the creepy science experiments

The 8 Creepiest Science Experiments

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• B.S., Cornell University

When science is working the way it's supposed to, experiments are well thought out, ethically conducted, and designed to answer important questions. But when science isn't working the way it's supposed to, you wind up with grafted testicles, genetically engineered spider-goats, and elephants on LSD. Here's a list of the eight creepiest science experiments, involving both human subjects and unwitting guinea pigs from the animal kingdom.

The Testicular Transplants of Dr. Stanley

You might think the worst things about San Quentin prison would be the abominable food and the unwanted attention of your fellow jailbirds. But if you were an inmate here from 1910 to 1950, you might have found yourself at the mercy of chief surgeon Leo Stanley, a fanatical believer in eugenics who simultaneously wanted to sterilize violent prisoners and "rejuvenate" them with fresh sources of testosterone.

At first, Stanley simply grafted the testicles of younger, recently executed inmates into much older (and often senile) men serving life sentences; then, when his human gonad supplies ran low, he pounded the newly detached testicles of goats, pigs, and deer into a paste that he injected into prisoners' abdomens. Some patients claimed to feel healthier and more energetic after this bizarre "treatment," but given the lack of experimental rigor, it's unclear if science gained anything in the long run. Amazingly, after retiring from San Quentin, Stanley worked as a doctor on a cruise ship, where he hopefully restricted himself to doling out aspirin and antacids.

"What Do You Get When You Cross a Spider and a Goat?"

There's nothing quite as tedious as harvesting silk from spiders . First of all, spiders tend to be very, very small, so a single lab technician would have to "milk" thousands of individuals just to fill up a single test tube. Second, spiders are extremely territorial, so each of these individuals would have to be kept isolated from all the others, rather than jammed into one cage. What to do? Well, duh: just splice the spider gene responsible for creating silk into the genome of a more tractable animal, like, say, a goat.

That's exactly what researchers at the University of Wyoming did in 2010, resulting in a population of female goats that expressed strands of silk in their mothers' milk. Otherwise, the university insists, the goats are perfectly normal but don't be surprised if you visit Wyoming one day and see a shaggy Angora hanging down from the underside of a cliff.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

It's the single most infamous experiment in history; it was even the subject of its own movie, released in 2015. In 1971, Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo recruited 24 students, half of whom he assigned as "prisoners," and the other half as "guards," in a makeshift prison in the basement of the psychology building.

Within two days, the "guards" began to assert their power in unsavory ways, and the "prisoners" resisted and then outright revolted, at one point using their beds to blockade the basement door. Then things really got out of hand: the guards retaliated by forcing the prisoners to sleep naked on concrete, near buckets of their own excrement, and one inmate had a complete breakdown, kicking and screaming in an uncontrollable rage. The upshot of this experiment? Otherwise normal, reasonable people can succumb to their darkest demons when given "authority," which helps to explain everything from the Nazi concentration camps to the Abu Ghraib detention facility.

Project Artichoke and MK-ULTRA

"Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will, and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?" That is an actual line from an actual CIA memo, written in 1952, discussing the idea of using drugs, hypnosis, microbial pathogens, extended isolation, and who knows what else to obtain information from enemy agents and intransigent captives.

By the time this memo was written, Project Artichoke had already been active for a year, the subjects of its abusive techniques including homosexuals, racial minorities, and military prisoners. In 1953, Project Artichoke mutated into the much more sinister MK-ULTRA, which added LSD to its arsenal of mind-altering tools. Sadly, most of the records of these experiments were destroyed by then-CIA director Richard Helms in 1973, when the Watergate scandal opened the unsavory possibility that details about MK-ULTRA would become public.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Despite its horrific reputation now, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study actually began in 1932 with the best of intentions. That year, the U.S. Public Health Service partnered with Tuskegee University, a black institution, to study and treat African-American men infected with the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. The problems began in the depths of the Great Depression when the Tuskegee Syphilis Study lost its funding. Rather than disband, however, the researchers continued to observe (but not treat) their infected subjects over the next several decades; worse, these subjects were denied penicillin even after this antibiotic was proved (in studies conducted elsewhere) to be an effective cure.

An astonishing breach of scientific and medical ethics, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study lies at the root of the generations of distrust of the U.S. medical establishment among African Americans, and explains why some activists are still convinced that the AIDS virus was deliberately engineered by the CIA to infect minority populations.

Pinky and the Brain

Sometimes you have to wonder if scientists spend half their day standing around water coolers saying stuff like, "how about we cross a chicken with a pig? No? Okay, how about a raccoon and a maple tree?" In the tradition of the spider-goat described above, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center recently made news by transplanting human glial cells (which insulate and protect neurons) into the brains of mice. Once inserted, the glial cells rapidly multiplied and turned into astrocytes, the star-shaped cells that strengthen neuronal connections; the difference is that human astrocytes are much bigger than mouse astrocytes and wire in hundreds of times as many connections.

While the experimental mice didn't exactly sit down and read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , they did display improved memory and cognitive abilities, to the extent that rats (which are smarter than mice) have been targeted for the next round of research.

The Attack of the Killer Mosquitoes

You don't hear much these days about "entomological warfare," that is, harnessing swarms of insects to infect, disable and kill enemy soldiers and noncombatants. In the mid-1950s, though, biting bug battles were a big deal, as witness three separate "experiments" conducted by the U.S. Army. In "Operation Drop Kick" in 1955, 600,000 mosquitoes were air-dropped into black neighborhoods in Florida, resulting in dozens of illnesses.

That year, "Operation Big Buzz" witnessed the distribution of 300,000 mosquitoes, again in largely minority neighborhoods, the (undocumented) results also undoubtedly including numerous illnesses. Lest other insects feel jealous, these experiments were conducted shortly after "Operation Big Itch," in which hundreds of thousands of tropical rat fleas were loaded into missiles and dropped onto a test range in Utah.

"I Have a Great Idea, Gang! Let's Give an Elephant Acid!"

The hallucinogenic drug LSD didn't break into the American mainstream until the mid-1960s; before then, it was the subject of intensive scientific research. Some of these experiments were reasonable, some were sinister, and some were simply irresponsible. In 1962, a psychiatrist at the Oklahoma City School of Medicine injected an adolescent elephant with 297 milligrams of LSD, over 1,000 times the typical human dose.

Within minutes, the unfortunate subject, Tusko, swayed, buckled, trumpeted loudly, fell on the ground, defecated, and had an epileptic seizure; in an attempt to resuscitate him, the researchers injected a huge dose of a drug used to treat schizophrenia, at which point Tusko promptly expired. The resulting paper, published in the reputable scientific journal ​ Nature , somehow concluded that LSD "may prove valuable in elephant control work in Africa."​

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7 Creepiest Science Experiments of All Time That Will Give You Nightmares

Scientists often run into doing crazy things in the quest of discovering something important. but some of these experiments aren’t just worthless but are unbelievably creepy..

Kashyap Vyas

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms

Techfilm Studio/Wikimedia Commons  

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity. It can tell us what is true over mere assumptions by validating the theories with practical experiments. The scientific experiments have often led to important discoveries that eventually helped the mankind to live a better life. Sometimes though, scientists in their quest for knowledge end up conducting experiments that are not only unethical but equally disturbing. The world has witnessed many of such spine-chilling and weird experiments that went badly wrong and even cost lives.

Here’s a list of 7 creepiest science experiments conducted ever that’ll surely give you nightmares:

You might have heard about the inhumane experiments done by Nazis during World War II. But they were not alone.

The Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731 carried out atrocities in the name of scientific experiments, some details of which are still left to be uncovered. It was until 1984 that Japan acknowledged about conducting cruel experiments on humans to prepare for germ warfare. Setup in 1938, the objective of Unit 731 was to develop biological weapons and was supported by Japanese universities and medical schools that supplied doctors and research staff to carry out such vile experiments. The unit used thousands of Chinese prisoners and Asian civilians as guinea pigs to develop killer diseases. The experiments included infecting wartime prisoners with cholera, anthrax, plague and other pathogens. Horrific still, some of the experiments involved vivisection without anesthesia and pressure chambers to identify how much a human can take before bursting. What’s creepier is that post-war American administration provided safe passage to some of those involved with Unit 731 in exchange of findings of their experiments.

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male is infamous because of the tragedy it caused to people suffering from the disease in the name of free treatment. Between 1932 and 1972, 600 men were originally enrolled for the project, consisting of 399 with latent Syphilis and 201 as control group. Monitored by Doctors of U.S. Public Health Service, these men were given only placebos such as aspirin and mineral supplements, rather than treating with penicillin which was the recommended treatment at that time. The purpose of the study was to understand the effect and spread of the disease on human body. Because of the unethical considerations by scientists, 28 participants perished from Syphilis , 100 died because of related complications and more than 40 spouses were diagnosed with the disease, passing Syphilis to 19 children at birth. President Clinton is 1997 issued his apology to the survivors and families of the victims of the study, stating “The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong… It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future.”

Two Headed Dogs

Vladimir Demikhov was a successful surgeon and his studies have helped medical science to advance especially in the field of organ transplant and coronary surgery. Demikhov was the first person to perform a successful coronary artery bypass operation on a warm-blooded creature. But, behind his successful operations, there are few of his experiments that can make you feel uncomfortable. His famous two-headed dog experiment is one of them. He stitched the head, shoulders and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of a German shepherd. Although the surgery was a success as both dogs could move around independent of each other, they didn’t survive very long due to tissue rejection. Demikhov created 20 such two-headed dogs, but the highest one survived only for a month. While the experiment may sound cruel, it indeed helped in pioneering organ transplants in humans.

Testicle Transplants

In one of the most disturbing experiments, Leo Stanley, the physician in charge at San Quentin Prison in California surgically transplanted the testicles of executed criminals into living inmates. Stanley felt that males who committed crimes share a common characteristic – low testosterone levels and raising it would reduce the crime rates. More than 600 inmates became the victim of Stanley’s crazy theory, and when there was a shortage of human testicles, he went on to inject liquefied animal testicles into the prisoners. Stanley claimed that the experiment was a success by citing a Caucasian prisoner who felt “energetic” after transplanting the testicle from an executed African-American convict.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, a group of researchers at Stanford University conducted an experiment to investigate the causes of conflict between prisoners and guards. 24 students were assigned the roles of prisoners and guards randomly and were put into a prison-like environment. Meant to last for two weeks, the study was abruptly ended after only six days, as it became difficult to control and maintain order. Despite being told not to use any form of violence, one in every three guards showed their tendency to abuse. Surprisingly, many of the prisoners accepted the abuses and led two of them to suffer emotional trauma. The study showed that how power of situations can influence individual’s behavior.

Zombie Dogs

Known as Experiments in the Revival of Organisms , Russian scientists Dr. Sergei Brukhoneko and Boris Levinskovsky released a video of dog heads that were kept alive by an artificial blood circulation system. Using a special heart-lung apparatus called the autojektor, the scientists showed dog heads responding to sound by wiggling their ears, blinking eyes and even licking their mouths. The experiment was repeated again by American scientists in 2005 by flushing all the blood from the dog and replacing it with oxygen and sugar-filled saline. After three hours, a blood transfusion and an electric shock the dogs were back from dead.

MKUltra is one of the most famous projects conducted by CIA to develop mind-control techniques that can be used against enemies during war. Lasted for more than a decade from 1950 to 1970, the project’s main goal was to remain ahead in the mind-control technology. But the scope widened eventually resulting into illegal drug testing on thousands of Americans. Using drugs like LSD and other chemicals along with other forms of psychological torture, the agency tried to alter brain functions and manipulate mental states of the people. The documentation related to the project was ordered to be destroyed completely, but in 1977 the Freedom of Information Act released more than 20,000 pages on the program.

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Seven Creepy Experiments That Could Teach Us So Much (If They Weren't So Wrong)

When scientists violate moral taboos, we expect horrific consequences. It's a trope in our storytelling that goes back at least to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: However well-intentioned our fictional scientists may be, their disregard for ethical boundaries will produce not a peer-reviewed paper in Science but rather a new race of subhuman killers, a sucking wormhole in space-time, or a profusion of malevolent goo.

In the real world, though, matters aren't so simple. Most scientists will assure you that ethical rules never hinder good research—that there's always a virtuous path to testing any important hypothesis. But ask them in private, perhaps after a drink or three, and they'll confess that the dark side does have its appeal. Bend the rules and some of our deepest scientific conundrums could be elucidated or even resolved: nature versus nurture, the causes of mental illness, even the mystery of how humans evolved from monkeys. These discoveries are just sitting out there, waiting for us to find them, if only we were willing to lose our souls.

What follows are seven creepy experiments—thought experiments, really—that show how contemporary science might advance if it were to toss away the moral compass that guides it. Don't try these at home—or anywhere, for that matter. But also don't pretend you wouldn't like to learn the secrets that these experiments would reveal.

Separating Twins

The Experiment: Split up twins after birth—and then control every aspect of their environments.

The premise:

In the quest to tease out the interplay of nature and nurture, researchers have one obvious resource: identical twins, two people whose genes are nearly 100 percent the same. But twins almost always grow up together, in essentially the same environment. A few studies have been able to track twins separated at a young age, usually by adoption. But it's impossible to control retroactively for all the ways that the lives of even separated twins are still related. If scientists could control the siblings from the start, they could construct a rigorously designed study. It would be one of the least ethical studies imaginable, but it might be the only way (short of cloning humans for research, which is arguably even less ethical) that we'd ever solve some big questions about genetics and upbringing.

How it works:

Expectant mothers of twins would need to be recruited ahead of time so the environments of each sibling could differ from the moment of birth. After choosing what factors to investigate, researchers could construct test homes for the children, ensuring that every aspect of their upbringing, from diet to climate, was controlled and measured.

The payoff:

Several disciplines would benefit enormously, but none more than psychology, in which the role of upbringing has long been particularly hazy. Developmental psychologists could arrive at some unprecedented insights into personality—finally explaining, for example, why twins raised together can turn out completely different, while those raised apart can wind up very alike. —Erin Biba

Brain Sampling

The Experiment: Remove brain cells from a live subject to analyze which genes are switched on and which are off.

You might donate blood or hair for scientific research, but how about a tiny slice of your brain—while you're still alive? Photo: Bartholomew Cooke

You might donate blood or hair for scientific research, but how about a tiny slice of your brain—while you're still alive? Medical ethics wouldn't let you consent to that even if you wanted to, and for good reason: It's an invasive surgery with serious risks. But if enough healthy patients agreed, it could help answer a huge question: How does nurture affect nature, and vice versa? Although scientists recognize in principle that our environment can alter our DNA, they have few documented examples of how these so-called epigenetic changes happen and with what consequences.

Animal studies suggest the consequences could be profound. A 2004 McGill University study of lab rats found that certain maternal behaviors can silence a gene in the hippocampi of their pups, leaving them less able to handle stress hormones. In 2009, a McGill-led team got a hint of a similar effect in humans: In the brains of dead people who had been abused as children and then committed suicide, the analogous gene was largely inhibited. But what about in living brains? When does the shift happen? With brain sampling, we might come to understand the real neurologic toll of child abuse and potentially a great deal more than that.

Researchers would obtain brain cells just as a surgeon does when conducting a biopsy: After lightly sedating the patient, they would attach a head ring with four pins, using local anesthetic to numb the skin. A surgeon would make an incision a few millimeters wide in the scalp, drill a small hole through the skull, and insert a biopsy needle to grab a tiny bit of tissue. A thin slice would be sufficient, since you need only a few micrograms of DNA. Assuming no infection or surgical error, damage to the brain would be minimal.

Such an experiment might answer some deep questions about how we learn. Does reading turn on genes in the prefrontal cortex, the site of higher-order cognition? Does spending lots of time at a batting cage alter the epigenetic status of genes in the motor cortex? Does watching Real Housewives alter genes in whatever brain you have left? By correlating experiences with the DNA in our heads, we could better understand how the lives we lead wind up tinkering with the genes we inherited. —Sharon Begley

Embryo Mapping

The Experiment: Insert a tracking agent into a human embryo to monitor its development.

Photo: Bartholomew Cooke Image based on photo by photo researchers

These days, expectant mothers undergo elaborate tests to make sure their fetus is normal. So, would any of them allow scientists to exploit their future offspring as a science project? Not likely. But without that sort of radical experimentation, we may never fully understand the great remaining mystery of human development: how a tiny clump of cells transforms into a fully formed human being. Today, researchers have the tools to answer that question in principle, thanks to new technology that allows for the tracking of cells' genetic activity over time. If ethics weren't an issue, all they would need was a willing subject—a mother who would let them use her embryo as a guinea pig.

To trace the activity of different genes within an embryonic cell, researchers could use a synthetic virus to insert a "reporter" gene (green fluorescent protein, for example) that was visually detectable. As that cell divided and differentiated, researchers could actually observe how genes turned on and off at various points in development. This would let them see which developmental switches transform embryonic stem cells into hundreds of types of specialized adult cells—lung, liver, heart, brain, and so on.

A fully mapped embryo would give us, for the first time, a front-row seat for the making of a human being. That information could help us direct the evolution of stem cells to repair cellular damage and treat disease (say, by inserting a healthy pool of neurons into the brain of a patient with Parkinson's disease). Comparing the details of human embryonic development to that of other species—similar mapping has already been done on mice, for example—might also reveal the differences in genetic expression that contribute to complex human attributes such as language. But the risks of human embryo mapping are too great to even consider performing it. Not only would the mapping process risk terminating the pregnancy, the viral vector used to insert the reporter gene might disrupt the embryo's DNA and lead, ironically, to developmental defects. —Jennifer Kahn

Optogenetics

The Experiment: Use beams of light to control the activity of brain cells in conscious human beings.

May I cut open your skull and implant some electronic gizmos in there? Before you say no, listen to what science might get out of the deal. The brain is a nearly infinite knot of electrical connections, and figuring out the purpose of any given circuit is a massive challenge. Much of what we do know comes from studying brain injuries, which let us crudely infer the function of various areas based on the apparent effects of the wounds. Conventional genetic approaches, in which particular genes are chemically disabled or mutated, are more precise—but those techniques take hours or even days to influence the activity of cells, making it hard to trace the impact on mental processes. To really map the brain, scientists will need a tool that is precise but also fast.

Optogenetics is an experimental method being used with great success in mice. Researchers have engineered a benign virus that, when injected into the brain, makes the ion channels—the switches that turn cells on and off—responsive to light. By flashing focused beams into brain tissue (usually with hair-width fiber-optic strands), researchers can selectively increase or decrease the firing rate of these cells and watch how subjects are affected. Unlike conventional genetic approaches, optogenetic flashes alter neural firing within milliseconds. And by aiming at specific circuits in the brain, it's possible to test theories with great precision.

One human brain, when decked out for optogenetic research, would yield unparalleled insight into the workings of the mind. Just imagine if we could silence a few cells in the right prefrontal cortex and make self-awareness disappear. Or if shining a light in the visual cortex prevented us from recognizing the face of a loved one. Ideally, the effects would be only temporary: Once the light was turned off, those deficits would disappear. Such experiments would give us our first detailed understanding of causality in the cortex, revealing how 100 billion neurons work together to endow us with all the impressive talents we take for granted. —Jonah Lehrer

Womb Swapping

The Experiment: Switch the embryos of obese women with those of thin women.

In vitro fertilization is an expensive and risky procedure as it is. So it's hard to imagine that any mother in an IVF program would ever be willing to swap embryos, entrusting her progeny to another womb while gestating someone else's child herself. But such an act of scientific selflessness could spawn some truly significant breakthroughs. Why? For all that we don't understand about epigenetics—the way that our genes are altered by our environment—the trickiest problem is this: Many of the most important epigenetic influences happen while we're in the womb.

A classic example is obesity. Studies have shown that obese women tend to have overweight children, even before dietary factors kick in. Trouble is, nobody knows how much of that is a product of genes—innate, inherited variations—or epigenetics.

The experiment would be the same as regular in vitro fertilization, except the fertilized egg of an obese mother would be transferred to the womb of a skinny mother, and vice versa.

We would know with much more certainty whether the roots of obesity were primarily genetic or epigenetic—and similar studies could probe other traits. For example, a Canadian team is currently undertaking a massive study, the Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals, to isolate the effects of in utero exposure to toxins on a child's genes. With embryo swaps at scientists' disposal, that task wouldn't require statistical guesswork. The answer would be clear as day—even if the ethics were profoundly murky. —Jennifer Kahn

Toxic Heroes

The Experiment: Test each new chemical on a wide range of human volunteers before it comes on the market.

Under current US regulations, we're all de facto test subjects for a whole range of potential toxins. So why not recruit volunteers to try out chemicals for us? Even with informed consent, medical ethicists would recoil at that idea. But it would almost certainly save lives over time.

To comply with the US Toxic Substances Control Act, manufacturers turn to testing labs, which expose animals—usually rodents—to high levels of the chemical in question. But just because a mouse survives a test doesn't mean that humans will. The only studies we can perform on people are observational: tracking the incidence of adverse effects in those we know to have been exposed. But these studies are fraught with problems. When researchers can find high levels of exposure—for example, workers in factories that make or use the chemical—the number of subjects is often too small to yield reliable results. And with broader-based studies, it becomes extremely difficult to tease out one chemical's effect, since we're all exposed to so many toxins every day.

Perform all the standard safety tests required by the Toxic Substances Control Act on humans instead of animals. To do so, we'd need to recruit volunteers of varying races and health levels—ideally hundreds for each substance.

Toxicology is currently a guessing game. Just think of the controversy over bisphenol A, about which the studies of effects in humans are maddeningly inconclusive. Testing chemicals extensively on groups of people would provide a much more accurate picture of how a given chemical affected us—data that would inform regulators and be shared with the public to help people make their own decisions. An ancillary victory: no more conflicting news reports about what is and isn't good for you. —Erin Biba

The Experiment:Cross-breed a human with a chimpanzee.

This forbidden experiment would help illuminate how two species with such similar genomes could be so different. Photo: Bartholomew Cooke

The great biologist Stephen Jay Gould called it "the most potentially interesting and ethically unacceptable experiment I can imagine." The idea? Mating a human with a chimp. His interest in this monstrosity grew out of his work with snails, closely related species of which can display wide variation in shell architecture. Gould attributed this diversity to a few master genes, which turn on and off the shared genes responsible for constructing the shells. Perhaps, he speculated, the large visible differences between humans and apes were also a factor of developmental timing. He pointed out that adult humans have physical traits, such as larger craniums and wide-set eyes, that resemble infant chimpanzees, a phenomenon known as neoteny—the retention of juvenile traits in adults. Gould theorized that over the course of evolution, a tendency toward neoteny might have helped give rise to human beings. By watching the development of a half-human, half-chimp, researchers could explore this theory in a firsthand (and truly creepy) way.

It would probably be frighteningly easy: The same techniques used for in vitro fertilization would likely yield a viable hybrid human-chimp embryo. (Researchers have already spanned a comparable genetic gap in breeding a rhesus monkey with a baboon.) Chimps have 24 pairs of chromosomes, and humans 23, but this is not an absolute barrier to breeding. The offspring would likely have an odd number of chromosomes, though, which might make them unable to reproduce themselves. As for the gestation and birth, it could be done the natural way. Chimpanzees are born slightly smaller than humans, on average—around 4 pounds—and so comparative anatomy would argue for growing the embryo in a human uterus.

Gould's idea about neoteny remains controversial, to say the least. "It got a lot of scrutiny and has been disproved in many ways," says Daniel Lieberman, a Harvard professor of human evolutionary biology. But Alexander Harcourt, professor emeritus of anthropology at UC Davis, regards neoteny as "still a viable concept." This forbidden experiment would help to resolve that debate and, in a broader sense, illuminate how two species with such similar genomes could be so different. Its outcome would take biologists deep into the origin of the species we care about most: ourselves. Let's just hope we can find a less disturbing route to get there. —Jerry Adler

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13.7 Cosmos & Culture

Five 'scary' experiments that did not destroy the world.

Marcelo Gleiser

This July 16, 1945, photo shows the mushroom cloud of the first atomic explosion at Trinity Test Site, New Mexico. AP hide caption

This July 16, 1945, photo shows the mushroom cloud of the first atomic explosion at Trinity Test Site, New Mexico.

Scanning YouTube for popular science videos, I found a jewel — clocking over 10 million views — titled " Five Experiments That Could Have Destroyed The World ."

The fact that we are here means these experiments did not succeed on this front. The message, however, is quite clear: We toy dangerously with things we barely understand — and the consequences could be cataclysmic. It's the fear that humans are not prepared for certain kinds of knowledge as they explore forces beyond their control.

Although this may be true in some cases, the following five experiments aren't the ones to worry about:

• Kola Superdeep Borehole. Russian scientists started boring a hole in the Arctic Circle in 1970, reaching a depth of 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) by 1989. Despite the efforts, the hole reached only about one third of the way through the Baltic continental crust. It's certainly not planet-threatening but still very useful for geophysical studies, including the analysis of rocks from the Archaean age, older than 2.5 billion years. Although no demons from hell were freed (some feared they would be), a surprising discovery was the large amount of hydrogen that made the deep mud appear to be boiling. It was a typical Cold War project, as the U.S. held the record until this point with the Bertha Rogers hole in Washita County, Okla., at 31,440 feet (9,583 meters).
• Trinity Test. On July 16, 1945, the first nuclear bomb was detonated in the desert of New Mexico. This was the Trinity Test , the culmination of three years of relentless efforts by a team of American and European scientists to create a weapon of mass destruction capable of deterring the Nazis (and, more to the point, the Japanese.) Initial fears that the detonation could ignite the atmosphere were shown mathematically to be nearly impossible. The test was totally safe. ("Nearly impossible" means the odds are extremely low. Calculations are often statistical and not a yes or no answer. Still, if the odds are 1 in 10 billion, you can be pretty sure it won't happen.)
• Large Hadron Collider. The behemoth particle accelerator from the European Laboratory for Nuclear Research (CERN) located near Geneva, Switzerland, was designed to collide beams of protons moving nearly at the speed of light. On July 4, 2012, scientists reported the discovery of the Higgs boson after a four-decade-long search, a triumph of modern technology and advanced particle physics. The collisions can produce mini black holes, a possibility that prompted many to fear that such objects would grow uncontrollably, swallowing the planet whole. Again, detailed calculations showed this to be nearly impossible: The mini black holes would evaporate in fractions of a second. Furthermore, collisions of even higher energies occur frequently when cosmic rays — particles traveling through space — hit the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere. If we have survived for more than 4 billion years, we should be safe from the LHC experiments.
• Starfish Prime . In 1962, the U.S. detonated a large nuclear bomb at an altitude of 250 miles, seeking to disrupt Soviet missile systems. The Cold War, again, was the culprit here. The detonation could be seen 900 miles away — and a radiation belt was created around Earth that lasted for 5 years, affecting low orbit satellites. But no planetary cataclysm should have been feared, apart from an exchange of fusion bombs with the Soviets.
• SETI. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a program that has been looking for radio signals from alien civilizations for more than five decades. The fear here is that we are also sending signals that could betray our position in the galaxy, making us easy prey for the nasty aliens. Again, the odds are extremely low for many reasons; one being the vast interstellar distances that even with incredibly advanced technology would take hundreds or thousands of years to cover. (With our technologies, it would take some 100,000 years to get to our nearest stellar neighbors.) If advanced civilizations do exist in the galaxy — and that's far from certain — they would have had plenty of time to colonize their neighboring stellar systems. The absence of evidence of alien visitation should be a comfort to us. Not proof of total absence — for this kind of proof is impossible scientifically — but certainly of the rarity of advanced life forms in our galactic neighborhood.

The biggest fear, it seems to me, comes from mutually assured destruction due to global thermonuclear conflict, a threat that, even if more remote now, is always very present. Still, that's a cataclysm created not by scientists performing experiments, but by politicians that have the power to push the button.

Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist — and professor of natural philosophy, physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is the co-founder of 13.7, a prolific author of papers and essays, and active promoter of science to the general public. His latest book is The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning . You can keep up with Marcelo on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser .

• Large Hadron Collider
• nuclear weapons

#1: Elephants on Acid

#2: The Obedience Experiment

#3: Demikhov’s Two-Headed Dogs

#4: The Initiation of Heterosexual Behavior in a Homosexual Male

#5: The Isolated Head of a Dog

#6: Human-Ape Hybrid

#7: The Stanford Prison Experiment

#8: Facial expressions while decapitating a rat

#9: The Vomit-Drinking Doctor

#10: Beneficial Brainwashing

11 Scariest Human Experiments Ever, Explained

Human experimentation evokes images straight out of a science fiction horror story. Even if horror story scenarios belong to the realm of fiction, some experiments involved horrific risks and hazards.

These practices are not only unethical but also illegal. Some of them exposed individuals to hazardous substances and physical or emotional abuse, leaving them vulnerable to harm in different contexts.

Here are 11 of the scariest human experiments ever conducted.

1. the milgram experiment.

The Milgram Experiment was led by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s at Yale University. He wanted to investigate how far individuals can go with complying with instructions from authority figures, even if they conflict with their own moral beliefs.

This is how participants started to administer electric shocks to other people. What they didn’t know was that the shocks were simulated. Even with their belief that the shocks were real, some participants continued to administer the shocks.

2. The Monster Study

A psychologist from the University of Iowa conducted a psychological study in 1939 called The Monster Study. Wendell Johnson is the name of the initiator, and he examined the impact of stuttering on orphan children. He wanted to prove how positive speech therapy helps, and he collected a group of twenty-two participants who were randomly divided into two groups. While one group received positive speech therapy, the other group experienced negative speech therapy. They were discouraged and assaulted with verbal criticism to reflect the development of stuttering issues in individuals.

This experiment was heavily criticized for its ethical implications, and it managed to cause psychological distress to the children. Moreover, it was conducted with no consent from legal representatives or guardians.

3. The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study

One of the most unethical studies ever conducted was the Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study, which took place during the 1940s. This penitentiary in Illinois aimed to examine the effects of malaria by infecting incarcerated people with the malaria parasite. Along with this, various drugs were administered to see their effectiveness in treating the infection, and this led to a successful experiment that made them understand the treatment strategies for malaria.

Even if it had contributed to the knowledge of this serious disease, the study is a whole ethical debate due to using prisoners as involuntary participants and exploiting vulnerable individuals for scientific purposes.

4. Operation Midnight Climax

A covert CIA program took place during the 1950s and 1960s as a part of the MKUltra project. It worked as a setup house in New York and San Francisco, where they seduced unsuspecting individuals using prostitutes. Once stepping into the house, they were administered hallucinogen drugs to document the behavioral effects.

During the experiment, a lot of various psychedelics were tested on unwitting subjects to get deep insights into the psychological effects of these substances. This unethical experiment persisted until it was exposed to the public in the 1970s, and this led to its discontinuation.

5. Operation ARTICHOKE

This operation was part of a bigger project called the MKUltra project that the CIA initiated to find out more about the impact of psychological manipulation on humans. They focused on finding the use of hypnosis and any other form of psychological manipulation for behavior changes and intelligence gathering.

This operation functioned by extracting information from individuals in interrogations that was then used to evaluate the effectiveness of hypnosis or other psychological methods. They investigated hypnosis effects on memory or behavior to ease clandestine operations. The program managed to show utility, but it generated controversy, and it eventually ended due to ethical concerns.

6. The Standford Prison Experiment

In 1971, at Standford University, Phillip Zimbardo conducted a study to investigate the impact of authority and power on individuals. A prison environment was simulated, and twenty-four male participants were assigned the roles of prisoners or guards for two weeks.

This study caused severe psychological distress to its participants because the ones in the guard’s role exhibited unethical and extreme acts. It managed to reveal how individuals tend to conform to assigned social roles and how they try to reach expectations even if abusive and harmful behavior is involved. The experiment was halted prematurely because it was difficult to keep it under control, but it was regarded as a classic illustration of obedience and conformity that can change an individual’s behavior.

7. The sexual reassignment experiment

Gender transition involves medical procedures and therapy to relate a person’s physical features to their gender identity. It can involve hormone therapy, chest, or facial surgeries, along with other forms of treatment.

On this topic, there are instances of gender reassembly occurring from birth. One tragic case is that of David Reimer, a Canadian citizen born male in 1965. Because of a medical error during circumcision, doctors decided to perform gender reassignment surgery, which led to raising him as a female. Around 9 to 11 years old, Reimer managed to realize his identity and started to live as a man from 15 onwards. This whole experience caused him severe depression, which tragically led to the act of taking his own life.

8. The Aversion Project

During apartheid, Dr. Aubrey Levin practiced a series of experiments classified as medical torture. They encompassed harmful and discredited actions claiming to treat homosexuality among South African soldiers. It’s crucial to notice that homosexuality is not a medical condition; therefore, it can’t be cured by medical interventions like treating an illness.

9. Unit 731

Unit 731 is known as a research facility during World War II of the Imperial Japanese Army where horrific human experiences have been conducted. It was located in Pingfang District, China, and the most horrible war crimes that were committed there are attributed to Japan.

They conducted experiments on live prisoners, war prisoners, and civilians from China, Korea, Mongolia, and Russia. The experiments that took place here were meant to test chemical and biological weapons. Even if the real scale of atrocities is uncertain, it’s claimed that thousands of people suffered cruel treatment and even lost their lives due to study activities.

10. Mentally disabled children infected with hepatitis

Willbrook State School was a government institution for children with mental disabilities in Staten Island, New York. Investigations revealed poor hygiene, overcrowding, and insufficient staff that led to conditions that equated to cruel treatment. A disturbing report shows that Willowbrook staff exposed the children to hepatitis, intentionally trying to study the virus’s effects. Multiple lawsuits and additional investigations took place and the school was closed in 1987.

However, the unethical experiments had lasting consequences, and they affected the lives of innocent children in a way that couldn’t be stopped along with the school’s activity.

11. Tuskegee Syphilis Study

A study conducted by the US Public Health Service in Tuskegee, Alabama, was meant to investigate the untreated progression of syphilis among poor African American men living in rural environments who were infected.

During the study, they had no clue about their syphilis diagnosis, and they were denied treatment even if the scientists discovered the penicillin standard cure in 1940. This is an example of unethical medical research and the racism of this era.

The result of this study was the implementation of changes in clinical research, such as formulation guidelines for informed consent and the establishment of Institutional Review Boards that started to inspect the ethical standards of clinical studies.

If you want to find out more on this topic, we recommend this book in Kindle edition that you can get from Amazon: Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR (Hopkins Introductions to the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine.

Read next: 5 Shocking Things That Happen During Coma: See How Your Body Reacts to It

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20 of Our Favorite Halloween Science Experiments

From exploding Peeps to dancing Gummy Bears

Halloween is the perfect occasion to try some spooky, creepy, candy-centered science experiments! Here, we’ve rounded up 20 hands-on Halloween science experiments that explore concepts such as the scientific method, osmosis, exothermic reactions, and more.

1. Whip up a batch of bubbling slime

Source: Epic Fun for Kids

There are gobs of recipes out there for DIY slime, but this recipe has an added element your students will love: bubbles! (Shh … the secret ingredient is xanthan gum.)

2. Experiment with this haunted Halloween hand melt

Source: Happy Hooligans

This fun activity will teach your students about the effect of salt on frozen water. They will make observations as the creepy hands melt and colorful Halloween toys emerge from the slush.

3. Create your own articulated hand

Source: De Tout et de Rien

Play Frankenstein in your classroom and teach your students to engineer their own articulated hands using construction paper, straws, string, and hot glue.

4. Concoct a batch of Wizard’s Brew

Source: Little Bins for Little Hands

Create a cool Halloween-themed chemical reaction that is just as much fun to play with as it is to learn from with this exothermic chemical reaction using hydrogen peroxide and yeast.

5. Brew up some candy potions

Source: Housing a Forest

Let your little scientists loose as they play Mad Scientist … mixing, dumping, shaking, pouring, and experimenting to create their own magic potions from Halloween candy.

6. Monitor a decomposing pumpkin

Decomposition, or rotting, is the process by which organic substances are broken down after death. Eventually, decomposition breaks organic matter down so that it becomes part of the soil again. And what better tool for this lesson than an old Jack-O-Lantern?

Source: Gift of Curiosity

7. Observe sprouting flint corn

Source: De-Tout-et-de-Rien

Explore germination with this fun experiment using dried flint corn, a shallow basin, and water.

8. Dissect a candy bar .

This lesson plan offers a starting point that can be adapted for other candies.

9. Make a Skittles rainbow !

SOURCE: Little Bins for Little Hands

This isn’t just a cool science experiment, it’s like a beautiful art project! Simple (just two ingredients) and quick.

10. Create an exploding Peeps geyser .

Exploding? Say no more! Your students will be enthralled as they watch ghost-shaped Peeps transform when they’re placed in the microwave.

11. Remove the “M” from M&Ms

You can actually make the M s float! The video above, from Kids’ Fun Science , explains it all.

12. Take the candy acid test

Source: Play Dr. Mom

A simple experiment to test whether candy has acid in it. All you need are sour Skittles, water, and baking soda. If the candy has acid, the mixture will bubble and fizz when the baking soda is added.

13. Make your own candy vending machine

There are a lot of variations of this project on YouTube from Hack Room , but it’s sure to challenge students’ engineering and planning skills.

14. Dance with gummy worms

Source: Playdough To Plato

This simple activity is perfect for little scientists who want to see creatures come to life before their eyes.

15. Create an edible solar system

Source: School Time Snippets

This awesome hands-on activity is paired with the book  Planets  by Ellen Hasbrouck. Kids will love constructing their own galaxy on a pan of brownies with leftover Halloween candy. (Ask parent volunteers to provide the brownies.)

16. Inflate balloons using Pop Rocks and Nerds

Source: Learn Play Imagine

Your students will think they are performing magic with this fun experiment! This version is a fun one, as kids get to try varying amounts of different candies and observe the results.

17. Instigate a fizzy eruption

Source: Steve Spangler Science

This experiment is a crowd-pleasing classic! Your students will love creating geysers from Diet Coke and Mentos as they learn about chemical reactions. Definitely an outdoor activity!

18. Supersize some gummy bears

Source: Playdough to Plato

Little ones will love this Alice in Wonderland style experiment. Using water, salt, and gummy bears, your students will learn about the process of osmosis.

19. Play magician with disappearing candies !

Source: Lemon Lime Adventures

What makes these candies dissolve the fastest—and why? Your students will get a taste of the scientific method as they experiment with different liquids and leftover Halloween candy.

20. Wanna know what’s really in candy ?

Source: Candy Experiments

Who knew candy had more than just sugar in it? This experiment using Starbursts and heat is eye-opening.

For more Halloween fun, check out our frightfully fun Halloween activities, crafts and games for the classroom .

Plus, free halloween writing paper plus 20 spooky writing prompts ..

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4 Of The Most Evil Science Experiments Ever Performed

Image Source: Photobucket

At their best, scientists represent the best in humanity: intelligence, curiosity, and skeptical rigor. This allows scientists to do things that ordinary people wouldn’t be allowed to get away with. If a random person burst into your house with a bubbling test tube and shouted “Quick! Drink this!” you’d call the police. Put that person in a white lab coat, though, and you’ll only delay long enough to thank them for coming in the nick of time.

Scientists are human, however, and humans who’ve been given that level of trust sometimes prove to be the last people in the world who should be trusted.

From the the Nazis to America’s own horrific misdeeds, here are four of the most evil science experiments ever carried out.

Warning: This article contains details of experiments carried out with varying degrees of consent. If this is the sort of thing that upsets you, congratulations on not being a monster.

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10 of the weirdest experiments of 2021

Brains grown in petri dishes, self-replicating zombies and the invention of otherworldly time crystals.

Every year, scientists undertake some truly baffling experiments, and 2021 was no exception. From growing mini-brains with their own eyes in petri dishes to reanimating 24,000-year-old self-replicating zombies from the Siberian permafrost, here are the absolute weirdest scientific experiments of the year.

Growing miniature human brains with their own eyes

In August, a group of scientists made news that was equal parts fascinating and horrifying when they announced they had successfully lab-grown a tiny human brain with its own pair of eyes. They made the Cronenberg-esque mini brain, called an organoid, by transforming stem cells into neural tissue, then stimulating the cells with chemical signals to form tiny rudimentary "optic cups" filled with light-sensitive cells. 

Thankfully for our collective sanity and for the mini-brains themselves, the tiny organoids don't have nearly enough neural density to be conscious — so they won't be asking themselves anytime soon how they awakened as a lost pair of eyes sliding around a petri dish. They are, however, incredibly useful constructs for studying brain development and potentially creating cures for retinal disorders that cause blindness — something that the researchers want to study. 

Read more: Lab-made mini brains grow their own sets of 'eyes'

Finding that crows understand the concept of zero

If the Cronenburg body-horror of the last entry didn't move you, this year also saw scientists reveal an experiment more in line with Hitchcock's classic horror film "The Birds" — proving that crows were smart enough to understand the concept of zero. The concept of zero, ostensibly developed by human societies somewhere in the fifth century A.D., requires abstract thinking. So it came as quite a surprise when a June paper in The Journal of Neuroscience revealed that crows not only picked zero as distinct from other numbers, but also associated it more readily with the number one than with higher numbers.

Scans of the birds' brain activity during the experiments showed that crows have specially tuned neurons for understanding the null number, but what they use those brain cells for (besides potentially plotting to take over the world, of course) is a mystery. The scientists were amazed that both human and crow brains can compute zero even though we shared our last common ancestor with birds well before the extinction of the dinosaurs; this shows that evolution takes multiple routes to create brains with the same higher-level functions.

Read more: Crows understand the 'concept of zero' (despite their bird brains)

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Figuring out why brazil nuts rise to the top of the bag

April saw researchers finally finding the answer to one of humanity's most pressing questions: Why do Brazil nuts rise to the top of the bag? The nutty mystery was resolved by shaking a mixture of peanuts and Brazil nuts, with the Brazil nuts placed at the bottom, and taking a 3D X-ray scan of the bag after each shake. It turned out that successive shakes eventually moved the larger nuts into a vertical orientation, after which every shake forced them upwards. The scientists believe their research could help engineers design better ways to prevent size segregation from occurring in other mixtures — something that, while vitally important for bags of nuts, could have essential applications in medicine and construction. 

Read more: 'Brazil nut puzzle' cracked by researchers

Creating a mutant "daddy shortlegs"

By switching off certain genes in the daddy longlegs , scientists created a stunted "daddy shortlegs" version — but why? By shortening the famous arachnid's legs, the researchers hoped to reveal the secrets behind its body plan as well as its unique method of locomotion: walking with three pairs of legs and waving the longest pair about to feel its way around. 

After the gene tweak, the legs of the stunted daddy shortlegs had not only changed in size, but also in shape; they morphed into short food-manipulating appendages called pedipalps. This offered the scientists a glimpse back in time at the kinds of creatures that daddy longlegs could have evolved from 400 million years ago. And this isn't the last mutant arachnid the scientists want to create; they also plan to mutate spider fangs to glean similar insights into their evolution.

Read more: Mutant 'daddy shortlegs' created in a lab

Turning water into a shiny golden metal

From early antiquity all the way to the 17th century, alchemists were obsessed with the philosopher's stone: a mythical substance with the power to transmute lead into gold . In July, scientists reported an experiment that looked a little like the fabled process: for just a few fleeting seconds, they were able to transform water into a shiny, golden metal. The researchers achieved this by mixing the water with sodium and potassium — metals which donate their extra electrons to the water, and therefore make the water's electrons wander freely, rendering it metallic. The briefly metallic water they created could provide scientists with some key insights into the highly-pressurized hearts of planets, where water could be squished so intensely that this process occurs naturally.

Read more: Scientists transform water into shiny, golden metal

Inventing an otherworldly time crystal

In July, researchers working with Google revealed that they had created a time crystal inside the heart of the tech giant's quantum computer, Sycamore. The crystal was a completely new phase of matter that the researchers claimed was able to evade the second law of thermodynamics , which dictates that entropy, or the disorder of a system, must always increase. Unlike other systems, which see their entropy increase over time, the time crystal's entropy did not increase no matter how many times it was pulsed with a laser. The truly remarkable thing about the weird quantum crystals is that they are the first objects to break a fundamental symmetry of the universe, called discrete time-translation symmetry. Scientists are hoping to use the otherworldly crystals to test the boundaries of quantum mechanics — the strange rules that govern the world of the very small. 

Read more: Otherworldly 'time crystal' made inside Google quantum computer could change physics forever

Reviving 24,000-year-old zombies from Russian permafrost

If you were to find a group of zombies from the Pleistocene epoch frozen inside Siberian permafrost, reviving and cloning them is probably not high on your agenda. However, that's exactly what scientists described in a June paper published in the journal Current Biology . Thankfully, these zombies aren't the shambling, fictitious brain-eaters popularized by George Romero, but are instead tiny multicellular organisms called bdelloid rotifers. Once thawed, the tiny creatures began reproducing asexually through a process called parthenogenesis, creating perfect clones of themselves. Remarkably, analysis of the soil around the creatures showed that they had been frozen for 24,000 years, and they had survived by putting themselves inside a protective stasis called cryptobiosis. Scientists are hoping to study this clever trick to better understand cryopreservation and how it could be adapted for humans. 

Read more: 24,000-year-old 'zombies' revived and cloned from Arctic permafrost

Drilling the deepest ocean borehole ever in the Pacific Ocean

In May, scientists working off the coast of Japan used a long, thin drill called a giant piston corer to drill a 5 mile (8,000 meter) hole to the bottom of the Japan Trench. The scientists then extracted a 120-foot-long (37 m) sediment core from the bottom of the sea, hauling it all the way back up to their ship. The researchers wanted to examine the sediment core because they were searching for clues into the region's earthquake history — the drill site is located very close to the epicenter of the magnitude-9.1 Tohoku-oki earthquake. The 2011 quake caused an enormous tsunami that smashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and caused a devastating meltdown. 

Read more: Scientists just dug the deepest ocean hole in history

Releasing a 'Russian doll' set of stomach-bursting parasites

A July study published in the journal Molecular Biology revealed that an already weird past study had produced even weirder unintended consequences. Decades ago, the Finnish scientist Ilkka Hanski introduced the Glanville fritillary butterfly onto the remote island of Sottunga, planning to study how a population of one species placed inside a harsh habitat could survive. Little did he know, the butterflies harbored a species of stomach-bursting parasitic wasp, and those wasps also carried their own, smaller, stomach-bursting hyperparasite — itself a parasitic wasp. Once the butterflies were released on Sottunga, the wasps erupted, spreading across the island with their hosts. This experiment provided later scientists with not only a fascinating ecological study, but also a clear warning that we must understand the ecological webs that form around endangered species before introducing them into new environments. 

Read more: 'Russian doll' set of stomach-bursting parasites released inside butterfly on remote Finnish island

Growing magic mushrooms in the blood through an ill-advised injection

Okay, so this one wasn't done by a scientist, but it's by far one of the weirdest amatuer experiments we've heard this year. A January study in the Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry revealed that a man who had brewed a "magic mushroom" tea and injected it into his body ended up in the emergency room with the fungus growing in his blood. After injecting the psilocybin tea, the man, who had hoped to relieve symptoms of bipolar disorder and opioid dependence, quickly became lethargic, his skin turned yellow and he started vomiting blood. The man survived, but needed to take antibiotics and antifungal drugs to remove the psychoactive fungus from his bloodstream. He also had to be put onto a respirator. A growing body of research indicates that psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms, could be a promising treatment for depression , anxiety and substance abuse — but only if taken safely. 

Read more: 'Magic mushrooms' grow in man's blood after injection with shroom tea

Originally published on Live Science.

Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.

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Here’s why daytime talk pioneer phil donahue was an ‘snl’ favorite, 21 terrible performances by great actors, here’s the first car to get the hot wheels treatment, 27 strange things students did during a college lecture, 5 of the creepiest science experiments ever.

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Science is usually around to take scary stuff and make it less ominous. Science is what tells us that Michael Myers couldn't survive those wounds, that a giant shark wouldn't actually seek revenge, and that Chucky would in reality have to rely almost entirely on projectile weapons.

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That said, some scientists seem dedicated to exploring all of the ways that Lovecraftian horror can be made real for their test subjects. They've discovered that ...

5 Brain Stimulation Can Make You Sense A "Shadow Person" Behind You

The right gadgets can put a ghostly figure right in a room with you, and we're not talking about holograms desecrating the sanctity of the Coachella Music Festival . Scientists have actually figured out the process behind how we create ghosts in our own minds . And they can now replicate the process at will ... you know, in case we ever need to do that.

Stimulation via electrodes and a robotic apparatus have been shown to make subjects believe they are surrounded by multiple spectral wraiths, ones that alternately lurk, mimic movements, and even touch their backs with " invisible fingers ."

According to Professor Olaf Blanke (a man whose name seems to indicate that he'll soon declare war on the Fantastic Four), "Our experiment induced the sensation of a foreign presence in the laboratory for the first time. It shows that it can arise under normal conditions, simply through conflicting sensory-motor signals. This confirms that it is caused by an altered perception of their own bodies in the brain." Another way to put it is they scared the shit out of some coeds by hooking stuff up to their bodies until they thought the lab was haunted.

Incredibly, the point of all this was not to come up with a fun and exciting new way to induce a heart attack. Rather, it was to identify the parts of the brain that cause us to see spirits and provide a rational explanation for many claims of the supernatural on record. So the next time someone runs out of their house shrieking about poltergeists, you can calm them down by saying, "Actually, it was science! The ghosts are in your skull. "

Related: 5 Of The Most Horrifying Human Experiments Ever Conducted

4 The "Bloody Mary" Game Really Does Make You See Monsters

If you weren't among the adolescents who went and Beelzebub'd a perfectly good slumber party by playing Bloody Mary, here's what it is: After the giggling has died down, a duly chosen participant stares into a mirror by candlelight while chanting the name "Bloody Mary" repeatedly. That's it. Well, except for the part of the ritual where a hideous "Bloody Mary" face appears in the reflection. But that's just a teenage urban legend, right?

Alarmingly, researchers have discovered that this particular phenomena is real, but thankfully it's only as paranormal as security cam moth ghosts . Not that it wasn't creepy as fuck for the people participating in the experiments conducted by Dr. Giovanni Caputo, who calls this the "Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion." It involved getting 50 subjects to stare at a mirror in a dimly lit room for ten minutes until unspeakable abominations started to appear. According to the study, it usually took less than a minute for people to see stuff like messed-up versions of their own face, dead relatives, portraits of their ancestors, and monsters.

That's seriously all it takes. You can go try it right now if you want. I'll wait.

What's actually happening is something called neural adaptation, which means the neurons in our brains go a little stir-crazy when forced to look at the same thing for extended periods of time. As for Dr. Caputo, he apparently wasn't satisfied with bamboozling the unsuspecting into confronting " fantastical and monstrous beings ." So he also concocted an experiment wherein 20 "healthy young individuals" were told to stare at each other, eyeball-to-eyeball, in low-light conditions. And while this scenario sounds like a completely different game teenagers play at sleepovers, Caputo once again discovered that, as the old saying goes, all roads lead to monsters.

Related: The 7 Most Hilariously Creepy Science Experiments Ever

3 VR Trickery Unlocks Bizarre Body Illusions

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm wanted to raise the bar in the twin fields of screwing with people's minds and terrifying them with body horror. For that, they knew they needed some cutting-edge technology.

Allegedly to learn how our relationship to our own arms and legs affects our perception of the world around us, they've been plunging volunteers into various hellscapes using VR headsets and mannequins , all to trick them into thinking that their various appendages are Barbie and/or Sasquatch-sized . They also tested this on themselves, with one of the scientists describing the process: "It is a crazy and funny phenomenon to be a small Barbie doll being touched by a gigantic hand that is bigger than your own body." Why, what a not at all creepy thing to say!

The end goal of these experiments is purportedly to better remotely control robots for things like deep-sea pipe repair and microsurgery (and the inevitable Kaiju battles the scientists are not allowed to discuss). And t o further study how our brains create a " self image ," they've also been recreating out-of-body experiences with VR devices , a little deception, and just a dash of sadism :

"In both studies, participants wore goggles hooked up to cameras planted behind them, so that participants had a view of their own backs. Then they were physically stimulated in ways that would enhance or reduce the feeling that their selves were located outside their bodies. To be certain -- and to get some harder data -- he hooked up his participants to stress-monitoring devices, and then swung a hammer at the space where the illusory chest would have been. The readings showed signs of stress all right. Many participants also visibly flinched."

You know. For science.

Related: The 6 Cruelest Science Experiments Ever (Were Done On Kids)

2 Inducing The Unthinkable Terror That Is Sleep Paralysis

As anyone who's ever experienced the phenomenon can tell you, sleep paralysis is a walk in the park -- a blood-curdling Slender Man, Babadook, and John Wayne Gacy park. Basically you wake up, are unable to move your limbs, then start having incredibly realistic hallucinations that range from intruder scenarios ("in which the person feels the presence of an evil, threatening individual"), to so-called "incubus hallucinations" (where you think a creature is sitting on your chest trying to suffocate you), to out-of-body experiences (you're suddenly looking down at your own paralyzed self).

Believe it or not, there are those who purposefully try to bring on these instances of hideous frozen helplessness in order to achieve more " extraordinary dreaming . " More rational people would rather eliminate sleep paralysis from their lives entirely , so researchers are hard at work studying the problem ... by waking up volunteers every hour, on the hour until the waking nightmares kick in . After all, h ow can you treat the horror without inducing the horror? Let's just cite the notes from the study:

"She ... was suddenly attacked by paralysis. She felt much stronger fear than ever before. She tried to fight the paralysis by turning over in bed. However, despite an attempt at turning, her paralysis did not cease."

You have to love the clinical "She felt much stronger fear than ever before" phrasing. Another subject:

"He tried to move his hands but could not. He heard strange sounds like a cassette tape winding quickly."

Well, that's not so bad. Let's see how the final subject did-

"In the dream, she saw the 'god of thunder' fly above her, and then her feet were paralyzed. She was frightened at her paralysis and woke up. She saw the strange face of a man on the wall of the bedroom."

Jesus Christ .

Related: The 10 Craziest Scientific Experiments Ever Conducted

1 Messing With The Air Can Instill Fear In The Fearless

So clearly, scientists are working around the clock to find amazing new ways to terrorize unsuspecting people, which is perfectly fine, despite also being the fixation of the Scarecrow. But these scientists are confounded by a particular group of people who physically cannot feel fear to any real degree, due to not having a functioning amygdala. The scientists, of course, took that as a challenge and set out to scare the bejeezus out of them.

Justin Feinstein at the University of Iowa found that test subjects with the aforementioned brain condition couldn't care less about standard goosebump fuel, like snakes, spiders, panel-van-driving clowns, or even a weird combination of all three at their front door. In fact, they couldn't even recognize the facial cues that indicated fear on the faces of others. But Dr. Feinstein eventually discovered that even the clinically fearless can indeed be spooked -- you simply have to mess with the air they're breathing . Yes, just like the Scarecrow.

The SM, AM, and BG brains show dark spots where normally heebie-jeebies-producing parts should be. And what Feinstein found was that even these three individuals, who had the misfortune of being cursed with one of the world ' s worst superpowers , can be freaked out by nothing more than tricking their goddamned brains into thinking they're suffocating .

Breathing high levels of CO2 -- tripping an alarm in the brain that screams "YOU CAN'T BREATHE" -- made these people feel fear, and then panic. And if that doesn't seem that bad to you, keep in mind that these subjects did not previously know what fear felt like . Stop and think about that. Feinstein said, " The patients experienced significantly more fear and panic than the controls," presumably because the control group knew what they were feeling. For the brain-damaged group, it was venturing into a realm of terror they previously didn't even know existed.

So ... mission accomplished?

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Top 30 Halloween Science Experiments: Spooky Experiments

Welcome to our spooky laboratory of Halloween delights! We are thrilled to present an enchanting compilation of the top 30 Halloween experiments specially curated for students and teachers.

Halloween offers an opportunity to dive into mysterious reactions, uncanny creations, and spine-chilling observations. These hands-on experiments are suitable for all age groups.

Whether you’re a daring teacher searching for captivating activities or a curious student craving a thrilling learning experience, we are here to make your Halloween unforgettable.

Get ready to explore the dark corners of science and unravel the mysteries that lie within this bewitching season.

1. Ghost Rockets

This thrilling activity combines the mystery of ghosts with the excitement of launching rockets. By using a few simple materials, students can create their own “ghost rockets” that soar through the air with an eerie charm.

Learn more: Ghost Rockets

2. Magnetic Flying Ghosts

Get ready to be mesmerized by these magical Magnetic Flying Ghosts this Halloween! This captivating science experiment combines the allure of ghosts with the wonders of magnetism.

Learn more: Magnetic Flying Ghosts

3. Ghost in a Bottle

As the chemicals react, carbon dioxide gas is released, causing the balloon to expand. This experiment not only intrigues and mesmerizes but also teaches important concepts like chemical reactions and gas formation.

Learn more: Ghost in a Bottle

4. Leakproof “Brain in a Bag” Surgery Experiment

This captivating activity allows students to step into the shoes of a surgeon as they perform a simulated brain surgery. By using a specially designed bag filled with liquid and a model brain, students can practice their surgical skills without the mess.

Learn more: Steamsational

5. Frankenstein’s Hand

It’s a spine-chilling opportunity for students to learn the wonders of science while embracing the Halloween spirit.

Learn more: Frankenstein’s Hand

6. Ghosts Craft

Get ready to get crafty and summon the Halloween spirit with a ghost-themed craft project! This delightful activity allows students to create their own spooky and adorable ghosts using simple materials.

Learn more: Ghost Craft

7. Creepy Density

Explore the spine-chilling world of creepy density with this intriguing science experiment! By using a few simple materials like water, oil, and various objects, students can investigate how different substances have different densities.

Learn more: Creepy Density

8. Ghosts Mud

As they knead and mold the mud, it takes on a ghostly appearance, resembling ethereal apparitions emerging.

Learn more: Ghost Mud

9. Pumpkin Decomposition

This experiment not only teaches important concepts like decomposition and nutrient cycling but also fosters an understanding and appreciation for the natural world.

Learn more: Pumpkin Decomposition

10. Flying Tea Bag Ghosts

Students can transform ordinary tea bags into soaring apparitions by carefully cutting and decorating them to resemble ghostly figures.

Learn more: Flying Tea Bag Ghosts

11. Witches Brew

Get ready to brew up some magic with the mysterious Witches Brew! This enchanting activity allows students to create their own concoction using a combination of ingredients to simulate a bewitching potion.

Learn more: Witches Brew

12. Make Spooky Noises

Using simple objects found around the house, students can produce eerie and haunting sounds that are perfect for Halloween.

Learn more: Make Spooky Noises

13. Jumping Ghosts

This captivating activity combines the spooky allure of ghosts with the mysterious power of static electricity. Students can create their own ghostly figures using lightweight materials like tissue paper or fabric.

Learn more: Jumping Ghost

14. DIY Glow-in-the-Dark Window Gel Clings

This illuminating craft allows students to create their own spooky and mesmerizing window decorations using glow-in-the-dark gel clings.

Learn more: Science Kiddo

15. Articulated Hand Model

Learn about the intricacies of anatomy with the fascinating Articulated Hand Model! This engaging activity allows students to create a realistic hand model that mimics the movements of a human hand.

Learn more: DIY Articulated Hand Model

16. Create Wizard’s Brew or Witch’s Potion

This enchanting activity allows students to create their own mystical potions using a combination of ingredients and imagination.

Learn more: Create Wizard’s Brew or Witch’s Potion

17. Halloween Hand Melt

This experiment not only captivates and intrigues but also teaches important concepts like solubility and the effects of temperature. It’s a hauntingly exciting way for students to explore the wonders of science while embracing the spirit of Halloween.

Learn more: Halloween Hand Melt

18. Exploding Peep Geysers

As the heat builds up inside the marshmallows, they rapidly expand and release a geyser-like eruption of sugary foam.

Learn more: Exploding Peep Geysers

19. Frankenstein’s Phlegm

This slimy and gooey activity combines the creepy essence of Frankenstein with a revolting concoction.

Learn more: Frankenstein’s Phlegm

20. Pumpkin Slime

This sensory experience not only sparks creativity and imagination but also promotes fine motor skills and tactile exploration. It’s a delightfully messy way for students to embrace the Halloween spirit and engage in hands-on science.

Learn more: Pumpkin Slime

21. Spiders with Light-Up Eyes

Don’t miss out on the chance to bring your Spiders with Light-Up Eyes to life and add a spooky glow to your Halloween decorations!

Learn more: Spiders with Light-Up Eyes

22. Halloween Robots

Students can design and build their Halloween-themed robots using materials like cardboard, motors, sensors, and craft supplies.

Learn more: Halloween Robots

23. Glowing Crystal

Prepare to witness the enchanting beauty of a Glowing Crystal this Halloween! This mesmerizing activity combines the captivating allure of crystals with a touch of luminescence.

Learn more: Glowing Crystal

24. Pumpkin Power Project

This project not only sparks curiosity and creativity but also introduces basic concepts of circuits and electrical energy.

Learn more: Science Buddies

25. Jello Worms for Halloween

It’s a wiggly opportunity for students to embrace the Halloween spirit and delight with these deliciously creepy Jello Worms.

Learn more: Jello Worms for Halloween

26. Halloween Catapult

Get ready for a thrilling Halloween activity that combines engineering and excitement: the Halloween Catapult! Students can design and build their own catapult using materials like popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and a spoon.

Learn more: Halloween Catapult

27. Fizzing Eyeballs

This experiment not only engages and fascinates but also teaches important concepts of acid-base reactions and effervescence. It’s a spine-chilling opportunity for students to embrace the Halloween spirit and explore the wonders of science.

Learn more: Fizzing Eyeballs

28. Foaming Bubbly Witches Brew: A Sensory Play

Students can create their own cauldron-like container using a large bowl or bucket, filling it with water and adding non-toxic food coloring to create a bewitching potion.

Learn more: Foaming Bubbly Witches Brew

29. Spinning Spider

Get ready for an arachnid adventure that combines the creepy allure of spiders with the fascinating magnet science: Spinning Spiders! Students can create their spinning spider using materials like a small cardboard cutout of a spider, a magnet, and a string.

Learn more: Spinning Spider

30. Halloween Magic Milk

Get ready for a spellbinding Halloween experiment: Halloween Magic Milk! This captivating activity combines the eerie ambiance of Halloween with a touch of scientific magic.

Learn more: Halloween Magic Milk

Similar Posts:

• Top 100 Fine Motor Skills Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers
• 68 Best Chemistry Experiments: Learn About Chemical Reactions
• 35 of the BEST Educational Apps for Teachers (Updated 2024)

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Disturbing Secret Science Experiments That Actually Happened

Scientists are genuine heroes. After all, they've solved some of the world's biggest problems with discoveries and inventions like pasteurization, X-ray machines, and air conditioning. But science definitely has its dark side. Unchecked by ethics, researchers can take their studies and experiments in some very disturbing directions.

From freaky transplants and biological attacks to mind control and illicit drug experiments, here are some disturbing secret science experiments that actually happened.

The monkey head transplant

Dr. Robert J. White was obsessed with brains. A neurosurgeon operating out of Cleveland, White once said (via Cleveland.com ), "I believe the brain tissue is the physical repository for the human soul." This obsession with the mind led White to some pretty weird places, turning him into a 20th-century mad scientist.

White's journey into scientific infamy started in the 1950s, when a Russian scientist named Vladimir Demikhov grafted the head of a dog onto the body of another dog, thus creating a two-headed mutt. Obviously, this stirred up some debate in the science community, but White took it as a challenge. In 1965, White surgically attached six dog brains into the necks of living canines. Next, he removed a monkey's brain and kept it working for 12 hours outside of a body.

But White wasn't finished grossing people out just yet. He had one last ghoulish trick up his sleeve. In 1970, White went full-Frankenstein, taking the head of a rhesus monkey and attaching it to a headless primate body. While it was too difficult to fuse the spinal columns together, the brain was perfectly functional, and the animal could taste, see, and hear. According to varying accounts, White kept his monster alive for somewhere between three and nine days.

Obviously, animal rights activists were infuriated with White's experiments, but the man did pioneer new ways of preserving brains during surgery. Plus, he won the respect of the Russians, clearly the ultimate goal of every red-blooded American. The Soviets were so impressed with his monkeys, they invited him over to check out their decapitated dogs in what had to be the most disgusting party of all time.

The Green Run

If you've ever seen an old-timey sci-fi movie, you know it's a bad idea for scientists to play around with radioactivity. They might create a giant monster, morph into an abominable creature, or accidentally threaten everyone in their community by launching an incredibly irresponsible experiment.

The latter's exactly what happened in December 1949 at the Hanford Site, a nuclear production complex in Washington state. Hanford was the plant that churned up enough plutonium to make Fat Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. In other words, this was the perfect spot to run a top-secret radioactive experiment. On December 2, scientists decided it'd be a swell idea to release iodine-131 into the air, to see if the United States military could detect the presence of " green fuel " from a distance. What's green fuel, you ask? Normally, uranium fuel is cooled for about 100 days. That way, the radioactive iodine will fade away. But if you only cool it for 16 days, then it's still incredibly radioactive, aka "green."

Now, the U.S. government worried the Soviets were using green fuel to build their bombs faster, so they needed to know if their instruments could pick up on radioactive iodine. That way, they could determine if the Russians were taking the lead in the nuclear arms race. So the Hanford scientists were ordered to release iodine into the atmosphere as a test run, but unfortunately, they accidentally released between 7,000 and 12,000 curies of the stuff. For comparison's sake, Sarah Zhang of Gizmodo notes Three Mile Island only released 24 curies ... at most .

Making things worse, the weather was less-than-ideal on that December day, and the iodine spread over 200 miles. This accident contributed to Hanford becoming the most contaminated spot in the U.S. However, government officials claim no one was harmed due to their slip-up ... which doesn't explain why they later paid two cancer patients $500,000 in damages.

The Edgewood experiments

Edgewood Arsenal is a U.S. Army facility near Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs , from 1955 to 1975, this base was home to thousands of human guinea pigs. Military officials had a whole host of drugs and chemicals they wanted to test out and, luckily for them, they had access to a huge reservoir of "volunteers."

Somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 men joined the Edgewood program . But while they signed consent forms, they were never told what kind of experiments they were participating in. In fact, they were told these tests were perfectly safe. Besides, it sounded like a good way to avoid going to Vietnam. However, upon arriving at Edgewood, they were assaulted with basically every chemical in existence. While a few lucky servicemen were given drugs like caffeine, most troops didn't get off that easy. Some were sprayed with LSD, while others were given PCP or barbiturates. On one occasion, a group of soldiers were given BZ (a drug that causes agitation and hallucinations) and then put in a newly assembled outpost. The soldiers were then forced to deal with fictitious war scenarios as scientists watched on cameras.

Most disturbingly, many soldiers were hit with deadly toxins like mustard gas, sarin, and VX. It should come as no surprise that many Edgewood veterans are still suffering from physical and psychological trauma, including diseases like Parkinson's, reports CNN . There's a problem when fighting in Vietnam was probably the healthier option.

The Harvard experiments that (might've) created the Unabomber

From 1978 to 1996, Ted Kaczynski sent 16 explosive devices to universities, airports, and unsuspecting citizens across the country. What was his motive? Well, the so-called "Unabomber" was basically an evil version of Thoreau, a recluse who hated technology so much, he attempted to reverse the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution by killing three people and maiming 23 more. Yeah, he was totally nuts.

But how did Kaczynski get so crazy? Well, there are many factors involved, and while it's wrong to blame any one incident, we can't ignore what happened at Harvard in 1959 . When Kaczynski was a 17-year-old sophomore, he signed up for a strange psychological experiment. Kaczynski and 21 other students were asked to write down their most personal beliefs and opinions. They were then going to discuss and debate their ideas with one another. Or that's what they thought anyway.

In reality, they were about to have their minds destroyed. The experiment was run by a man named Henry A. Murray, a guy who'd trained American spies to withstand interrogation (via Psychology Today ). At Harvard, Murray decided to carry on with his psychological games by running an experiment on his students. You see, Kaczynski and his cohorts weren't going to debate each other. Instead, they were strapped to chairs, rigged with electrodes, and blinded with bright lights. Then, the victims were forced to debate their beliefs with law students, who were told to be as nasty and abusive as possible. After the test subjects were thoroughly humiliated, they were forced to watch recordings of the entire affair. This went on for three years.

And naturally, when Kaczynski was later connected to Harvard, the files related to the experiment were permanently sealed.

Operation Sea-Spray

Most people generally dismiss conspiracy theorists as crackpots, and while that's often true, sometimes the crackpots are actually onto something. Occasionally, the government really does conduct secret science tests on unsuspecting citizens. For proof, look no further than Operation Sea-Spray, the 1950 experiment where the U.S. military turned San Francisco into a bacterial testing ground.

With the Cold War gearing up, government officials wanted to know which cities were most susceptible to biological attacks. They also wanted to learn how far biological agents could travel through the air. So, the Navy decided it was a good time to bomb San Francisco with a boatload of bacteria. For the experiment, they picked a microbe called Serratia marcescens, which was supposedly harmless, plus its red pigment made it easy to track.

The Navy then sailed a ship off the coast of San Francisco, spraying a giant bacterial cloud into the air. Blending into the fog, the cloud floated down streets and into buildings — soon, the 800,000 San Fran citizens were inhaling millions of germs. The Navy kept this up for six straight days — afterwards, they determined how far the bacteria had traveled.

Unfortunately (and obviously, to be frank), this incredibly unethical experiment had some tragic results. The bacteria led to at least 11 urinary tract infections that were initially resistant to antibiotics. Even worse, a man named Edward Nevin died of heart complications thanks to S. marcescens, reports Smithsonian Magazine . But that didn't bother the government. They ran tests in American cities over 239 times, and these experiments didn't stop until President Richard Nixon banned germ warfare in 1969 (so he wasn't all bad). As for Operation Sea-Spray, it didn't become public knowledge until 1976.

The Mosquito Experiments

In addition to spraying cities with bacteria, the U.S. government was also interested in entomological attacks. So in May 1955, they dropped 300,000 mosquitoes onto the state of Georgia, hoping to see how effective these bugs could be. Encouraged by the results of Operation Big Buzz , the government went on to drop even more mosquitoes on the South in Operation Drop Kick, Operation Gridiron, and Operation May Day .

But those creepy-crawly experiments were nothing compared to what happened in the Stateville Penitentiary. In the early days of World War II, U.S. officials wanted to develop drugs to fight malaria, but they needed to experiment on humans. That's how government officials ended up at the Illinois prison, offering to reduce sentences for any volunteers. It was a tempting offer, so over 400 inmates signed up ... to get bitten by 10 mosquitoes a day, reports Gizmodo . They were also given anti-malarial drugs, some of which actually caused heart attacks. On top of that, inmates suffered from serious malarial fevers that hit up to 106 degrees. Shockingly, these experiments went on for 30 years , and led to some icky results.

During the infamous Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors justified their own experiments by pointing to Stateville. While that argument didn't help them out in court ("they're evil too!" doesn't magically make you less evil), eventually the American people realized that conducting tests on inmates was a bad idea, and prison experiments stopped in the 1970s.

The reproductive radiation tests

The 1960s was an exciting time to be a scientist. The space race was ramping up and creating all sorts of interesting new questions for eggheads to crack. For example, if an astronaut went into space, what would happen to his private parts? Would space radiation have any impact on his testicles? Additionally, scientists wanted to know if atomic energy was having any sort of effect on guys working at power plants.

So in the spirit of the '60s, scientists funded by NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Department of Energy) decided to run experiments on prisoners. After all, as one scientist put it, the inmates "weren't going anywhere," so why not? From 1963 to 1973, about 130 inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary and the Oregon State Penitentiary were subjected to extreme amounts of radiation. The scientists assured the prisoners there was nothing to worry about. Plus, they would earn $25 for participating, and the scientists would even give a good word to the parole board. Sure, it sounded like a great gig, but these unlucky inmates had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Most of the prisoners were put in front of a powerful X-ray machine. Others put their testicles in a box of water, which was then zapped with radiation. These tests could last up to 10 minutes, during which time prisoners were bombarded with 400 rads of atomic power. According to Mother Jones , one rad is the equivalent of six normal chest x-rays. Imagine 2,400 x-rays in a row — yeah, these guys got hit with lethal levels of radioactivity. As a result, they had to deal with lesions, cysts, cancer, and in some cases, possibly death.

The Tuskegee experiment

Up until recently, syphilis was something of a mystery. While it'd been around for over 450 years, doctors weren't sure how to treat it. Most of the known "cures" were incredibly toxic. Hoping to understand the disease better, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) decided to conduct an experiment ... one that quickly devolved into one of the most infamous events in modern American history.

In the early 1930s, the PHS teamed up with the Tuskegee Institute, a Black college in Macon County, Alabama, to study syphilis among African-American men. The plan was to observe patients for nine months and then try to make them better. Well, that's what the PHS said anyway. In reality, their "nine-month experiment" grew into a 40-year torture session.

Exactly 600 Black men took part in the Tuskegee experiment , 399 with syphilis and 201 without. These men were lured in with the promise of free medical treatment for a variety of illnesses. But even after they were examined by doctors, none of the patients were told they had syphilis. The men were also tricked into undergoing painful spinal taps. Making things worse, in the 1940s, scientists realized penicillin was incredibly effective in treating syphilis. However, the PHS never offered the antibiotic to the sick men. After all, that would've ruined their experiment and prevented future observations.

Thanks to the Tuskegee experiment, nearly 130 men died, and at least 40 patients passed the disease to their wives. A shocking 19 children were born with the illness, and it's been shown that, thanks to the experiment, many African-Americans are now distrustful of doctors and the American healthcare system overall, reports The Atlantic . Fortunately, the PHS was exposed in 1972. Decades later, President Bill Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation, and the PHS eventually paid $9 million to their victims. Still, that hardly makes up for all the suffering.

The horrors of J. Marion Sims

If you visit South Carolina, Alabama, or New York City, you might spot a statue of J. Marion Sims. A 19th-century doctor, Sims is possibly one of the most important physicians in history. In 1855, he founded the first women's hospital in America. He was the president of the American Medical Association, and most importantly, he's been labeled the "father of modern gynecology" (via NPR ).

How did he earn that name? Well, back in the 1800s, women often suffered from something called vesicovaginal fistula . In layman's terms, after a rough childbirth, sometimes an opening would form between a woman's bladder and her vagina. This was painful, dangerous, and led to urinary incontinence. However, this kind of fistula isn't a problem in most countries thanks to Sims. He's the guy who figured out the best way to correct this problem.

But how he discovered this particular procedure is incredibly troubling. You see, Sims needed to practice his surgical techniques on human beings, so he bought or rented slaves. Sims subjected 10 women to his experimental operations, and these women went under the knife without any anesthesia. Why? Well, Sims believed Black women didn't really feel pain like white women did, so drugs weren't necessary.

Adding insult to injury, Sims would invite other male physicians to watch the surgeries ... and there were a lot of surgeries. Sims operated on one woman named Anarcha a grand total of 30 times (and that's not even counting the other nine women). Eventually, he realized that silver sutures were the key to his procedure, but that discovery came at a sickening cost. While Sims has prevented pain around the world, 10 women were forced to suffer, against their will, in the name of racist science.

Beneficial brainwashing

At first glance, Donald Ewen Cameron seems like a great psychiatrist. He worked in Montreal's Allan Memorial Clinic, was the first president of the World Psychiatric Association, and served on the medical board that decided Nazi official Rudolf Hess was psychologically fit to stand trial. But there's a dark secret under those credentials. While working at Allan Memorial, Cameron ran one of the most horrific experiments in Canadian history.

It all started with good intentions — Cameron thought he could cure schizophrenia. All he had to do was reprogram the brain to work normally, and to do that, he had to bombard his patients with specially recorded messages. These tapes supposedly pushed out negative memories and implanted positive thoughts. Cameron called this "psychic driving," while others called it " beneficial brainwashing ." This might've been an okay tactic, except for the fact that Cameron's patients were forced to participate against their will.

During the 1950s and '60s, Cameron drugged patients and strapped them onto beds. He would then stick headphones on his comatose victims and play messages like, "People like you and need you." This went on for days, and sometimes months. Cameron also employed LSD and electroconvulsive therapy. Crazier still, many of Cameron's victims didn't even suffer from schizophrenia. He just grabbed anyone who walked into his clinic, and at least one victim was pregnant, reports The Scotsman .

Eventually, Cameron's techniques caught the attention of the CIA, and they began funding his research, thus making him a part of the infamous MKUltra program. But eventually, the Americans cut off his cash, and Cameron ended his program. Unfortunately, he was never punished for his insane experiments.

20+ Halloween Science Experiments Kids Will Love

October is one of the best months of the year.

Not only does the tempature start to drop, but October kicks off the hoiday season, with one of the best holidays ever, Halloween!

Halloween is the perfect time to explore the grosser, creepier, and spookier side of Halloween STEM.

Halloween science experiments are truly memorable, and provide tons of educational value for kids!

Easy Halloween Science Experiments for Elementary Students

Love Halloween? Love science? Then you’ll love these creepy science experiments for Halloween.

You don’t have to be a scientist to do these fun science activities at home with your kids.

These Halloween science experiments work for at home, at a Halloween party, and in the classroom to make your elementary science experiments a bit more fun!

Each of these Halloween experiments can be adapted for a wide variety of ages, from kindergarten all the way up to middle school!

What are the benefits of Halloween science projects?

Why are kids fascinated with all things spooky, gross, and creepy?

It’s definitely hard to say, but Halloween is the perfect time to take advantage of this fascination.

Kids will love learning about the science behind their favorite creepy experiences and Halloween is also a fun time to give a Halloween or spooky twist to any traditional science experiment.

Why just make a baking soda and vinegar reaction when you can turn it into a mad scientist’s lab?

Or why make a regular leakproof bag science experiment when you can turn it in to creepy brain surgery?

With a bit of imagination, Halloween science is the best science of all!

If you love Halloween science, don’t miss this list of Halloween slime recipes!

What do kids learn doing Halloween science experiments for the classroom?

These Halloween science experiments teach chlidren about a variety of scientific concepts including:

• Molecules and atoms
• Bacteria and mold growth
• Molecular bonds
• Chemical reactions
• Properties of matter

You just might be surprised how much science there is to learn within the realm of Halloween science activities!

Don’t miss the complete list of Halloween STEM activities. 

What to include in a Halloween science activity:

All Halloween science demonstrations should contain four parts:

• A question or hypothesis.
• A test or experiment.
• The recording of data.
• A re-test with additional varaibles.

Include these four elements in your science experiments to make them true experiments, rather than just science demonstrations.

Supplies for Halloween science:

Our favorite Halloween science books:

Grab these Halloween science experiment books if you need more ideas!

READY TO GO HALLOWEEN SCIENCE KITS

If you’re short on time, try ordering one of these Halloween science kits!

Now, let’s get to the creepy science experiments!

Halloween Science Experiments for the Classroom

Halloween science experiments for the elementary classroom.

Bring the spooky science of science to life this Halloween with these spooky Halloween science experiments for kids!

Hand Washing Science Experiment

In the Germs Handwashing Science Experiment kids will learn why it's important to wash your hands!

Stunning Glow in the Dark Oobleck Experiment for Kids

Try the Glow-in-the-dark Spooky Oobleck for a creepy twist on the classic non-Newtonian science experiment.

Osmosis for Kids: Blood Cell Membrane Experiment

Try the Blood Cell Osmosis for Kids Experiment and learn about how blood cells work.

Bring The Classroom to Life with a 3D Blood Model

Speaking of blood, kids will really love making a 3d Blood Cell Model!

Become a Halloween Hero when You Make Boiling Blood Slime

Make someone's blood boil when you make this bubbling slime that looks just like blood!

Bread Mold Experiment

Explore the gross side of science this Halloween when you do a classic Bread Mold Experiment.

Gross and Jiggly Halloween Jello Worms

Making Jello worms is creepy, but it's also a lesson in kitchen science! Get the Halloween Jello Worms Experiment tutorial here.

Exploding Minecraft Creeper-Inspired Alka Seltzer Rockets

If your students love Minecraft, try this Exploding Minecraft Creeper Chemistry Experiment.

The Perfect Halloween Twist on the Leakproof Bag Experiment

Get a little creepy with this Vodoo Doll Leakproof Bag Experiment.

How to Make a Spooktacular Halloween Density Jar

Halloween can mix with spooky and science lessons in this fun Halloween Density Jar Science demonstration!

Bubbling Spider Leg Potion

Practice the spooky art of witch science when you make a Bubbling Spider Leg Potion Chemistry Experiment.

Halloween Science Lab: Erupting Mad Scientist Potion

Build your own DIY Halloween Science Lab and think like a mad scientist!

Halloween Science: Build a Cotton Swab Skeleton

Create your own spooky skeletons and learn about the body with Cotton Swab Skeleton Science.

Witch-Inspired Salt Crystals Science Project for Halloween

Make salt crystals that look like witches with this Witch Salt Crystal Science Experiment.

How to Make a Ghost Cartesian Diver

Love the Cartesian diver project? This diving ghost version is even more fun!

"Brain Surgery" Leak Proof Bag Experiment

Find out what it's like to be a mad scientist with a Brain Surgery Leakproof Bag Experiment!

Edible Pitri Dish Bacteria: Bacteria You Won't Regret Eating!

Try your hand and making your own Edible Pitri Dish Bacteria.

Be the Best Science Teacher Ever with Ghost Chromatography

Learn all about what colors are lurking in your favorite marker when you try the Ghost Chromotography Science Experiment.

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The Russian Sleep Experiment And Why We Believe In Urban Legends

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The Russian sleep experiment is often used as an example of the horrific experiments humans have carried out on each other – only, it never actually happened.

Dr. Russell Moul

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Russell is a Science Writer with IFLScience and has a PhD in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology.

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Did you get got by the urban legend? 

Image credit: Navid Linnemann/Shutterstock.com, modified by IFLScience 

In 1947, a covert Soviet test facility carried out experiments into sleep. The researchers took several test subjects – prison inmates – and sealed them in an airtight space that was then filled with an experimental stimulant gas designed to prevent sleep. Over the next few weeks, the researchers planned to observe their hapless test subjects by way of hidden microphones and two-way mirrors.

At first things ran smoothly, but after a week the test subjects began to exhibit signs of stress. They became withdrawn and paranoid, whispering into the microphones about their fellow inmates. But then, a few days later, the screaming started. The prisoners suddenly turned frantic, they ranted and raved, and screamed themselves horse. Some apparently screamed so hard they practically ruptured their vocal cords. And then it all went silent.

The experience was terrifying, so the experimenters tried to stop the study and open the chamber. However, they were stopped from doing so when a voice, one of the prisoners, announced “We no longer wish to be freed”.

By the time the researchers cut the gas and opened the chamber a few days later, most of the inmates were dead, apparently having mutilated themselves or one another. Some had reportedly resorted to cannibalism. Those who remained alive were in a state of psychosis, refusing to leave and refusing to sleep again. Of course, the Soviet authorities tried to remove all evidence of this grisly event from the record.

If you are familiar with this story, or some version of it, then congratulations, you have come across an urban legend that has made its way onto the internet in recent years. The Russian Sleep Experiment , as it is known, was originally a creepypasta story – a kind of short horror story designed to sound plausible – that has now mutated into a living urban legend. Much like the popular Slender Man that lurked and crept its way from a work of internet fiction to very real tragic events , the Russian Sleep Experiment now has a life beyond the authors who originally created it.

But what makes stories like this so “believable”? Or, to put it another way, why do some stories become urban legends when others do not, and why do we accept them?

A new folklore 

Urban legends are effectively a form of modern folklore. The stories can vary in their content, from the mundane culinary experience – the Kentucky fried mouse story – and creature sightings – alligators in the sewers – to the supernatural encounters like Slender Man and the Vanishing Hitchhiker . All these stories are united by a sense of strangeness, albeit to varying degrees, as well as a sliver of believability.

This is an important factor for a budding urban legend. No matter how ridiculous, or worrying the content, it has to have a small amount of credibility to survive. This is usually achieved by combining elements of the familiar with the unfamiliar, but only in measured doses.

Previous research into the popularity of folk stories, such as those in the Grimm Brother’s fairy tales, has shown that the more popular narratives are those that only use a few supernatural components. For instance, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella are fantastical stories with a few references to the weird, but they are also recognizable and extremely popular. In contrast, The Donkey Lettuce (sometimes Cabbage), which appears in the same collection of stories is filled with supernatural elements and yet is barely known.

It seems our minds have a credibility threshold beyond which our critical thinking starts to object. The same may be true for urban legends. If they include too many surprising details, then the story becomes less enjoyable or believable.

The psychology of urban legends

In terms of psychology, this could be explained in relation to thinking styles and what is known as the dual processing model . According to this idea, we have two ways of processing information that are distinct but nevertheless interrelated.

Essentially this is a kind of “system one” and “system two” approach, Dr Neil Dagnall , a cognitive and parapsychological researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University, told IFLScience. The former favors emotional, instinctive, and subjective evaluations and the latter focuses on objective and critical thinking. 

[P]eople are likely to engage with urban legends because they're interesting anecdotes or something topical. So [people] latch on to it from that subjective side, and then are less interested in validating its accuracy and more interested in the story for the story's sake. Dr Neil Dagnall

Although these processes work in parallel, each style draws on different cognitive resources. Critical thinking , which relies on established rules of logical reasoning, is more mentally taxing. It’s intentional and attentional, whereas emotional thinking is less demanding, relying on general cognitive processes to interpret information, and is mostly automatic.

Previous research into dual processing theories has found that belief in paranormal phenomena is closely related to “system one” thinking, that is, intuitive rather than critical thinking. So perhaps something like that is happening with the belief in urban legends.

“[P]eople are likely to engage with urban legends because they're interesting,” Dr Dagnall explained. “They're nice little stories, or they're interesting anecdotes, or something that's topical. So [people] latch on to it from that subjective side, and then are less interested in validating its accuracy and more interested in the story for the story's sake.”

This explanation contrasts with others that try to view humans as simply being prone to believing outlandish ideas, that they are generally non-discerning. Or, as psychologist Gordon Pennycook argues, humans will generally believe “ bullshit ”.

Essentially, this suggests some people are simply not discerning and will rely on system one thinking. They are not particularly selective with the information they believe and instead endorse things that are not true. As such, they will believe any form of bullshit, from urban legends to paranormal events to ridiculous conspiracy theories .

But Dagnall believes there is more going on here. We know, for instance, that even within the conspiracy theory world, believers in one claim may not necessarily believe in another. For instance, he explains, “I might think Elvis faked his death, I might think Elvis was murdered, but I don't necessarily think that's true of Marilyn Monroe.” Equally, someone who believes in the Flat Earth conspiracies may not necessarily believe in aliens or be opposed to vaccinations.

Although it is true that people who believe in conspiracies often do have other unusual beliefs, the situation is more complicated and contextual than simply saying they just believe “bullshit”.

Even “within people who engage with urban legends,” Dagnall says, “they're going to be more critical of some of those urban legends than other ones, and the degree to which they're susceptible to them will be influenced by other factors, such as how plausible they think they are.”

At the same time, because of the rise of the internet and social media, how such stories spread has changed. Not only is it easier for people to circulate various new urban legends across the internet, but many of us are also too busy to apply critical thinking to everything we see.

“There’s less opportunity to evaluate stories or to deal with them...," Dagnall notes. "[I]n the past, if you just get it in an email and you may get a precautionary thing, it's more likely to be the focus of your attention. Now, you just get them popping up all over the place.”

This returns us to credibility. Good urban legends are stories that have something believable about them. So the alligators in the sewers story, for instance, works well because it has historical precedence in places where they are native. It is therefore plausible that alligators or crocodiles may have infiltrated other sewer systems, even in places like New York City .

This too is true for the Russian Sleep Experiment story. The Soviet Union is remembered as a cruel and barbaric regime that demonstrated a staggering disregard for human life, especially under Joseph Stalin. Couple this with contemporary stories about unethical human experiments, such as those performed by the Nazis in the Second World War , or the CIA's Project MKUltra and you have the framework for a believable narrative about abused inmates and sinister experiments.

So like any worthy urban legend, the story may not be true, but for some it may nevertheless feel like it could be.

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How ‘psychics’ use psychology to create the illusion of telepathy

By Chris French / MIT Press Reader

Posted on Aug 11, 2024 12:00 PM EDT

8 minute read

This article was originally featured on MIT Press Reader . This article is excerpted from Chris French’s book “ The Science of Weird Shit .”

There is a hidden cause behind a fun little demonstration of an ostensibly paranormal experience that I often include in public talks on anomalistic psychology, especially when I have a reasonably large audience. I explain to my audience that an important part of proper skepticism is to always be open to the possibility that you may be wrong. In that spirit, I tell the audience that I would like to do a little experiment with them to see just how psychic they are. I tell them that I am going to try to telepathically send a simple message from my mind to theirs. “I’m thinking of a number between one and ten,” I say. “Not three, because that’s too obvious. I want you to make a mental note of the first number that comes into your mind  now !”

I then explain that, with such a large audience, we would expect around 10 percent of them to guess the number correctly just by chance, so we should only get ecstatically excited if considerably more than 10 percent of the audience get it right. I then, apparently somewhat nervously, ask, “Did anybody think of the number seven? If you did, raise your hand.” With a large audience, I can, in fact, be very confident that around a third of them will put up their hand.

Feigning surprise, I will try another, slightly more complicated example. “This time I’m thinking of a two-digit number between one and fifty. They are both odd digits and they are not the same. So, it could be fifteen — one and five, both odd digits, not the same — but it could not be eleven — both odd digits but they are the same. What is the first number that fits that description that comes into your mind  now ?”

I then ask, as if expecting no one to have got it right this time, “Did  anyone  think of the number thirty-seven?” Once again, about a third of the audience will put up their hand. I will then add, “Did anyone think of thirty-five?” About a further quarter of the audience will raise their hand. “Sorry, that was my fault,” I explain. “I thought of thirty-five first and then I changed my mind.”

What is going on here? Any audience members who believe in ESP may well think that it has just been demonstrated. More skeptical members may be at a loss to explain what they have seen (and possibly directly experienced). Is it possible that I had simply conspired with all those members of the audience who got it right by telling them in advance to raise their hands in response to my questions? That would seem unlikely. Was it just a coincidence that so many more people guessed correctly than would be expected on the basis of chance alone? Again, possible but extremely unlikely.

The actual explanation is  a phenomenon that psychologists refer to as  population stereotypes . For most people faced with this task, when they are asked to make a mental note of the first number that comes into their head, they assume this is pretty much a random process. Therefore, they expect the frequencies of response to be more or less equal across the range of response options. In fact, this is not what happens. Responses tend to cluster in reliable and predictable ways, especially with large audiences.

In the first example, about a third of people will choose seven regardless of whatever number I may be thinking of (especially as I have ruled out three as a valid response, which otherwise would also be a popular choice). In the second example, about a third will pick 37 and about a further quarter will choose 35. Note that in neither example do the response rates approach 100 percent, but that is not a problem as people do not expect telepathy to be 100 percent reliable.

There are several other examples of population stereotypes that could be used to fool (at least some of) the unwary that you possess amazing telepathic powers. Tell them your telepathic target is two simple geometric forms, one inside the other. Around 60 percent will choose circle and triangle. Tell them you are thinking of a simple line drawing. Around 10 to 12 percent will draw a little house. It makes for a fun demonstration of the fact that not everything that looks like paranormal actually is. But would anyone ever seriously try to pass off such a demonstration as really involving telepathy?

The answer is yes. For example, in the mid-1990s Uri Geller took part in a TV program called  Beyond Belief , presented by David Frost, in which, it was claimed, various paranormal phenomena would be demonstrated live for the millions of viewers at home. I was one of those viewers. Uri demonstrated his alleged telepathic powers by supposedly transmitting a message to viewers. Uri had chosen one of four symbols that were presented at the bottom of the screen in the following order: square, star, circle, cross. As the camera slowly zoomed in on his face, Uri said: “I’m visualizing the symbol in my mind . . . and you people at home, millions of you, I’m actually communicating now with millions of people, maybe eleven, twelve, thirteen million people. Here goes. I’m transmitting it to you. I’m visualizing it. Open up your minds. Try to see it. Try to feel it. I’m really strongly passing it to  you ! One more time . . . okay.” By this point, the upper half of Uri’s face pretty much filled the screen, with the four symbols still displayed across the bottom of the screen. Viewers were instructed to phone in using one of four different numbers to indicate their guess at Uri’s choice of symbol. Over 70,000 viewers did so.

My days of believing that Uri really did possess amazing psychic abilities were long gone by this stage, and I was therefore watching from the perspective of an informed skeptic. It was pretty easy to come up with nonparanormal explanations for all of the demonstrations featured in the program. With respect to this particular demonstration, I was rather pleased with myself for not only stating in advance what Uri’s telepathic target would be but for also correctly stating the order of popularity of the remaining symbols. It was very lucky for Uri that he chose to “telepathically” transmit the star symbol. It was by far the most popular choice of the viewers, with 47 percent of them indicating that this was the symbol that they had “received.” The second most popular was the circle, with 32 percent of the “votes,” followed by the cross (12 percent) and the square (10 percent). If the guesses were completely random, we would expect about 25 percent for each option, so 47 percent choosing the same symbol as Uri is a massively statistically significant outcome. The probability that almost half of the callers chose this symbol just by chance is astronomically low. So, was this really strong evidence of Uri’s psychic powers?

Readers who are familiar with common techniques used to test for ESP will have recognized that the four symbols used in Uri’s demonstration are taken from the five symbols used on Zener cards (the missing symbol is three wavy lines). The cards are named after the person who designed them, perceptual psychologist Karl Zener. A full deck consists of twenty-five cards, five of each design. In a test of telepathy, a “sender” would take each card from a shuffled deck in turn and attempt to telepathically transmit the image on the card to a “receiver.” The receiver would record their guess of which card the sender was looking at. By chance alone, we would expect around five of the receiver’s guesses to be correct. If the receiver scores significantly more than five, this might be taken as evidence of ESP. However, it has been known for over eight decades that people are more likely to guess certain symbols compared to others. Back in 1939, Frederick Lund  asked 596 people to each generate a random sequence of five symbols from the Zener set . By far the most popular symbol was — you’ve guessed it — the star, accounting for 32 percent of the responses compared to the 20 percent that would be expected by chance alone. So, as I said, it really was lucky for Uri that he chose the star as his telepathic target (assuming that it was just luck).

Chris French  is Emeritus Professor and Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Patron of Humanists UK. He is the coauthor of “ Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience ” and author of “ The Science of Weird Shit ,” from which this article is excerpted.

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Aliens From the Fourth-Dimension May Be Invading Our World—And We Don’t Even Know It

Theoretically, it’s impossible for us to perceive a 4D creature. That is, unless it broke into our three-dimensional reality.

The book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott explores the concept of physical dimensions through characters who encounter higher-dimensional beings. The protagonist, “A. Square,” lives in a two-dimensional world called Flatland. When the three-dimensional “Sphere” visits him, Square realizes that a whole world exists that he never could have imagined. Eventually, his interactions with Sphere open his mind to the possibility of even higher dimensions.

Higher dimensions are a necessary feature in mathematics as the only way to understand certain concepts. For example, string theory—so far, our best explanation for how the tiniest particles in the universe behave—requires the existence of higher physical dimensions. Otherwise, the behavior of vibrating “strings” that theorists think make up all particles cannot work. Today’s physicists accept the theoretical possibility that our universe started out with as many as 11 dimensions .

Over the years, experiments and mathematical modeling have provided some inkling of four-dimensional characteristics. For example, two-dimensional experiments in both the U.S. and in Europe 2018 showed evidence of a four-dimensional existence because scientists could make logical inferences based on how electrons behave while undergoing a specific change in their electric charge. First, the electrons moved in one direction through an electrically conductive material. When researchers put a magnetic field perpendicular to the material, it forced the electrons to divert either to the left or to the right. The electrons were essentially stuck in two dimensions. Physicists involved in the experiment extrapolated that a comparable effect would occur in the fourth dimension, and that we would see its effects in our familiar third dimension.

In other words, we can see evidence of the fourth dimension in our own. As three-dimensional beings, we cast a two-dimensional shadow. The same principle could be true for four-dimensional beings who could leave traces of themselves in our world. To understand how, let’s start with the basic concept of how different dimensions relate to one another.

As residents of a three-dimensional world, we easily perceive three dimensions: height (or length), width, and depth. We can travel up and down, left and right, and forward and backward. And we know the lower dimensions. The zeroth dimension is a point, which has no height, width, or depth. The first dimension branches out, becoming a line, with length only. Nothing would exist beyond this line to a one-dimensional creature. Two-dimensional shapes, like the characters in Flatland, are what we can draw on paper, like squares and circles. They have both width and length, and they can also travel in these directions. A two-dimensional creature wouldn’t be able to escape the piece of paper they live on, however, because they simply cannot perceive anything other than two dimensions. With the addition of a third dimension, a far richer reality emerges, because now the shape can travel up and down, leaping right off the paper. This is the shape of the universe we know and take for granted.

Now comes the tricky part. To step into higher dimensions, you’re basically making a right angle to the previous shape: first squaring the line for the second dimension, and then cubing the line to reach the third dimension. To step up to the fourth dimension, you need to do the same thing—make a right angle to the cube, extending it into a “ hypercube ,” or tesseract. Four lines connect to every point, and every surface is a cube. Sometimes physicists describe the fourth dimension as a space that’s perpendicular to a cube. (Feeling lost yet?) This description, while geometrically accurate, is not much help—no brain wired for a 3D world can understand what a tesseract or other higher-dimension object actually looks like. So theoretically, we would not be able to perceive a four-dimensional being with our senses—unless they somehow physically accessed our three-dimensional reality.

How would we see aliens from higher dimensions if they entered our three-dimensional world? “Well, it depends on what part of the 4D object is passing through our 3D space,” science communicator Toby Hendy explains. She provides a neat visualization of what it would be like to see a four-dimensional object in our three-dimensional reality on her YouTube channel, Tibees. Supposing there is a four-dimensional ball, Hendy holds out her hand, and a little red ball of yarn pops into existence on it. “Right now, we see a small sphere, because this slice is near the edge of the 4D ball,” she says. As the ball moves through our world, it appears to grow. As it moves out of our plane of existence, it shrinks again, then disappears. “The 4D ball still exists, but our slice of space does not contain it,” Hendy concludes. On the other hand, a 4D being would be able to see the ball and know exactly where it is, she says.

In the same way, an alien from the fourth dimension may pass largely undetected through a “slice” of our three-dimensional universe. Only a part of it would appear, materializing out of nowhere, and then we would see more and more of its parts. But we’d never be able to see all of it at once, because we can’t actually see the fourth dimension with our senses. Finally, it would shrink down to nothing again.

If you can’t quite wrap your head around that (we don’t blame you) then think of it this way: The square in Flatland cannot comprehend the third dimension. So how would it perceive a sphere, a three-dimensional object, invading its two-dimensional plane of existence? Imagine you are the square on the sheet of paper. As the sphere descends onto the sheet in front of you, you start to see a small circle appearing (out of nowhere). This is the leading “slice” of the sphere that’s entering your two dimensions. Gradually, as the sphere continues passing through your two-dimensional plane, the circle—which indicates the diameter of the sphere’s body—gets larger and larger, until the middle of the sphere is fully in your plane. This slice of sphere then shrinks, until nothing is left. At this point, the sphere has traveled completely out of your 2D universe.

For us, that means aliens might be larger than they appear, because we would see only a three-dimensional slice of them at a time. This is exemplified in the games Miegakure and 4D Miner , where you can experience a four-dimensional world through our comprehensible three-dimensional perceptions. So, objects like trees and hills appear and disappear, since our perception of them changes as we move through three-dimensional space. The 4D “hyperspider” predators in 3D Miner are extra menacing because they can move through objects as they hunt us. That’s because a four-dimensional object can slide through gaps that we can’t perceive or access.

Once we hit higher dimensions, it becomes even more difficult to picture what the beings living in there would be like, and how they would interact with our three-dimensional lives. Mathematically, you can keep going with these dimensional iterations, and make cool-looking models. In the end, even models like these four-dimensional shapes are overly simple analogies for a complex reality that’s out of our reach.

So, what would a four-dimensional alien make of us if they visited our three-dimensional reality? Theory suggests they would be able to see inside of us. Just as we can see an array of objects scattered over a two-dimensional surface, all at once from our vantage point in the third dimension, a four-dimensional being would be able to see all of us at once. Kind of creepy.

Perhaps while they are studying us, we have no clue. Based on what we know about physical dimensions, it may be hard to detect an alien spacecraft popping into our space. Could it be that if any UFO sightings are truly related to aliens, they’re hard to prove because the aliens can easily slip away into a higher dimension?

Before joining Popular Mechanics , Manasee Wagh worked as a newspaper reporter, a science journalist, a tech writer, and a computer engineer. She’s always looking for ways to combine the three greatest joys in her life: science, travel, and food.

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