We live in a strange world.
At any moment we can find something that’ll completely throw us for a loop, something
that has no reasonable, rational explanation for why it is are where it is.
Sometimes, if we're lucky, we eventually uncover the truth.
Sometimes, it remains a mystery forever.
Here are just some of the strangest things found where they don’t belong.
Nanotechnology in a 1,600-year-old chalice
What's more cutting-edge and high-tech than nanotechnology, right?
It's the stuff of science fiction and … ancient Rome?
The British Museum received the color-changing Lycurgus Cup in the 1950s, and for decades,
they had no idea how it worked.
When lit from one side, it was red.
When lit from the other side, it's green.
It wasn't until the 1990's that the museum was able to look at broken pieces of the cup
on a super-microscopic scale.
They found that the color change was done with a technology that we're only starting
to understand.
Bits of gold and silver were ground down into tiny, tiny, tiny pieces, measuring only about
50 nanometers in size, less than a thousandth of the size of a single grain of table salt.
Those tiny grains were then put in the glass, and its precise, exact nature suggests the
ancient Romans knew exactly what they were doing.
They weren't just making something that turned pretty colors when you held it to the light,
either.
When researchers created a cup that used the same type of technology, they learned the
colors also changed based on what kind of liquid was poured in.
Not a bad party trick for the fourth century.
The ship graveyard in the desert
Massive ships might be the last thing you'd expect to see in the desert, but that's exactly
what litters the desert outside of the city of Moynaq, Uzbekistan.
Ships big and small rust away in the hot desert sun as they provide shade for camels and other
desert animals.
What they're definitely not doing is sailing.
The ships now sit in is all that remains of the Aral Sea, what was once so vast that it
supplied the Soviet Union with about a sixth of its fish, and employed between 40,000 and
60,000 people.
At some point before the mid-1960s, plans were put in place to use the waters of the
Aral Sea's nearby rivers to irrigate new farmland.
That cut off a major source of freshwater flowing into the sea, and over the next few
decades, it started to change.
First, the salt content rose too high to keep supporting the abundant fish that had once
lived there, and then the sea started drying up.
Ships that had once worked out of the Aral Sea's port cities were stranded in the sand
as the water receded and the climate changed.
Some of the skeletal ships have sat there for decades now, and while the Aral Sea hasn't
disappeared completely, it's still an eerie reminder of the damage mankind can do.
Stonehenge at the bottom of Lake Michigan
In 2007, research from the underwater archaeology department at Northwestern Michigan College
turned up something cool.
Sitting on the bottom of Lake Michigan under about 40 feet of water was a series of massive
stones, arranged in a circular formation good enough to make the experts scratch their heads
and slow down.
ZME Science says developments and research have been scarce, mostly because of how deep
the stones are.
The idea of an ancient civilization building a stone circle in what's now Lake Michigan
is pretty awesome, and they may have left their signature, too.
The photos divers have been able to take show what may be a rock with a petroglyph carved
into it, one that looks like a very cool rendering of a mastodon.
Who knows what else might be hidden here.
50,000-year-old creatures trapped in crystal
Even if you aren't familiar with the details, you've probably seen the photos of that cave
filled with those unbelievably massive crystals.
The cave is real, and so are the crystals.
Mexico's Naica Mine was first opened in 1910, and a secondary cave was breached in 2000.
The crystals weigh as much as 55 tons, and formed millions of years ago after some freaky
volcanic activity.
Between temperature and humidity, exploring it has been next to impossible.
What's also impossible is what scientists found there in 2017.
Life, not just inside the cave, but inside the crystals themselves.
After finding tiny pockets inside the crystals, they extracted some of the liquid inside and
sent it off for analysis.
According to Science Alert, they found tiny life forms that had been in a self-induced
suspended animation for as long as 50,000 years.
NASA scientists extracted the creatures, which had been surviving on iron and sulfur, woke
them up, and got them to multiply.
They say there's nothing else like them on Earth.
Spiders that live underwater
Hate spiders?
Feel safe from spiders when you're swimming?
Kiss that comfort goodbye.
If you're taking a dip in bodies of freshwater in Asia or Europe, you may come across the
diving bell spider.
Within a few weeks of being born, these little creepers leave their mom's underwater refuge
and spin what's essentially a little underwater bubble house.
Strings of silk are stretched to the surface like climbing ropes, and the spiders stick
their rears above the water to grab some air bubbles before heading back down the silk,
into the depths, and their little bubble web house.
What they end up with is an underwater air pocket that honestly seems like so much work
it can't possibly be a practical adaptation.
Thus is the nature of cosmic pranks.
Have a nice swim!