Since we've all likely heard about the 10 percent rule, it's a cool dream to think that there's some inner-superhero inside us just waiting to be released. Unfortunately, the idea that humans only use 10 percent of their brains is as much a piece of fiction as Lucy's new abilities to control time and space.

"... the brain, like all our other organs, has been shaped by natural selection," Barry L. Beyerstein of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at Simon Fraser University told Scientific American. "Brain tissue is metabolically expensive both to grow and to run, and it strains credulity to think that evolution would have permitted squandering of resources on a scale necessary to build and maintain such a massively underutilized organ. Moreover, doubts are fueled by ample evidence from clinical neurology. Losing far less than 90 percent of the brain to accident or disease has catastrophic consequences."

"if it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," said daniel baker, of the laboratory for atmospheric and space physics at the university of Colorado. "i have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did. if the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire."

with colleagues from nasa and other universities, baker has been studying the disaster that wasn't. if the coronal mass ejection (cme) had hit the Earth, it would have disabled "everything that plugs into a wall socket".

there would have been major disruption to all satellite communications and electrical fluctuations that could have blown out transformers in power grids. most people wouldn't have been able to turn on a tap or flush a toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electricity.