From an entire new galaxy right next to us, to a spooky ghost town, here are ten totally
wild discoveries made by accident!
10: The Neighboring Galaxy An accidental discovery from the Hubble telescope
has revealed a new galaxy right beside the Milky Way.
The Hubble telescope, which has been orbiting Earth for almost 30 consecutive years, was
checking out our cosmic neighborhood, inspecting a globular star cluster named NGC 6752.
It’s about 13,000 light-years away inside the halo of our own private galaxy.
That was when the telescope was photobombed by a totally unknown galaxy right beside us!
Star cluster NGC 6752 resides in the constellation Pavo, the peacock.
It’s the third brightest cluster visible to us, after Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae.
Astronomers were trying to hunt down white dwarf stars to age NGC 6752 when they discovered
Bedin 1 completely by mistake.
It turns out that Bedin 1 is a spheroidal galaxy that’s 13 billion years old and has
a maximum of several billion stars within it.
What's truly fascinating is that our new neighbor only measures about 3000 light-years at its
greatest extent.
That’s only 1/30th of the diameter of our Milky Way.
But it’s not our only cosmic neighbor.
Scientists have already identified at least 36 dwarf spheroidal galaxies inside of our
Local Group.
The Local Group itself is made up of 54 different galaxies, with the Milky Way being just one.
According to the report in Forbes Magazine, Bedin 1 is 30 million light-years from us,
or 2300 times as far as the star cluster NGC 6752.
9: New Blue A few years ago, a group of chemists accidentally
created a unique blue pigment for the first time in over 200 years.
If this sounds silly, it's really not.
These chemists basically cooked up a new color, a unique brilliant blue that they nicknamed
YInMn.
It took ten years for it to be approved for commercial use by the US Toxic Substances
Control Act.
In 2020, the new and accidental pigment finally became available to art suppliers and is currently
one of the rarest colors of paint in the world.
One shop was reported to be selling the new blue at $179.40 for 40 milliliters.
That's less volume than a shot of tequila!!
This new blue color is so special that Crayola announced in 2017 that they would replace
their retired Dandelion yellow color with a new crayon inspired by the color of YlnMn
blue – though they couldn't actually afford to use the real pigment.
The pigment was made by scientists at Oregon State University while they were investigating
materials to be used in electronic applications.
Graduate student Andrew Smith was trying to make a type of electronic material by heating
manganese oxide to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit when he noticed a strange blue compound had
suddenly appeared in the furnace.
Besides this amazing color it makes, it is a very stable compound that doesn’t react
when heated or cooled, or mixed with water or acid.
Surprisingly other blues cause problems.
Cobalt blue is known to be carcinogenic and Prussian blue can release cyanide.
But this new blue appears to be safe.
Since the happy accident happened the team has now made other durable colors such as
yellow, orange, green, and purple by using similar chemistry.
They are now on the lookout to make a safe and durable red pigment.
8: Storage Unit Jackpot Art dealer David Killen recently purchased
a collection of abandoned artworks from a storage unit in New Jersey and made an incredible
accidental discovery.
This New York art dealer purchased the contents of the abandoned storage unit for $15,000
but these things are always a mystery.
You buy the unit, but you don’t know what’s in there!
Most of the time it’s a bunch of junk!
When he made the purchase, he wasn't sure he'd ever get his money back.
Little did he know, there were six unknown paintings by famous artist Willem de Kooning.
The unit also contained unclaimed work from an art conservator named Orrin Riley who died
in 1986.
When David purchased the 200 seemingly worthless art pieces, he thought they would be minor
works by minor artists.
He was actually planning to use them as filler in his gallery.
Happily for David, this storage unit really paid off.
The former assistant to Willem de Kooning told the New York Post that he believes the
six paintings are definitely authentic, probably from the 1970s.
This is big news considering a small painting by Kooning recently sold for over $4.2 million
at auction.
But the total auction record for Kooning stands currently at $66.3 million.
This means that if the paintings are authenticated and David puts them up for sale, his accidental
discovery could net him millions and millions of dollars.
That would be a very lucrative investment on his part.
Have you ever found anything cool in storage?
Maybe your grandmother’s attic or something??
Let me know in the comments below!!
7: Colossus of Ramses II Archaeologists working in Egypt recently discovered
a giant statue submerged underneath groundwater inside of a slum in Cairo completely by accident.
The experts are saying the statue probably depicts the ancient Pharaoh Ramses II, who
reigned over Egypt 3000 years ago.
The random discovery has been praised by the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry as one of the
most important in recent memory.
The statue was found near the ruins of Ramses II’s broken temple in the old city of Heliopolis,
on the outskirts of Cairo.
Ramses II was one of the most powerful rulers of the ancient Egyptian kingdom.
He ruled from between 1279 and 1213 BC and led several successful military expeditions,
including marching the Egyptian army into Nubia and Syria.
So far, the researchers have discovered the head and torso.
News crews and curious locals looked on as archaeologists pulled the enormous head out
of the water using a forklift.
And nearby, the team found a limestone statue depicting Ramses II’s grandson, Pharaoh
Seti II.
The main reason archaeologists are positive that the statue depicts Ramses II is that
the sun temple in Heliopolis was founded by the man himself.
At the time, it was one of the largest temples in the entire nation.
The sun temple in Heliopolis was nearly double the size of the famous Karnak temple in Luxor.
But like many ancient wonders, it was destroyed during the Greco-Roman occupation of Egypt.
Most of its obelisks were moved, many of the goods were stolen and taken to Europe, and
many of the building supplies were scrapped and reused to help build Cairo.
6: Fossilized Vampire Squid An expert team of paleontologists working
in Prague discovered a mysterious remnant from a lost time in the ocean’s history.
They surprisingly came across a fossil of a vampire squid that dates back thirty million
years.
What's really crazy is that vampire squid still exist today.
They are a crimson color and have webbing that attaches all of their appendages, making
them look like squid vampires in red capes.
The team made the discovery while combing through an old fossil collection at the Hungarian
National History Museum.
They came upon an old imprint of a fossil found in 1942 by a Hungarian paleontologist.
He had discovered the vampire squid, cataloged the find, and then everyone had forgotten
about it.
Because the vampire squid was found free of microfossils, experts today know that the
animal was definitely living in deep waters.
This is important because it shows that the vampire squid had already evolved and was
thriving in deep oceans between 34 and 23 million years ago, during what is known as
the Oligocene Epoch.
Scientists still don't know exactly when the vampire squid first evolved to live in the
ocean, but they believe they made their way from shallower waters into the depths of the
world’s oceans around 150 million years ago, which explains how they managed to avoid
ever going extinct.
5: Classic Car Mania An urban explorer came across the find of
a lifetime when he discovered a rare and very valuable collection of vintage prototype cars
that have been estimated to be worth upwards of $1 million.
The urban explorer identified himself only as Ben, and he'd apparently known about the
secret complex full of unknown treasures for years before he and a friend decided to make
their way into the property and see what was in store.
What they found was a prototype Bristol Bullet, a Bentley Continental Flying Spur, and even
a 1957 Beardmore Taxi – all of this stuff hidden inside of a turreted complex with boarded-up
windows and unkempt, overgrown grounds.
The explorers had no idea they would find such valuable vehicles.
The Bristol Bullet was designed as a 70th anniversary prototype model but was never
sold and is worth at least $250,000.
The 2008 Bentley Continental Flying Spur is worth around $20,000, while the 1964 Bristol
409 Bullet Speedster goes for around $300,000.
The speedster was crafted as a testing prototype and never made it to market.
According to Ben, the urban explorer who found all this stuff, he had no idea what he was
getting into when he and his friend broke into the building.
They thought it was just an ordinary abandoned warehouse, maybe with a few ghosts and a bit
of junk.
The building was owned by Bristol Cars, the last independent British car manufacturer
in the entire country.
They went bust during the COVID lockdown and must have left behind some treasures by accident.
And now for number 4 but first it’s shout out time!!
Wanted to say a big thank you to XXX.
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We have tons more videos about new discoveries coming up!!
4: Antarctic Sponges The discovery of Arctic sponges underneath
the ice shelf in Antarctica has scientists pretty confused!
These Arctic sponges are strange lifeforms that were found totally by accident on a boulder
beneath the ice.
The area that floats beneath the Antarctic ice shelves is one of the least-known habitats
on our planet.
The only way to see what's happening beneath the ice is to drill a massive borehole and
lower in a camera.
Researchers were drilling almost 3000 feet through the ice and found lifeforms attached
to rocks, living in utter darkness thousands of feet beneath solid ice in subzero temperatures.
How had these creatures managed to survive?
While they are not exactly fish or lobsters, sponges are filter feeders that don’t really
move around, making it even more surprising that they are getting enough nutrients to
survive down there!
According to marine biologist Huw Griffiths, it was a genuine surprise to discover animals
living in such an extreme location.
This is because things like sponges were previously thought unable to live in a place so far from
sunlight with absolutely no obvious source of food.
But clearly that’s not the case!
The sponges discovered have probably adapted to living in these harsh conditions through
thousands of years of evolution and are likely able to live for a long time without having
to eat.
However, scientists and biologists alike are still boggled by how exactly any lifeform
can thrive basically encased in ice.
3: A New Throat Organ Despite all we think we know about human anatomy,
scientists literally discovered a new organ just this year completely by accident!
Researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute were using special scanning techniques to
investigate a patient and found a new set of salivary glands in the upper part of the
throat that they hadn't known about before.
The scientists then used the same scanning techniques to look at 100 additional patients.These
new glands were found in the nasopharynx region, positioned behind the nose.
Previous to the discovery, scientists thought that the region was pretty much empty.
But they’ve now discovered what they’re calling tubarial salivary glands hiding underneath
a piece of cartilage.
They also dissected two cadavers to further confirm the discovery.
From what scientists can figure out so far, these newly found glands probably work to
lubricate the upper throat just behind the nose and mouth.
This newest discovery was published in the Journal Radiotherapy and Oncology.
It’s kind of surprising that nobody knew this was here right?
With all the nasal issues and reconstructive surgeries and plastic surgeries it took new
technology to discover this new organ in the throat!
2: A Creepy Ghost Town When TikTok users were exploring rural Missouri,
they stumbled upon one of the creepiest ghost towns in all of the United States.
A girl shared her discovery ofa subdivision full of creepy, abandoned mansions known as
the Indian Ridge Resort.
This place was supposed to be a luxurious neighborhood with a building cost of around
$1.6 billion.
The developers were going to build a shopping mall, a golf course, a museum, and one of
the largest indoor water parks in the world.
But none of this stuff ever got off the ground.
A few of the giant mansions were partially built but nobody ever moved into them.
Construction stopped by 2009 after the financial crisis and the entire area has since been
forgotten.
Most people don’t even know it’s there, which made the poor TikTok user’s discovery
so much more horrifying for her.
The mansions are now crumbling, haunting, and not very welcoming.
And it doesn’t help that they were built in the middle of a foggy forest.
The girl was pretty scared but she had a blast sharing it!
As far as we know, there are no current plans to demolish the creepy abandoned mansions,
so they should definitely be around if you want to find them on your next trip to Missouri.
1: A Lost Forest Archaeologists were recently shocked when
they discovered an ancient forest completely by accident off the coast of Wales.
The United Kingdom has experienced a series of strong storms.
The worst was definitely Storm Frances.
When Frances smashed into Wales, the gale-force winds blew away parts of the beach, revealing
an ancient forest that had been buried in the sand for roughly 4500 years.
Carbon dating placed the forest as being alive in 1500 BC.
But what’s really fascinating is that the ancient forest buried under the sand may have
something to do with the 17th century legend of a lost civilization swallowed by the sea,
known as “The Sunken Hundred.”
The legend of The Sunken Hundred states that a once powerful kingdom occupied the land
where this ancient forest once thrived, before being flooded and turned into a beach.
The land was flooded because one of the princes in charge of the city forgot to close the
floodgates and allowed the entire area to be swallowed by seawater.
Unfortunately, there has never been any archaeological evidence to prove this Welsh version of Atlantis
ever existed.
But these newly found trees do suggest that the area was definitely full of greenery before
some kind of geological event caused the sea levels to rise.
What’s the wildest discovery you’ve ever made by accident?
Let me know in the comments.
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