But there are some fundamental truths we were taught as kids that, it turns out, were never true.

Or they seemed true at one point but now we have more information and fresh facts that demote them to “myth” status.

From the very land and water of Earth, to the planetary bodies, to some supposedly basic history we’re remembering wrong, here are a few things it’s time to relearn.

Or rather, it’s always been there, encircling Antartica, it’s just that we were slow to acknowledge its individuality.

But the National Geographic’s cartographers say now is the time, and if it’s an ocean to them, that’s good enough for me.

He and the National Geographic Society’s map policy committee had been considering the change for years, watching as scientists and the press increasingly used the term Southern Ocean.

Welcome, Southern Ocean!

Earth’s “hidden” continent, they say, is a mostly submerged land mass beneath New Zealand and New Caledonia—an elevated part of the ocean floor, about two-thirds the size of Australia—nicknamed Zealandia.

We figured out that Pluto was much smaller than we initially assumed (it’s even smaller than our moon) and there is other stuff out beyond it that’s bigger.

But the brontosaurus, as we knew it, was actually the apatosaurus. Or...

The first of the Brontosaurus genus was named in 1879 by famed paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh.

In 1903, however, paleontologist Elmer Riggs found that Brontosaurus was apparently the same as the genus Apatosaurus, which Marsh had first described in 1877?

In such cases the rules of scientific nomenclature state that the oldest name has priority, dooming Brontosaurus to another extinction.

Before we knew it, we were adults, and our young children were learning about the apatosaurus, and we were like, “No, no, that’s a brontosaurus, silly!” Luckily, in 2015, another paleontologist decided there actually were enough differences between the two groups of fossils to classify them as separate species.

So the brontosaurus did exist.

It’s still considered to be true that atoms have a nucleus made of protons and neutrons, and that electrons tend to be somewhere in the vicinity.

You’ve almost certainly learned, at some point, that we are all destined to live with ever-growing ears and noses, which makes sense if you think of the way elderly people do seem to have these oversized features!

Well, it’s not true.

What is true is that it looks like our ears and noses are growing—thanks to gravity.

As you age, gravity causes the cartilage in your ears and nose to break down and sag?

Studies have estimated that ears lengthen at a rate of about .22 millimeters per year?

The growth appears in men and women, so it’s just one of the many universal joys of getting older.

cartoon, it must be true.

Fat is what’s stored in its hump, and that fat is used as nourishment when food is scarce.

The raindrop becomes more like the top half of a hamburger bun

The surface tension at the top allows the raindrop to remain more spherical while the bottom gets more flattened out

Even as a raindrop is falling, it will often collide with other raindrops and increase in size

Once the size of a raindrop gets too large, it will eventually break apart in the atmosphere back into smaller drops

This time, the surface tension loses and the large raindrop ceases to exist