From gelatinous rain to dark streaks on Mars, here 11 strange things that science still
can’t explain!!!
11.
Why are there so many flowers?
According to Charles Darwin, evolution occurs slowly through natural selection.
Because of his theories, he called flowering plants “an abominable mystery”!
How’s that for describing flowers?
Biology refresh: Flowering plants belong to the class of plants called angiosperms.
And they are everywhere.
Most plants, in fact, produce some sort of flower.
However, that’s not what makes them such a mystery.
Scientists know that flowering plants took over other plant types about 400 million years
ago and they did it in a very, very short amount of time.
Flowering plants literally conquered the world!
This defies Darwin’s slow evolution theories, and angiosperms didn’t stop there.
Natural selection is the process by which the best traits are passed down to the next
generation.
However, flowers are not the most beneficial method of reproduction.
Plants put a lot of effort into making flowers, efforts that could be better used in growth
or storing food.
How flowers came to be the best and fastest evolutionary step remains a mystery, however,
because unfortunately for us, plants don’t leave fossil records when they die.
10.
Diversity at the Equator
Today, it’s common knowledge that the closer you get to the equator, the more diverse life
becomes.
Lush, tropical forests bursting with life are synonymous with equatorial regions, after
all.
However, this quirk of nature wasn’t noticed until 200 years ago, when my personal favorite
explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, made the connection.
You can actually read his journals for free online!
Not only did natural life become more diverse, but so did human culture and societies.
Since it’s so warm near the equator, it doesn’t seem that strange since its easier
to battle the heat with less resources, until you take into account that disease also flourishes
more easily the closer you get to the equator.
Deadly virus outbreaks tend to happen most often in warm, tropical regions.
Therefore, it makes evolutionary sense that life and culture would actually do better
in places where disease does not.
However, it is the exact opposite!
As you’ve probably guessed, scientists are divided as to why this is and no one has really
been able to convince the rest!
And now for number 9, but first if you are new here, welcome and be sure to subscribe
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9.
Phytoplankton
Phytoplankton are organisms that live in large bodies of water.
This class of creatures include a variety of different subspecies, and they are everywhere.
However, their diversity poses a bit of a problem.
According to theories of evolution, there shouldn’t be so many varieties.
The lack of resources should make it impossible for a large variety of organisms to survive
in an ecosystem without killing each other off.
However, phytoplankton manage to do it somehow.
Water bodies full of nutrients tend to have a lower diversity of species, while bodies
with fewer nutrients have more variety of organisms.
For example, there are areas in the Antarctic with high nutrient levels.
However, the level of phytoplankton are low.
You’d think the more food, the more creatures.
Scientists call it the paradox of enrichment, or the Antarctic paradox, because higher nutrients
should equal higher diversity.
But, they don’t, and no one knows why.
8.
Animals That Don’t Need Oxygen
We are taught in school that oxygen is required for life.
However, that isn’t exactly true.
There are organisms that do not need oxygen and scientists can’t really explain how
they can exist.
In 2010, scientists first found animals that didn’t need oxygen deep in the Mediterranean
Sea.
Up to this point, it was normal to find bacteria or simple organisms that could live oxygen-free.
However, scientists were shocked to find complex, multicellular animals that could exist without
any oxygen at all, and they were completely fine!
The organisms belong to the Loricifera phylum class, which consists of tiny animals that
adapted to live in environments where oxygen was replaced by salts.
Their evolutionary history remains a complete mystery.
They didn’t exactly leave a fossilized trail of breadcrumbs, or at least we haven’t found
it yet.
Scientists hope that Loricifera phylum can give us a window into marine life before the
oceans had oxygen, which was about 600 million years ago.
7.
Gelatinous Rain
In 1994, a jelly-like substance rained from the sky onto the Washington town of Oakville.
Anyone there when that happened???
According to urban legend, dozens became ill with flu-like symptoms and pets even died.
Supposedly, scientists analyzing the substance found two types of bacteria, one of which
is commonly found in the human digestive system.
What actually happened on that August day is slightly less sensational but just as weird.
During a rainstorm, a translucent gelatinous substance the size of grains of rice came
down onto the home of Sunny Barclift.
Soon after the storm, Barclift’s mother visited the hospital, complaining of dizziness
and nausea, but her illness stemmed from a severe ear infection.
Barclift and a friend claimed that after handling the blobs they started suffering from nausea
and dizziness.
The only pet to die after coming into contact with the blobs was Barclift’s kitten.
However, the kitty had been suffering severe intestinal problems beforehand.
The blobs fell a second time after the first incident but no one fell ill.
Even so, if this ever happens in your area, I don’t think you should be touching it.
The blobs were found to contain human white blood cells without any nuclei.
It was suggested they were fluid waste from an airplane toilet.
However, the Federal Aviation Administration said all commercial plane toilet fluids are
dyed blue, which the blobs were not.
To this day, scientists have not been able to explain what the blobs were.
6.
Right Hand vs Left Hand
The majority of humans are right-handed.
The percentage of left-handed people is somewhere between five and thirty percent.
(A wide range I know).
There are people who are ambidextrous but there are no statistics on how many.
But why right-handed?
It doesn’t offer an evolutionary advantage.
It almost seems random, for there to be so many right-handed people.
Scientists think genes may have been an influence but no one has found the “left-handed gene”
yet.
Another theory is that social environments influence hand dominance.
Being left-handed is considered unlucky in some cultures and south paws are forced to
write with their right hand.
However, these are all just theories and scientists have yet to produce a clear explanation.
Right now, they are thinking that it will be related to how the brain processes and
utilizes information.
5.
Why do we dream?
Dreams are steeped in lore and legend.
Some believe that a dream has important things to say about our lives, desires, and perhaps
even our futures.
Others believe that dreams are only random images.
What does science say about dreams?
Not much.
Despite decades of study, scientists don’t know why we need sleep, much less why we dream
or if the subject matter really matters.
We do know that during the REM stage of sleep, our dreams are more abundant and are more
likely to be remembered.
It’s an accepted idea that everyone dreams, though the frequency of remembered dreams
varies from person to person.
Aside from that, it’s all hypotheses.
A popular one is that dreams are a way for the brain to make sense of information it
receives during the day, but nobody knows for sure.
4.
Viking Test Results
In 1976, NASA sent two probes named Viking 1 and Viking 2 to Mars.
When they arrived, they performed three experiments.
These experiments were supposed to determine if life existed on the Red Planet.
One such experiment was called the Labeled Release apparatus, which tested for microbes
in the soil.
One of the experiments came back positive.
The other two, however, came back negative and scientists discarded the first as a false
positive.
However, in 2012, the data was re-examined.
Scientists discovered that the two negative results did not necessarily cancel out the
one positive.
To this day, scientists can’t explain the significance of the positive and the question
of whether life exists on Mars remains unanswered.
I guess we’ll just have to go again!!
3.
Missing Lithium
You are probably already familiar with lithium because of lithium batteries.
However, this element is a perplexing question for scientists.
Why?
Because there should be a whole lot more of it!
The Big Bang Theory suggests that the universe should contain three times the amount of lithium
than what we currently observe.
Is the problem, then, with the theory or the observation?
Even the earliest stars don’t have as much lithium as they should.
Because the Big Bang is well-supported with evidence, scientists aren’t sure what the
lack of lithium means.
In case you’re wondering what the big deal is, lots and lots of lithium should have been
created during the Big Bang because of the nature of the event.
Is it all hidden somewhere and we just haven’t found it yet??
A scientific paper from China suggests scientists were off in their predictions of how much
lithium was created during the Big Bang.
However, no one has been able to explain away the mystery.
2.
Dark Streaks on Mars
During warm seasons, there are dark streaks on the surface of Mars.
Once the weather becomes colder, the streaks disappear.
It was an exciting observation, as it suggested that there was water on the planet.
However, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter didn’t detect any water.
That is, until 2015.
In that year, the Orbiter discovered trace amounts of water.
However, the liquid was mixed with heavy amounts of salt, creating hydrated salts (so not exactly
water).
These salts corresponded with the dark streaks on the Martian hills.
Scientists went back to being excited because water, even when mixed with salt, could mean
life.
(Remember those organisms in the Mediterranean that exist in waters where oxygen has been
replaced by salt.)
Scientists shouldn’t have gotten their hopes up, though.
A new study suggests that the streaks are caused by the movement of sand.
That’s it.
Just sand moving on the face of Mars.
Colin Dundas, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science
Center, says that the slopes where the streaks occur are “more like what we expect of dry
sand”.
What a buzz killer.
But this feature doesn’t explain everything uncovered in the new study.
So, until a rover or a person visits those slopes, the question regarding Mars’ streaked
hills remains unanswered.
1.
Humpback Whale Super Groups
Humpback whales normally congregate in small groups, even in migration.
Usually, it’s in groups of 3-4 maximum because they are usually solitary animals.
However, in 2017, scientists discovered that these marine behemoths were forming supergroups
between twenty to two hundred individuals!!
Ken Findlay, the lead author of a new study analyzing the mysterious behavior, remarked
that scientists have never seen anything like it.
The super groups have been forming off the coast of South Africa and maybe they are there
feeding or something.
Scientists discovered that this phenomenon has only occurred in this area.
That’s not the only strange thing.
The whales were off the coast of southern Africa at the wrong time of year.
They are not normally seen there in the summer months because that’s when they migrate
to Antarctica.
Scientists wonder if this new behavior is linked to global warming and a change in fish
populations.
Maybe they know something we don’t know and are trying to stick together to protect
themselves.
In recent years, these whales have made a dramatic comeback after nearly being driven
to extinction.
Scientists believe this population boom may influence feeding habits and migration patterns.
However, this behaviour is still a mystery!