outer space

When I was young I didn't know we lived on a planet or about gravity. Then one day my grandma told me we lived on the planet Earth and how gravity worked. As soon I realized that Earth was just a ball floating in the middle of space I was too scared to move. I thought that my movement would cause the "ball" to drop instantly and we would all die. I would also walk around holding on to things since Earth was a sphere and I was scared of falling off the planet.

Anon

Up until I was about 12 I thought why it becomes night time is because of the moon blocking the sun (obviously that would really be a solar eclipse)

Nate

I used to believe you could walk on clouds. And you would be able to walk in space on the edge of the world.

Alex

As a child I believed that the earth was an electron, the sun was the center and the solar system an atom, and continued until the universe was like a set of molecules until several universes forming a human body ..... Sometimes I still think the same thing

raul

This is my co-worker's sister-in-law and niece. He said that for the longest time, and sadly well into their adulthoods, they believed that the sun and the moon were actually the same object, but that it was just darker at night.

Lori

I used to think that if you went to the bottom of the Earth (the south pole), you would fall off into space and float around there.

Sasha

When i was about 5 or 6 i thought that all the atmosphere was held down by the ozone layer. i always worried about spaceships popping it or the shock wave from an atomic bomb letting air out.

Anon

I used to believe that satellite dishes made day and night. I don't know why, but I thought when it was night, the satellite dish would release a black sky.

anony

When I was in science class, they said the earth rotates on an imaginary line called the axis. I didn't know what imaginary is, so I thought at the north and south pole, there really was a big pole coming out of the ground. I wanted to go see it!

Axis

I used to believe that stars were actually little holes in the ceiling of the sky where you could see the light from heaven shine through.

Sonja

I used to believe there were some body lived in the moon.

Anon

When I was young, I used to believe that we lived "inside" the globe and what we on maps are actually what the clouds form in the sky. Then one day, mom told me we lived "on" earth. I was scared as hell, and avoided going out of my home at night because I feared I'd fall off the surface!

Mehreen

I used to think we were all living inside the earth instead of on top of it. I wondered how space ships got out. Did they poke a hole through the earth to reach space?

Catherine

I used to think gravel was the same as gravity. Like the rocks in our driveway are what held us to the earth. When you think about it, gravity is hard to perceive when it's so intangible.

K

I used to believe there were seven universes, arranged in concentric circles. The middle (first) one was yellow, and the next was white. We live in the third. Then there was another called the Outer Outer White, which contained the planet where my imaginary dinosaur friends lived. Then a green one and a yellow one, and finally another black one like ours but much, much bigger.
In about third grade I got in an argument with a classmate about this. He said that there were thousands of universes. When I went home and asked my mom, she said we're both wrong, there is only one universe, that's where the "uni" part comes from.

Aretia, master of seven universes

When I looked outside and I saw how the moon would change from one day to weeks later, I thought it was from "smurfs", or little blue alien people eating the moon because I thought it was made of cheese. The less of the moon was showing, the more the "smurfs" ate. And when it was a new moon, the "smurfs" would eat all of it and slowly the moon cheese would grow back to a full moon, and that's when the "smurfs" would start eating it again.

Alea