, there would be a slight discomfort due to the expansion of air inside the body, but there would be none of the Hollywood "explosions". Although liquid does boil in a vacuum, human blood pressure regulates the circulatory system so everything would be fine. It is indeed cold in space, but a person would not lose his body temperature so quickly, and as the thermos flasks show, vacuum is an excellent insulator. In practice, what would kill us in space is lack of air.
7. The collapse of the atom: The atoms that make up our body are mostly empty space. Despite their large number, without that space people would be much smaller. The nucleus, which makes up most of the matter of an atom, is so much smaller than the whole structure that it can be compared to a fly in a cathedral. If we lost all the empty space, our body could fit into a cube whose sides are less than five hundredths of a centimeter.
8. Electromagnetic rejection: The atoms that make up matter never touch. The closer they are to each other, the greater the repulsion between them. This happens even when objects are in direct contact - when we sit on a chair, we are not actually touching it. We levitate a short distance away from her. This electromagnetic force is significantly stronger than the force of gravity - about a million times stronger.
9. We are space dust: Every atom in our body is billions of years old. Hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and an important part of our bodies, was created in the Big Bang 13,7 billion years ago. Heavier atoms such as carbon and oxygen were forged in stars between 7 and 12 billion years ago. After some of those stars exploded they were scattered around the universe. Some of these explosions were so powerful that they created elements heavier than iron, which stars are unable to create. All this means that the components of our body are really ancient, we are space dust.
10. A quantum body: One of the mysteries of science is how something as solid and clear as the human body can be made of strangely behaving quantum particles such as atoms and their constituent parts. If you ask someone to draw you one of the atoms in our body, you will most likely get a picture similar to the solar system - with a core like the Sun and electrons orbiting around it like planets. This was indeed an early model of the atom, but it was discovered that such atoms would disintegrate in an instant. In reality, electrons are condemned to certain orbits, as if moving on rails. They cannot exist anywhere between these orbits so they need to make a "quantum jump" from one to the other. Quantum particles, electrons exist more as a collection of probabilities than as a specific location.
11. Red blood: When you see blood flowing from a cut you can assume it is red. This is because it has iron in it. However, the presence of iron is just a coincidence. The red color appears because iron is bound in a ring of atoms in hemoglobin called porphyrin, and the color is due to the shape of its structure.
12. Foreign DNA: Surprisingly, not all the useful DNA in our chromosomes comes from our evolutionary ancestors – some of it is borrowed from elsewhere. Our DNA contains the genes of at least eight retroviruses. These are viruses that use the cell's DNA-coding mechanisms to take over. At some point in human history these genes became part of human DNA. These viral genes perform important functions in human reproduction, yet are completely foreign to our genetic heritage.
13. Another life: If we look at the numbers, there is more bacterial life inside a human than human life - about 10 times more. Many of the bacteria that call us home are friendly in the sense that they do us no harm. Some are useful.
14. Conquerors of eyelashes: Depending on your age, it is very likely that your eyelashes have mites. These little creatures live in old skin cells. They are mostly harmless, although they can cause allergic reactions in a small number of people. These mites are extremely small, they can grow up to a third of a millimeter, and they are almost transparent, so it is impossible to see them with the naked eye. Almost half of the human population has them.
15. Photon detectors: Our eyes are very sensitive and can only detect a few photons of light. If you look at the constellation Andromeda on a clear evening, a small dim part of the light is visible to the naked eye, if you can notice it, you have reached the maximum of human vision without the use of technology.
16. Lots of sensors: Despite what they tell you, you have more than five senses. Place your hand a few inches from the hot iron. None of your senses are able to tell you that you are going to get burned. And yet you feel that the iron is hot from a distance and you will not touch it. This is thanks to an additional sense - heat sensors in the skin. In a similar way, we can detect pain or notice that we are upside down. Another quick test. Close your eyes and touch your nose. When doing this, you don't use the big five senses to find it, but proprioception. This is the sense that detects where body parts are in relation to each other. It's a metasense that combines your brain's knowledge of what your muscles are doing with your sense of the size and shape of your body.
17. Real years: Like a chicken, human life begins with an egg. However, there is a significant difference between a human egg and a chicken egg that affects your age. The human egg is formed in our mother - but surprisingly, it was formed when she was an embryo. The formation of your egg and half of your DNA comes from your mother and can be considered the first moment of your existence. And it happened before your mother was born.
18. Epigenetic influence: We thought that genes were a key factor in determining our physical appearance, however, they are only a small part of DNA. We believed that the other 97 percent was just garbage, but now we understand that epigenetics - processes that take place outside of genes, also have a very important impact on our development. For a while we were puzzled as to how it was possible that 20.000 genes (significantly less than the number in some rice species) were responsible for our speciation. Real knowledge is that the other 97 percent is equally important.
19. Conscious action: If you're like most people, you'll locate your consciousness right behind your eyes, as if there's a small person there controlling a much larger device – your body. You know it's not actually true, but your consciousness has an independent existence and tells the body what to do. In reality, a lot of it comes from your subconscious. Some tasks become automatic with practice, so that we no longer have to think about everyday actions. When this happens, processes are handed over to one of the most primitive parts of the brain.
20. Optical illusion: The picture of the world we see is artificial. Our brain does not create images in the same way as a camera. Instead, the brain constructs a model of the world using modules that measure light and shadows, curvature, etc... This makes it easier for the brain to write the necessary information itself into the blind spot, the part of our retinas where the optic nerves connect and which has no sensors. It also compensates for the rapid and sudden movements of our eyes giving the false image of constant vision. The downside to all of this is that our eyes are easily fooled. Movies and optical illusions work by deceiving the brain about what the eyes see.

What was not mentioned?

There are other features of the human organism that deserve to be mentioned. One of them is the ratio of brain to body mass.

Tejar de Chardin emphasized the fact that this ratio is the greatest in humans, taking this circumstance as an indicator of a complicating evolutionary trend or, if you want, internal evolutionary laws.

Namely, there are mammals that have a larger brain than a human being, but which have an incomparably larger body, such as a whale or an elephant. This coefficient, which perhaps represents the most impressive characteristic of man, was brought into close connection with intelligence and overwhelmingly placed man at the top of the earthly scale of earthly creatures.

Medical experience shows that in some cases giving patients a fake pill, with the explanation that it will cure them, often leads to improvement, as well as in those who took the real medicine

Moreover, it turned out that this genetic material allowed us to more easily overcome some evolutionary challenges.

In addition to this, a small percentage of "Denisovan" genes, which originate from Denisovan man, another extinct human species discovered a few years ago in the Altai region of southern Siberia, has been found in some modern Asian populations.

Finally, there is the phenomenon of the placebo effect. Medical experience shows that in some cases giving patients a fake pill, with the explanation that it will cure them, often leads to improvement, as well as in those who took the real medicine.

How is it possible for "nothing" to have an effect? Experiments have shown that the effect is absent if the placebo tablets contain substances that block the effect of morphine.

Although this indicates that the placebo effect is somewhat biochemical and not just a psychological effect, we know next to nothing about its nature. How thoughts affect the body's biochemistry is currently unanswered.