Science may be our best tool for understanding the universe and everything around us. But
sometimes, even science can’t explain certain phenomena. Come with us on this
journey through the mysteries of the unknown, where we will explore
the darkest aspects of our existence, the bedrocks of life, and where it all began.
What we know about the world and universe through science is always changing. This is
what makes science so powerful; there are no absolutes, which means that our understanding
of the universe is always being questioned. Science is grounded in data and evidence. So,
scientists can update their understanding of the universe if new evidence presents
itself or new data is collected that contradicts what we claim to be true. There will never be a
time when science claims to know everything. But with these gaps in knowledge, there are
certain mysteries that science can’t currently explain, some of which will blow your mind.
Perhaps the greatest mystery of all is how life began on our planet.
If this event never happened, you wouldn’t be watching this video
right now because neither you nor the Infographics Show would exist.
There have been a number of science experiments that have tried to create life in a lab.
The most famous example of this is the Miller–Urey experiment. These scientists
sought to create life out of compounds and elements thought to be present when life first
came to be on Earth. They were not successful in creating lifeforms of any kind. However,
they were able to synthesize over 20 different amino acids that are necessary for life.
This showed that given enough time, it is likely that the amino acids could have combined in a way
that may have resulted in the very first life on the planet.
From these experiments, it is hypothesized that life could have started around hydrothermal vents
during Earth's early formation or in nutrient-rich oceans that were
constantly being bombarded by lightning and radiation. This is called the Primordial Soup
model. Scientists who subscribe to this theory believe the ingredients necessary
for life were on the planet, and no outside intervention was required.
However, this has not been proven yet. In fact, scientists aren’t even sure if the
Primordial Soup model is the right approach to discover how life got started on Earth.
Some believe that life came from another planet, like a piece of Mars that was
ejected into space from an asteroid impact. Or perhaps life hitched a ride on a comet or meteor
that then impacted Earth. This theory is called Panspermia. But this scenario begs the question:
how would life have started on whatever celestial body it came from? The debate over how life began
on our planet continues to rage on and may never be completely agreed upon by scientists.
Life is full of mysteries. This is especially true when scientists tried to explain why
dozens of octopi emerged out of the sea and walked across a Welsh beach in 2016.
It was late October when scientists started receiving reports that dozens of octopi
were walking on land. This is an incredibly odd event that had never been seen before.
Scientists couldn’t explain why the octopi were evacuating the water and heading for dry land,
but they managed to develop a few theories. The first explanation was rather surprising
and a little bit sad. Scientists thought that the octopi were going through senescence. This is the
scientific way of saying the octopi had gone senile and had no idea what they were doing.
Since it was October, the octopi probably had just laid eggs and were now ready to die.
The octopus species that was observed walking across the land only lives for about a year
before they finish their reproductive cycle, lay their eggs, and die so new generations
can flourish. However, scientists thought perhaps all of the mysterious octopi were
in fact elderly and very confused as to what they were doing. But the fact that there were
so many of them on the beach made this theory seem somewhat unlikely. Scientists scrambled to
save as many as they could by gently picking them up and placing them back in the water.
Another theory for why this mysterious octopi event occurred had to do with the weather.
Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian were both off the coast at the time,
which may have somehow disrupted the octopi's natural behavior. However, there had been major
storms in the past which did not result in the octopi engaging in the odd behavior.
The final theory had to do with overpopulation. It was thought that perhaps there were so many octopi
in the area at the time that many were forced out of their natural habitat to try and find
food and shelter elsewhere. This led to dozens of octopi leaving the ocean simultaneously and
trying their luck on land. It didn’t go so well as there were no resources for them on the beach,
and they would have died if scientists and local residents hadn’t intervened.
This mysterious march of the octopi still has scientists stumped. Their
strange behavior continued for about a month before the octopi decided to stay
in the water and leave scientists with more questions than answers.
Octopi are known to be notoriously smart. They can work their way through mazes and use
reasoning skills to solve puzzles. But there is another organism that is also incredibly clever,
but it is so simple that scientists can’t figure out why it shows so much intelligence.
Slime molds are very simple organisms. In fact, slime molds are actually made up of
millions of single-celled organisms, which somehow work together to create a hive mind.
Scientists have observed huge numbers of these single-celled creatures fusing
together to create one giant mass capable of doing some pretty extraordinary things.
No explanation has been put forward on how thousands or even millions of individual
organisms can band together to create one intelligent organism. But in experiments
done with slime molds, they have been able to solve mazes, make risk-benefit decisions,
and even keep track of time. What has baffled scientists is that the slime mold
isn’t using a brain or nervous system like intelligent animals do. Instead,
the mechanism that allows the slime mold to show signs of intelligence and reasoning
comes from some unknown source when all of the single-celled organisms fuse together.
Slime molds are not technically a fungus, in fact, they are a type of ameba. However,
an actual fungus does something that scientists can’t quite explain.
There is a mushroom called Chorioactis geaster that only grows in two places in the entire world.
The crazy thing is, these two places couldn't be more different. Chorioactis geaster only grows
in Texas and Japan. That’s right, the only two places in the world that this mushroom
grows are seemingly completely different and nowhere near each other. To be fair,
both of these locations are at similar latitudes. But scientists who study mushrooms,
also known as mycologists, have no idea why Chorioactis geaster only grows in these two areas.
When scientists sequenced the DNA of the two populations of mushrooms they found that they
had been separated for nearly 19 million years. So, how could two populations of mushrooms be so
similar, yet so far away from one another? Well, your guess is as good as any because scientists
can’t explain it. This fungal conundrum may never be solved, but that won’t stop scientists from
playing around with different ideas to try and uncover the mysteries of the mushrooms.
Just under 100 years ago, a disease caused people’s bodies to shut down completely while
keeping their brain alert and functioning. Victims of the disease were literally trapped
inside their own bodies without any idea of why or for how long. Even to this day,
scientists aren’t entirely sure what caused this disease to have such terrifying symptoms.
Between 1917 and 1928, around 500,000 people were infected by Encephalitis lethargica or
what came to be known as “the sleeping sickness.” The disease first appeared
in Europe but spread around the world quickly, becoming prominent in North America and India.
There were a couple of outcomes for people who were infected by Encephalitis lethargica. Around
a third of the people who became ill with the disease died. However, they were the lucky ones.
Half of the people who were infected by the sleeping sickness found themselves trapped
in their own bodies. It was a nightmare come to life. They couldn’t move, speak,
or show any signs of consciousness, but they were fully awake and aware of their surroundings.
Very few victims of Encephalitis lethargica were able to communicate through limited vocal noises
and movement of the eyes, but this was rare. The
rest of the victims infected with the sleeping sickness were living statues.
Scientists at the time couldn’t identify what was causing the paralysis symptoms,
and even today, we know very little about the disease itself. Some scientists think that the
sleeping sickness was caused by a virus that found its way into the brain and infected the
nervous system causing bodily systems to shut down while keeping synaptic activity going for its own
benefit. Others think that the disease came from a rare strain of streptococcus, which would cause
swelling in the nervous tissue, resulting in a person's own immune system attacking their brain.
This nightmare could last for only a few hours, but it would go on for days in most cases.
Those pincredibely unlucky people were living statues for weeks and even years
of their life because of the disease. And if the disease itself wasn’t scary enough,
it did something even more mysterious that baffled scientists. Encephalitis
lethargica disappeared for several years at a time only to resurface again in different
parts of the world. This happened in the 1950s in Europe. Then in the early 2000s,
a girl in China was infected by the disease and became trapped within her own body.
There have been sporadic cases of other diseases that cause symptoms similar to
Encephalitis lethargica more recently, but scientists are unsure if it is the same
illness or a mutated form of whatever causes the sleeping sickness. Either way, scientists don’t
know the exact reason it can cause someone to become a living statue, but hopefully,
they can figure it out before it reaches pandemic levels as it did in the early 1900s.
There are a lot of dark mysteries in the universe, many of which scientists are not able to explain.
Perhaps the biggest unsolved mystery is what actually makes up most of the universe?
The first unknown phenomenon we are going to look at is dark energy. This form of
energy is puzzling to scientists as it is causing something unexpected to happen to our universe.
Even though gravity should be pulling everything with mass closer to one another,
the mysterious force of dark energy is actually pushing space-time apart. Not only are things
moving in the opposite direction than scientists believed they should, but the universe seems to
be expanding at an accelerated rate. When scientists first noticed this, it made them
scratch their heads. And for decades, this problem has persisted without any clear answer as to why.
The only thing that scientists really know about dark energy is that it is some kind
of mysterious force that counteracts gravity. There are definitely some thoughts about what
is causing this phenomenon. Some believe space has an inherent property that causes
a form of negative pressure which results in space-time expanding away from itself.
However, scientists are a long way from figuring out if this is true or not.
And they are even further away from explaining how it works if it is.
But the craziest part of dark energy is the sheer magnitude of it. We like to think we
understand the universe pretty well, but dark energy makes up roughly 70% of the
total contents of everything in existence. Think about how huge that number is. Almost
three-quarters of the universe is made of something that science can’t explain.
And the mystery of unknowable things in the universe doesn’t stop with dark energy,
there is something else out there that may be even more perplexing—dark matter.
Around 84% of all matter in the universe is invisible to our eyes and most of our sensors.
The only reason we know that dark matter even exists is because of the effect it has on the
things we can see. For example, scientists know dark matter exists because of the way
it exerts its gravity on things such as the light from stars and the movement of celestial objects.
Dark matter contains the majority of the mass in our universe. And the fact that it is hard
to detect might be good news. We don’t have to worry about slamming into a wall of dark
matter that we can’t see. And scientists do have some ideas of what dark matter could be.
Many believe that the mysterious substance is made up of WIMPs,
or "weakly interacting massive particles.” Scientists even have WIMP detectors deep
in the Earth to try and catch some of these particles, but nothing has been found so far.
Scientists think that most of the dark matter sits on the outskirts of galaxies and may influence
their shape and the way regular matter interacts. However, since 1933 when astronomer Fritz Zwicky
first hypothesized the existence of dark matter, scientists still have no idea what it actually is.
Perhaps the darkest and most mysterious objects in our entire universe
are black holes. We know they are everywhere,
and scientists have just recently captured the first photograph of these lurking space monsters.
Scientists have explained why these phenomena occur but have no idea what happens inside of
a black hole. Black holes are created when a massive star goes supernova.
After the star ejects its guts across the galaxy, all that's left is a sphere of
densely packed particles that once made up the star's core. The matter in this region
of space is so dense that it collapses in on itself, creating a singularity where gravity
becomes infinite. The gravity is so strong that nothing can escape its pull, not even light.
But the real mystery is what happens inside of a black hole. According to the laws of physics,
matter and energy cannot be destroyed. This means although a black hole would most certainly crush
you with its immense gravity if you ever fell into one, the atoms you are made up of would
need to go somewhere. Scientists don’t think that all of that information is just stored
at the center of the black hole, but since nothing but a small amount of what is called
Hawking Radiation—named after the famous astronomer Stephen Hawking—leaves a black hole,
what happens to all of the things that fall into it is still a mystery?
This problem stumps the most brilliant minds that have ever lived, and no solution seems to
be in sight. Maybe the singularity at the center of a black hole leads to an alternate dimension
where everything that is sucked in ends up. Or perhaps all of the information is just stuck
around the event horizon of the black hole. We will most likely never find out in our lifetime,
but scientists will never stop trying to uncover the answer to this great mystery of our universe.
And speaking of gravity… what is it?
You’d think that a force such as gravity which we can calculate with incredible
precision and observe all around us, would be something that science could explain.
But it turns out that scientists don’t actually know what gravity is.
The difference between gravity and other forces is that scientists can’t pinpoint the particles
that cause gravity. For example, bosons, gluons, and photons are all responsible for forces that
hold nuclei together or create electromagnetism, but what particle is responsible for gravity?
Scientists have no clue. Some researchers suspect a yet-to-be-discovered particle called a graviton
somehow causes gravity, but there is no proof of that yet.
Another hypothesis around what creates gravity has to do with string theory. Theoretical physicists
think that gravity is just a closed loop of energy connected in a way that influences
everything in the universe. But perhaps the most trippy idea about what gravity is has to do with
extra dimensions. Some scientists think that the cause of gravity isn’t in our dimension
but hidden somewhere within the multidimensional layers that make up the multiverse. Maybe there
is another you in an alternate dimension that is somehow influencing this dimension’s gravity
in some unknown way. We may never know, but it is fun to think about.
You might not realize it, but time is weird. Why does it only move in one
direction? Is traveling backward in time impossible? These questions are currently
being worked on by scientists, but for right now, there are very few answers.
Scientists think time moves forward because of a property known as entropy. At a basic level,
entropy is the idea that everything in the universe is moving from a state of
order to a state of disorder. Once a system undergoes entropy and becomes more disordered,
there is no going back. This is similar to how time works:
once you go forward in time, you can't go back in time. But why is this the case?
It may just be the ignorance of humans and our inability to perceive the movement of
time in different ways, but as far as we can tell, time only moves in one direction.
This is further reinforced by the numerous paradoxes that can occur when we discuss
traveling back in time. Theoretically, traveling to the past might be possible,
but it could also end the universe as we know it. Time travel and the movement of
time in one direction are conundrums that scientists are currently trying to solve,
but time will tell how long it will be before we can make sense of it all.
Scientists know the universe started with two types of matter. There was regular matter—which
is what you and everything you can see is made of—and there was antimatter. But today,
the universe is made almost exclusively of regular matter.
Why do we live in a world full of matter instead of a world full of antimatter?
This is a great question and one that scientists don’t have an answer for. We think that at the
beginning of it all when the Big Bang created the universe, there was about a 50/50 split between
antimatter and matter. When these two forms of matter come into contact, they annihilate,
which isn’t conducive to constructing the universe we see today. However, for some reason, our
universe ended up with slightly more matter than antimatter, which is why anything exists at all.
If there were even amounts of antimatter and matter, the only thing that would be left in
the universe after it all annihilated would be some photons. Obviously,
this was not the case. Scientists know that there must have been more matter,
but they can’t figure out why that would be the case. In fact, it is estimated that only about
one matter particle per billion escaped being annihilated just after the Big Bang. This is
a really small percentage, but it was enough to create everything we see in the universe today.
The craziest part is that the antimatter and matter mystery is nowhere close to being solved.
It just doesn’t make sense that mirror copies of particles would not have been produced in
the same number during the Big Bang. Perhaps there was some form of divine intervention;
the only problem with this theory is that it is not testable,
and therefore, not an explanation that scientists are willing to accept.
There is another mystery that scientists can’t explain,
which may not seem quite as important as some of the other topics discussed,
but once you hear about it, you will never look at a glass of water the same again.
The phenomenon we are talking about is sonoluminescence. This is one unexplained mystery
you can observe in a science lab. If you emit a certain frequency soundwave at a glass of water,
it causes bubbles to form within the liquid. This is pretty cool, but it is not the aspect of
sonoluminescence that scientists can’t explain. When the bubbles pop, something extraordinary
happens: they emit light. To be fair, the light flash only lasts for a trillionth of a second, so
the phenomenon can't be observed by the naked eye, but it is still an awesome unexplained mystery.
Scientists understand that the bubbles form due to changes in pressure regions,
but the actual source of the light is unknown. Some scientists think it is a
very small nuclear fusion reaction, which would be almost unbelievable
and kind of scary. Others think it has to do with some type of electrical discharge
or the gasses inside the bubble igniting. It is difficult to get an exact measurement since
the light-causing reaction happens so quickly. But one thing that scientists do know is that
the temperatures within the bubbles are over ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit when they pop.
Human history is full of mysteries that have yet to be explained. From ancient computers to
an unbreakable code, some real-life archaeological finds rival the epic adventures of Indiana Jones.
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient device found on a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea.
The artifact has been called the first computer as it used a wind-up system of cogs and wheels
to track the movement of celestial bodies in the sky. The Antikythera mechanism was
so sophisticated that it could predict the motions of all five known planets at the time,
along with the sun and moon. It could also determine the timing of eclipses.
These are all complicated calculations that required precise timing mechanisms and
sophisticated knowledge of engineering, physics, and astronomy. Scientists don’t think there needed
to be some outside alien intervention for the Greeks to create such a device.
Instead, by using mathematics, it was possible for the ancient Greeks to
create the Antikythera mechanism all on their own. What has scientists baffled
is how they were able to do it so early in history and why it is one of a kind.
It seems odd that something as important as an early computer would not be replicated.
Think about the first computers that led to the smartphones we have today. In a matter of decades,
we went from computers that took up and entire building to more powerful ones that we can hold
in our hand. The Antikythera mechanism could have been the foundation to even more complex devices,
but it wasn’t. No other apparatuses have been found that are similar or seem to build off the
Antikythera mechanism. The reason for this has scientists and archaeologists stumped.
But this isn’t the only archaeological find that stumps scientists.
The Voynich Manuscript is a document written in a code that scientists have struggled to break for
years. The manuscript was written around 600 years ago and likely came from Central Europe. At first,
scientists and code breakers thought it was written in some unknown language. The more
they examined it, the more apparent it became that the text wasn’t a new language, but a code.
Up until this day, no one has been able to break the code and decipher what the book says. Many
believe that the language that lies underneath the jumble of looping letters and symbols is
Hebrew. The manuscript was recently fed into a computer that found 80% of the coded words
correlated to Hebrew words. The problem is that the other 20% of the manuscript
still hasn't been deciphered, which means no clear meaning can be discerned from the text.
Scientists are perplexed by this mysterious manuscript. The code
seems practically unbreakable, but the meaning of the text could help us piece
together another part of history. Perhaps it explains occult practices from the past,
or maybe it is directions on how to communicate with God. At this point,
it seems like we may never know, but it is the unknowable that science strives to explain.
It is important to remember that even though all of the phenomena in this
video currently have scientists stumped, it is likely this won’t always be the case.
As science progresses and new evidence is uncovered, we will be able to shed light on many,
if not all, of these topics. Maybe there are truly some unknowns in our universe,
but the beauty of science is that it will never stop trying to solve these mysteries.
Now watch “Horrifying Unsolved Internet Mysteries.”
Or check out “The Most Shocking Unsolved Murders In The World.”