Science has mapped the human genome, landed robots on Mars, and explained how stars are born and die. But for all that progress, there are still dozens of things we don’t fully understand, and some of them are surprisingly close to everyday life. From diseases with no known cause to cosmic signals that shouldn’t exist, these are not theories or conspiracy stories, but real phenomena that scientists have studied for years without a final answer. Here are 50 strange facts that show just how much of the world, and the universe, still doesn’t make complete sense.
1 Brainerd Diarrhea Cause Mystery
Brainerd diarrhea is a sudden-onset, watery, explosive illness that can last for months and does not respond to antibiotics. Doctors first described it in Brainerd, Minnesota, in 1983, and since then they have recorded ten outbreaks, including nine in the United States. Investigators have linked some outbreaks to raw milk and untreated water, but they still have not identified the exact cause. That has left Brainerd diarrhea as a real medical mystery that can drag on for months or even years before it finally resolves.
2. Scientists don’t know where, how, or when great white sharks mate in the wild because they have never seen it happen. Even after decades of research and tracking efforts around the world, no confirmed mating site has ever been found for the species. Researchers have inferred parts of their reproductive process by studying other sharks, but key behaviors like courtship and mating remain undocumented. This has left one of the ocean’s most famous predators guarding a major biological mystery.
3. Between 1915 and 1926, encephalitis lethargica spread around the world and killed or incapacitated about 500,000 people. The disease attacked the brain and left some victims in a statue-like state, unable to speak or move. Doctors first described it in 1917, but they never pinned down a definitive cause while the epidemic was raging. Then, just as mysteriously as it had arrived, the disease faded away and left one of the strangest medical puzzles of the 20th century.
4. In some bamboo species, entire populations bloom at the same time after intervals of roughly 40 to 120 years, even when the plants grow in completely different parts of the world. Plants cloned from the same original stock can still flower together regardless of geography or climate. After blooming, they usually die, which can wipe out huge stands of bamboo in one sweep. Scientists think each plant carries some kind of internal timing mechanism, but exactly how that clock works remains a mystery.
5. The Earth gives off a faint microseismic pulse every 26 seconds, almost like a planetary heartbeat. Scientists have traced the rhythmic signal to somewhere in the ocean, where it causes tiny tremors that instruments can pick up over and over again. Researchers have studied the pulse for decades and come up with possible explanations that include waves, seafloor activity, and volcanic regions. However, they still don’t know exactly what causes it.
6 Fibromyalgia Cause Medical Mystery
Fibromyalgia affects an estimated 10 million Americans, yet doctors still do not know its exact cause. The condition has been recognized for centuries, but it had no prescription medication until 2007, and doctors still cannot confirm it with a single diagnostic test. Diagnosis often takes years because physicians must first rule out other conditions, and the name itself reveals almost nothing since it comes from Latin and Greek roots meaning “tissue,” “muscle,” and “pain.” That has left millions of patients living with a life-altering disorder that medicine recognizes as real but still does not fully understand.
7. Tullimonstrum gregarium, better known as the Tully Monster, was so bizarre that paleontologists still argue over what kind of animal it actually was. Scientists have found thousands of fossils, all from the Mazon Creek fossil beds in Illinois, yet the debate over whether it was closer to a vertebrate, an invertebrate, or something in between still has not fully ended. A 2016 pair of studies argued for a vertebrate connection, but later papers challenged that conclusion, and a 2023 study said its three-dimensional anatomy casts doubt on those supposed vertebrate traits.
8. Chemists call it a disappearing polymorph when a chemical suddenly stops forming one crystal structure and begins forming another instead. In some cases, that shift seems to spread through labs and factories as microscopic seed crystals contaminate equipment, air, or materials and push future batches into the new form. The problem has hit pharmaceutical compounds especially hard, because a new polymorph can make the old version difficult, impractical, or uneconomical to produce. Scientists understand the basic seeding theory, but the full process can still look eerily contagious when the change spreads across the world.
9. In 1986, American biochemist Leonard H. Rome and cell biologist Nancy Kedersha discovered a massive, barrel-shaped structure inside cells called the vault. These giant ribonucleoprotein particles exist in nearly every eukaryotic cell and can number in the tens of thousands within a single cell. Despite more than 40 years of research, scientists still have not pinned down their exact function, even though they appear linked to processes like transport, immunity, and drug resistance. That has left one of the most abundant structures in biology as one of its least understood.
10. In 1962, biologist Gordon C. Creel documented a bizarre salt spring near Estelline in northern Texas, about 500 miles from the nearest ocean, that sheltered a marine-style ecosystem including crabs, barnacles, seaweed, diatoms, and a single fish species. The crab found there was originally described as Hemigrapsus estellinensis, although a 2020 genetic analysis later concluded it was the same species as the Pacific shore crab Hemigrapsus oregonensis. The spring likely preserved this strange community as a relic from ancient changes in sea level, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a dike around it in January 1964, raising the salinity and wiping out much of the biota. By then the crab population had already vanished, and the spring’s weird inland marine world was gone.
11 Great Attractor Cosmic Mystery
The Milky Way is moving at about 600 kilometers per second toward a massive region of gravity called the Great Attractor. Astronomers cannot see that region clearly in visible light because the Milky Way’s dusty galactic plane blocks much of it behind the Zone of Avoidance. Researchers have identified major hidden structures there, including the Norma Cluster, and they now think even larger mass concentrations beyond it also contribute to the pull. That means the motion is real, but the full structure behind it is still only partly mapped.
12. Sweating sickness tore through England in a series of outbreaks between 1485 and 1551, then vanished from the record as suddenly as it had appeared. The disease struck fast, with symptoms coming on abruptly and death or recovery often arriving within 8 to 10 hours, and historical accounts suggest the highest mortality fell on men in their 30s and 40s. Modern researchers have proposed possibilities such as an unknown hantavirus, but no one has definitively identified the disease.
13. General anesthesia does not mimic normal sleep, and EEG readings show that even the deepest sleep never reaches the same brain state as the lightest anesthesia. Instead, the patterns more closely resemble a comatose brain, which is why some researchers describe it as a “reversible coma.” Anesthesiologists know how to dose it, monitor patients, and manage its effects during surgery. Yet despite decades of use, scientists still do not fully understand the precise molecular mechanism behind how many anesthetic drugs shut down consciousness.
14. Sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, is the sudden death of a baby younger than 1 year that remains unexplained even after an autopsy, a death-scene investigation, and a review of the clinical history. It has accounted for a large share of post-neonatal deaths in Western countries, and modern public health agencies still classify it as a diagnosis of exclusion rather than a solved disease. Researchers have identified risk factors and likely biological vulnerabilities, but the exact cause is still unknown.
15. Haff disease is a rare condition where people develop severe rhabdomyolysis, a dangerous breakdown of muscle tissue, within 24 hours of eating fish or seafood. The illness was first described in 1924 near the Baltic Sea and has since appeared in outbreaks across the United States, China, and Brazil, often linked to cooked fish that seemed completely normal. Scientists strongly suspect a heat-stable toxin that survives cooking and enters the body through contaminated seafood. However, despite nearly a century of cases and investigation, the exact toxin has still never been identified.
16 Strasbourg Dancing Plague Mystery
In 1518, the city of Strasbourg saw one of history’s strangest outbreaks when dozens, and eventually hundreds, of people began dancing uncontrollably in the streets. Contemporary accounts say the episode lasted for weeks, and historians estimate that somewhere between 50 and 400 people joined the frenzy. Some later sources claimed dancers kept going until they collapsed or died, but modern historians note that the death toll is disputed even though the event itself is well documented. What caused the Dancing Plague still has not been definitively explained.
17. When filmmaker Wes Craven developed A Nightmare on Elm Street, he drew on news reports about Southeast Asian refugees in the United States who were terrified to fall asleep after intense nightmares. Some of those men, many of them Hmong refugees from Laos, reportedly screamed in their sleep and then died with no obvious cause, alarming doctors and public health officials in the 1980s. Later reporting and medical investigation connected the deaths to what became known as Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome, a real phenomenon that still has no single definitive explanation.
18. The yips are a sudden and unexplained loss of the ability to perform simple, well-practiced actions, even in elite athletes. The condition has affected players across sports, including MLB pitcher Jon Lester, who in 2014 struggled so badly with routine throws that he began running most of the way to first base before underhanding the ball. Researchers have linked the problem to a mix of performance anxiety and a neurological issue called focal dystonia, which causes involuntary muscle movements. But no single cause explains every case.
19. According to a much later retelling of an older report, a nun in a French convent during the Middle Ages began meowing like a cat for no clear reason. Other nuns soon joined her, and the convent reportedly ended up meowing together at the same time every day for several hours. The noise continued until authorities threatened the nuns with whipping, after which it stopped.
20. About one-third of the nearly 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War have reported a chronic multisymptom illness now called Gulf War illness or Gulf War syndrome. Veterans have described problems such as fatigue, muscle and joint pain, memory trouble, and cognitive symptoms, and those patterns have shown up consistently in major research reviews. Scientists no longer doubt that the illness is real, but they still argue over its exact cause, with current research focusing on toxic exposures and biological susceptibility rather than a single settled explanation.
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21 Oumuamua Acceleration Space Mystery
In 2017, astronomers detected ‘Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object ever seen passing through our solar system. It came from outside the solar system, showed an unusual tumbling shape, and then picked up a small but measurable acceleration as it moved away from the Sun. Researchers now think that acceleration was likely caused by some form of outgassing or behavior similar to what later got called a dark comet, but the exact mechanism is still debated because no obvious coma or tail was seen.
22. Parakaryon myojinensis is a single-celled organism so strange that biologists still cannot place it cleanly anywhere on the tree of life. Japanese researchers described it in 2012 from a single specimen collected near the Myojin Knoll hydrothermal vent field, and the cell appeared to mix features seen in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes while fitting neither group. Because scientists have never found another confirmed specimen, they have not been able to culture it properly or sequence enough data to settle what it is.
23. In utero, a temporary vessel called the median artery runs down the arm to help supply the developing hand, and it usually disappears shortly after birth. But a 2020 study found that more adults are now retaining that artery, with the prevalence appearing to be far higher than it was in people born in the late 19th century. Researchers suggested this could reflect ongoing microevolution linked to genetic or developmental changes, but they did not pin down a single exact reason for the shift.
24. Ainhum is a rare condition where a tight, fibrous band slowly forms around the base of the pinky toe, gradually cutting off its own blood supply. Over several years, the band tightens, the bone and tissue begin to break down, and the toe can eventually detach and fall off on its own. Doctors have observed this process across different populations, most often affecting adult men, and it can take 4 to 6 years to reach full auto-amputation. Despite understanding how the toe is physically constricted, the exact cause of ainhum is still unknown.
25. When Danish chemist Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen introduced the pH scale in 1909, he clearly used “H” to represent hydrogen but never actually explained what the “p” stood for. Over time, scientists suggested meanings like the German “Potenz” or the French “puissance,” both meaning “power,” while others linked it to terms like “potential of hydrogen.” But none of those explanations come directly from Sørensen himself. That leaves one of the most widely used scientific terms with a letter whose original meaning is still debated more than a century later.
RE: Fact #4 (Bamboo Mass Blooming Mystery) – Since it doesn’t seem to be affected by environmental conditions, I’d assume this is a genetic trait. How the organism is able to monitor the passage of time accurately enough to permit coordinated gene expression is still a mystery.
RE: Fact #2 (Great White Mating Mystery) – As to where, I’d guess they probably do it in the ocean. But I’m definitely not a marine biologist.
You’d think that, but I have a friend who works at the Motel 6 by the highway and buddy, he has seen some things.
RE: Fact #12 (Sweating Sickness Cause Mystery) – Bet that within the next decade, some determined doctor will exhume victims to finally solve this 500-year-old medical mystery.
I recall that certain shaving brushes made from badger fur caused anthrax issues around World War I. They were eventually banned, and I wonder if antique versions can still carry the bacteria.
The outbreak involved brushes made of horsehair used to imitate badger hair, which had become scarce due to the war. The fur wasn’t properly disinfected because shipping routes were disrupted, and the US Army ended up issuing these cheap brushes to soldiers.
This seems like a plausible theory. Some luxury item derived from an animal, used in a way that brings it into close contact with the body, could easily transmit a pathogen. It does not have to be a shaving brush, but something similar makes sense.
RE: Fact #8 (Disappearing Polymorph Chemistry Mystery) – What drug developers have learned and are now aiming for is simple: don’t develop a drug containing a metastable polymorph. I’m familiar with the subject since I work in drug development.
A huge number of drugs or their precursors must contain metastable polymorphs, though. It seems like a more practical workaround would be to avoid relying on metastable structures that have a low energy barrier keeping them in their current state.
We try to prioritize the most thermodynamically stable polymorph for development nowadays. The ritonavir situation really forced the entire industry to pay attention. But as everyone in the field likes to say, the number of polymorphs you discover is directly tied to the time and effort you put into looking for them.
The problem is that the more stable a form is, the less water soluble it typically becomes, which can ruin a drug. Some compounds even have to be formulated as amorphous solids just to keep them soluble.
I know, but it is still not worth the risk of an unexpected polymorphic change during manufacturing or storage. Most of our drugs that reach development do not fail because of formulation or bioavailability issues. It might make lead optimization and candidate selection more challenging, though.
RE: Fact #43 (Curling Stone Motion Mystery) – I thought the curling motion came from the brush creating friction, which heats the ice, makes it smoother, and lowers the friction coefficient so the stone just takes the easiest path. Is that wrong?
I play in a beer league, and the stones definitely curl more if you sweep less or very lightly. We only sweep hard to make the stone travel further and keep it straight.
RE: Fact #18 (Athletic Yips Neurological Mystery) – It wasn’t fielding the ball that was the problem, it was throwing it to first. He struggled with pickoffs for that exact same reason.
RE: Fact #3 (Encephalitis Lethargica Epidemic Mystery) – “They would be conscious and aware , yet not fully awake; they would sit motionless and speechless all day in their chairs, totally lacking energy, impetus, initiative, motive, appetite, affect or desire; they registered what went on about them without active attention, and with profound indifference. They neither conveyed nor felt the feeling of life; they were as insubstantial as ghosts, and as passive as zombies.” This hits a little too close to home in some parts.
Passive zombies, we don’t get those anymore. All the zombies are ravenous sprinters these days.
It was a cool shtick when 28 Days Later first did it. Then World War Z jumped the shark.
This reminds me of a study on mice where they blocked the dopamine receptors, pretty sure it was dopamine. Either way, they ended up starving to death because they lacked the will to walk over to food that was sitting right in front of them.
There were experiments where rats were given a lever to stimulate their deep brain for pleasure. The rats would press it nonstop, ignoring food, water, or mates, and would even walk across electrified floors just to hit that lever. There have been a few similar cases in humans with very similar results.
“It’s the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped… everything else.”
RE: Fact #18 (Athletic Yips Neurological Mystery) – I used to play fighting games competitively. The first time I reached the top 8 at a major tournament, I was invited to play on the big stage. During that first match, I completely forgot how to do my super attack. It just vanished from my brain. I actually had to ask a friend sitting nearby how to do it after I lost the first round. It was a move I’d performed easily 50, 000 times, but it just went blank. The pressure in those situations with hundreds of people watching is surprisingly intense.
RE: Fact #19 (Meowing Nuns Mass Hysteria Mystery) – Sister Therese: Jesus, it’s really boring in here. Sister Therese: …. Sister Therese: Meow. Sister Claire: What was that for? Sister Therese: Bored as hell. Sister Claire: Meow. Sister Jeanne: Why are you doing that? Sister Claire: It’s fun. Better than chanting and prayer. Sister Jeanne: Meow. Abbess Marie: What on earth is happening? Sister Therese: Meow. Sister Claire: Meow. Sister Jeanne: Meow. Abbess Marie: Meow. Sister Therese: Meow. Sister Jeanne: Meow. Sister Claire: Meow. Sister Beatrice: Meow. Sister Fleur: Meow. Sister Camilla: Meow. Sister Eloise: Meow. Mother Superior Adalene: Meow. Sister Lisette: Meow. Sister Vivienne: Meow. Sister Brigitte: Meow. Jean-Jacques: Sacre bleu! What is going on in this convent? Abbess Marie: Meow. Jean-Jacques: All right, bring in the soldiers. That’s a whipping.
RE: Fact #38 (Gravity Nature Physics Mystery) – General Relativity is the current standard. It describes gravity not as a force, but as an effect caused by massive objects warping 4D spacetime. It gets much more complex, of course. We don’t actually know why massive objects warp space, but if you dig deep enough, we don’t really know “why” anything works.
RE: Fact #5 (Earth’s 26-Second Pulse Mystery) – “That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die.”
RE: Fact #9 (Cellular Vault Function Mystery) – It is interesting that the researcher who discovered them actually engineered mice lacking all three of the building blocks for vaults. The mice were essentially fine during standard testing, showing no major issues despite lacking them entirely.
This reminds me of a story I read years ago, possibly one of the later Asimov robot stories. An engineer analyzed circuits designed through forced selection and evolution. The designs were allowed to evolve with random errors, where the poorest performers were deleted and the best were copied with new mutations. The resulting robot brain was incredibly hard to analyze, full of functionless loops and side circuits, but since it performed better than anything else, it was used anyway. It makes me wonder if Vaults are like those ‘useless’ circuits. Does anyone know this story? Was it Asimov or Brin?
RE: Fact #14 (Sudden Infant Death Mystery) – A few years back, they discovered that lower levels of certain metabolites might play a part in SIDS.
That’s interesting news, though they’re calling it a “marker.” Do we know if there’s any way to boost those metabolites, or if that’s even the root cause?
Prenatal vitamins are a complete mess, and expectant mothers are often left to figure it all out on their own while pharmacies struggle to keep basics in stock. Nutrition awareness in general is pretty awful, and aggressive food marketing doesn’t help.
RE: Fact #5 (Earth’s 26-Second Pulse Mystery) – Any geologists, scientists, or experts in this area have theories? That would be a lot more interesting than the usual jokes.
I suspect it’s something like Old Faithful. Maybe an underwater geyser where it takes 26 seconds for the water to reach a hot spot, vaporize, and explosively expand.
I used to do this with air in my gut when I was a kid. Could literally breathe farts in and out.
Damn, I was hoping for the theory that a massive entity exists in the deep ocean, releasing an electromagnetic pulse while in hibernation that we’re picking up as a heartbeat. Way to crush my dreams of a real-life Cthulhu.
RE: Fact #19 (Meowing Nuns Mass Hysteria Mystery) – Policing was invented in the 18th century, not the Middle Ages. Why would there be police in a convent back then?
A) There were still appointed local authorities or church officials back then. B) Whipping was definitely a thing.
RE: Fact #29 (Infant Colic Cause Mystery) – COLIC IS A NIGHTMARE. We planned on having a huge family, but we stopped after one kid because of this. Colic isn’t just a baby being fussy or crying for a few minutes. A colicky baby will scream bloody murder for hours, in our case, sometimes 6 to 8 hours straight with only tiny breaks to eat. I hate admitting it, but colic is the only thing that could ever make a sane person think about throwing their baby against a wall. For those 3 or 4 months, there’s no bonding or cuddling; you’re basically caring for a machine that sucks the sanity right out of your brain. It destroys marriages, can lead to child abuse, and it made me decide never to have another kid. We tried everything, gas drops, music, bouncing, and I’m even ashamed to say we tried homeopathy. Nothing worked. After three months, the doctor suggested it might be acid reflux and gave us a prescription. Two weeks later, our kid was fine, but we have no idea if it was the medicine or if the colic just ran its course. If you’re dealing with this, get help so you can take a break. Don’t feel guilty about putting the baby in the crib and closing the door for 15 minutes; the baby will be fine, and you need that time to make sure you don’t lose your mind.
I’m another parent who stopped at one child because of colic. I’m the oldest of six, so I always planned on a large family, but we tried everything, even prescription antacids, and nothing worked. I’m not joking when I say I truly understand how well-meaning parents can reach a breaking point and potentially become abusive in a moment of extreme frustration. I was pushed that far myself. Add post-partum depression to the mix, and we’re just lucky our family got through those first few months in one piece.
My daughter was the same way. She screamed for almost every waking moment of her first 9 months. The only thing that settled her was a bouncy seat that had to be manually rocked constantly. It was exhausting having to do that every single minute of every day. Even in the silence, the sheer physical demand of constant bouncing was maddening. We even tried the automatic bouncers, but none of them worked, so it was all on us.
My first child was colicky too, and the constant crying was brutal. I wish it had only been 3 hours, 3 days, or 3 weeks; for us, it was non-stop for 8 months. I vividly remember counting down the hours from the moment I woke up until he finally fell asleep. I felt like he only stopped when he started crawling. My plan was to have two kids, so five years later we had our second. I was worried, but luckily he didn’t have colic and was just a typical energetic toddler. The first one never even went through the terrible twos. I’m so glad those days are behind me. When elderly people in the grocery store used to tell me to enjoy those years because they go by fast, I just thought, thank God they don’t last forever.
RE: Fact #25 (pH Letter Meaning Mystery) – It stands for Power of Hydrogen. Each step on the pH scale is a logarithmic change in the concentration of hydrogen ions in a substance. It’s disputed, sure, but the meaning isn’t totally unknown.
I used the word ‘exact’ for a reason. There are a few likely candidates for what it means, but no one is 100% sure which one he actually intended.
RE: Fact #22 (Parakaryon Life Classification Mystery) – Science News magazine had a feature on similar organisms called Asgard archaea, which have pseudopods that could engulf endosymbionts. Aha, found it: ‘How these strange cells may explain the origin of complex life.’
RE: Fact #17 (Sudden Nocturnal Death Mystery) – The Hmong deaths were likely linked to sleep paralysis, or “Hag Syndrome.” People all over the world describe the feeling of something sitting on their chest, making it impossible to breathe. In their culture, it’s known as Dab Tsog, and the belief is so intense that some people seem to stop breathing just to avoid fighting through the paralysis. It’s fascinating how similar those hallucinations are across different cultures.
This is genuinely terrifying. I never even knew this was a thing until it happened to me once. I was sleeping next to my girlfriend when I woke up in the middle of the night to see a woman in what looked like a wedding dress floating near the bed, wearing the most evil smile I’ve ever seen. I just knew she wanted to kill me. I was completely frozen and couldn’t get a word out. She started chuckling, and I was so petrified that I decided if I was going to die, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me scared. I tried to laugh as loudly as I could, though no sound came out, just to show her I wasn’t afraid. Then I woke up and she was gone. I couldn’t bring myself to sleep alone for months after that. I don’t believe in ghosts, but it’s still the most surreal and frightening experience of my life. The science behind sleep paralysis is fascinating, though. It’s like your body is only half-awake and assumes there’s a threat, but since there isn’t one, your mind just makes one up. Spooky stuff.
I deal with this constantly. I’ve figured out what triggers it more often, but it still happens in different ways. Sometimes if I’m sleeping facedown, I’ll enter paralysis and feel pressure on my shoulder, which isn’t too scary. I’ve also felt a presence nearby or had neutral hallucinations where a family member seems to be talking to me. The worst episodes were when it first started, seeing a figure like the girl from The Ring crawling toward me, that was horrifying. I’ve even had bad bouts during car rides without the hallucinations, where I’m fully aware of my surroundings but totally paralyzed, internally screaming just hoping to make a sound. It can last for what feels like 30 minutes. I’m pretty wary about sleeping upright in a car or on my back now. I think it happens because I’m often sleep-deprived; it definitely occurs more when I haven’t slept in a while.
RE: Fact #1 (Brainerd Diarrhea Cause Mystery) – “Does not respond to antibiotics.” Antibiotics often cause diarrhea themselves, so that isn’t a huge surprise. Since they don’t know the actual cause, using antibiotics would be a total guessing game anyway, there’s no solid evidence here that it’s bacterial.
RE: Fact #44 (Eye-Eardrum Signal Mystery) – That’s probably because the brain is already aware of the movement before you make it consciously. 10 milliseconds isn’t really that much of a head start.
RE: Fact #24 (Ainhum Self-Amputation Disease Mystery) – I’ve been stubbing that little guy on furniture for decades. It has plenty of reason to want to leave.
RE: Fact #30 (Acetaminophen Mechanism Medical Mystery) – Tylenol Manufacturer: Here is Tylenol. FDA Scientist: Does it actually work? Tylenol Manufacturer: It works great, thanks for asking.
RE: Fact #31 (Sleep Purpose Biological Mystery) – Maybe we sleep to upload all the data we gathered throughout the day to the alien masters watching us from space.
Does that mean people who need more sleep are just working with slower upload speeds? Mind blown.
Maybe you just accumulate more data every day, or you are due for a modem upgrade.
RE: Fact #28 (Forest Grove Sound Mystery) – It’s Man-Bear-Pig! There’s something big going on, and the public deserves to know! I’m out. “hssssssssh”
RE: Fact #28 (Forest Grove Sound Mystery) – This reminds me of the ‘Taos Hum, ‘ where a persistent noise has been bothering people for years. The creepy part is that not everyone hears it, and investigators still don’t have a solid answer. Apparently, there are several towns around the world that have dealt with something similar.
RE: Fact #27 (Depression Mechanism Brain Mystery) – There’s this thing called therapeutic lag where antidepressants take 2 to 6 weeks to actually work, even though they affect serotonin immediately. On the flip side, ecstasy also boosts serotonin and kicks in right away. So, whatever antidepressants are actually doing to help, it isn’t just a simple serotonin boost.
After I was diagnosed with MDD, I tried every SSRI, SNRI, and antidepressant you can think of. They didn’t do anything for me, even though I was told to give them time. A month later, I was still feeling suicidal, nothing had changed. Then, a clinician had a hunch and asked my psychiatrist to try me on ADHD medication. I didn’t have to wait three weeks; 15 minutes after taking Adderall, I was in the best mood I’d been in a decade. My racing thoughts stopped, and I could finally focus. Two years later, I’m off the antidepressants entirely and just take Adderall. Maybe my problem was actually undiagnosed adult ADHD all along, but since the symptoms overlap so much, it’s really hard for doctors to tell the difference.
RE: Fact #37 (Cocoliztli Epidemic Cause Mystery) – Reading about those symptoms on Wikipedia actually made me gasp. It’s wild that a disease could cause bleeding from so many places and turn the tongue black. The fact that it killed people in just a few days without any warning is terrifying.
Yeah, it’s easy to see why people compare this to a hemorrhagic fever like Ebola.
That was my first thought too. I just finished reading about the Marburg virus, and that was nightmare fuel. Also, regarding that book, I agree with the other commenter that it can be a bit sensationalized.
Could it have been a combination of diseases that they had no immunity to? That’s always been my assumption.
This happened a lot with children and was almost always fatal. Hemorrhagic smallpox was particularly common in pregnant people; it caused massive internal bleeding and organ failure while the skin would turn black or burnt-looking instead of forming normal fluid-filled rashes.
RE: Fact #36 (External Testes Evolution Mystery) – We should be thankful birds keep their testicles inside. The last thing I want on a night out is to get hit in the face with a seagull’s testicles while I’m eating a kebab.
RE: Fact #46 (Silphium Lost Plant Mystery) – It’s wild to think that something as common as garlic could go completely extinct, where future generations only know about it from history books.
Actually, asafoetida, the plant thought to be a close relative to silphium, tastes a lot like garlic and onion. It’s often used in Jain cooking as a substitute since they don’t eat those root vegetables.
RE: Fact #26 (Parry-Romberg Disease Cause Mystery) – I did some extra reading to calm my anxiety, and maybe this will help you too: According to the NIH, Parry-Romberg is incredibly rare, with under 5, 000 cases in the U.S. It usually starts before age 15 and is often linked to people who have a family history of unusual autoimmune issues. If you’re past your teens and don’t have that family history, you’re likely in the clear. You are statistically way more likely to be hit by lightning or a shark than to end up with this.
Great, now I’m stressed about lightning strikes and shark attacks instead!
RE: Fact #38 (Gravity Nature Physics Mystery) – That applies to all of physics, really. Science relies on experiments to show us how things behave, not necessarily what they fundamentally are. Asking what something “is” is basically outside the scope of science.
Exactly. Once we label something, we’re just working with an abstract concept rather than the “real” thing. At the end of the day, all we can do is make predictions about measurable results.
RE: Fact #13 (Anesthesia Mechanism Brain Mystery) – That’s reassuring. I’d hate to think deep sleep would be enough to get me through a surgery involving a knife.
Your body still reacts to pain while you’re under, which is why it needs to be managed so carefully.
There’s a difference between a physical stress response and conscious suffering. Your body might go into reflex mode with hormone rushes, but your conscious mind doesn’t actually experience the pain.
RE: Fact #36 (External Testes Evolution Mystery) – I was born with bilateral cryptorchidism, meaning my testicles stayed in my abdomen. When I was 9, they were discovered, and I had surgery. One hadn’t formed properly and was a cancer risk, so it was removed; the other was brought down. The doctors told me then that because they had been exposed to body heat for so long, they might not function right. They were spot on. 25 years later, I had fertility tests done, and while my hormone levels are normal, my sperm count is zero.
RE: Fact #14 (Sudden Infant Death Mystery) – My son probably would have died from it if not for the home monitor we were given. For the first few weeks, it went off two or three times every night because he kept turning blue. We had to wake him up just to remind him to breathe. It’s terrifying to think how many babies could have been saved by a simple monitor.
My twins were born about six weeks early, so they didn’t have a developed feeding reflex yet and had to spend a couple of weeks in a special care nursery. I was weirdly grateful they were on monitors the whole time so I didn’t have to deal with any scares. By the time we brought them home, I felt like they were thoroughly debugged.
I had a 12-week preemie and felt the exact same way. I had no idea babies could desaturate that easily. It’s so scary to experience, but it definitely made SIDS feel a lot more real to me. Interestingly, our NICU was totally against people using things like the Owlet at home.
RE: Fact #25 (pH Letter Meaning Mystery) – The term pH popped up in 1909, introduced by S.P.L. Sörensen using the German ‘PH’. The ‘P’ comes from the German ‘Potenz’, meaning potency or power, and ‘H’ is the symbol for the hydrogen ion that dictates acidity or alkalinity.
So it just means ‘power, ‘ and we’re just unsure which language he meant it in? Seems like we actually know what he meant.
RE: Fact #16 (Strasbourg Dancing Plague Mystery) – I’m pretty skeptical about the theory that the dancing was caused by religious ecstasy over Saint Vitus.
RE: Fact #11 (Great Attractor Cosmic Mystery) – The distance from Earth to Pluto is about 5.3 billion kilometers. At 600 kilometers per second, that is about 21.6 million kilometers per hour. Dividing the distance by that speed, I get roughly 247 hours. Am I right that the galaxy is traveling the distance between Earth and Pluto in about 247 hours?
Yes, the universe is mind-blowingly massive. It is nearly impossible for our brains to truly comprehend the scale.
RE: Fact #18 (Athletic Yips Neurological Mystery) – This also happened to Brett Maher with the Cowboys on extra points. I really don’t envy professional athletes when they get the yips. The amount of crap they have to take for it is just unreal.
That had to be brutal for him. He’d probably practiced thousands of extra points and hit 95% of them throughout his career, then something just snapped and he went 1 for 6 in the playoffs. There’s no position in sports lonelier than a kicker who is missing.
RE: Fact #6 (Fibromyalgia Cause Medical Mystery) – As a man with fibro, I have to take Lyrica. Nothing was worse than people telling me it was all in my head while I was in agony. I’ve found that daily walking and yoga help calm the pain, though it never fully goes away.
RE: Fact #11 (Great Attractor Cosmic Mystery) – I find this less disturbing than the alternative, which is our galaxy receding from every other galaxy in the universe. Also, 600 kilometers per second is about 0.02 light-years per year, so it will take billions of years for the Milky Way to get anywhere near it.
I love how space is so vast that we can hear something like this and just think, “It is cool, we are only moving 600 kilometers per second.” The fastest man-made object is around 400, 000 mph, while 600 kilometers per second is over 1.3 million mph. That number is honestly hard to wrap my head around.
The Great Attractor isn’t strong enough to stop the expansion of space. We will eventually merge with our local cluster, but the supercluster will continue to disperse.
RE: Fact #40 (Coronal Heating Solar Mystery) – I wouldn’t equate “we haven’t solved it” with “we have no idea.” There are several competing models; the challenge is just proving which one is right and ruling out the others.
RE: Fact #14 (Sudden Infant Death Mystery) – My parents lost their first child to SIDS. Back in the mid-70s, the medical advice was to swaddle newborns and put them face-down to sleep. Once that advice switched to back-sleeping, the numbers really went down. I’m no expert, but this was a common topic in our house growing up, especially as the PSAs started rolling out in the 90s.
RE: Fact #34 (Dhaka Muslin Lost Craft Mystery) – I saw a documentary on this. The silk came from a rare species that became extinct in the wild. For thousands of years, families kept their production methods secret, much like the Chinese did with silk. In the documentary, they used DNA to find a wild relative and had some luck using CRISPR to identify the right genes for silk production. They are hoping to breed that relative to produce fine silk, effectively creating a new species. That is incredibly difficult and expensive, though. They also mentioned using spiders as a ‘cheap alternative.’ They’ve set a goal for 2030, but who knows? Finding investors for decade-long research with uncertain results is a tough sell.
RE: Fact #23 (Human Median Artery Evolution Mystery) – Living things are essentially just a massive library of instructions that worked once and keep on working. In the womb, we have tails, body hair, and shapes that look more like birds or lizards than humans. We shift through so many different forms in those first few months that we’re practically unrecognizable. If you’d never seen a human embryo and someone just showed you one, you’d almost certainly assume it was some kind of animal, not a person. Life just follows the inherited blueprints used to build its ancestors, and those instructions are so ancient that for the first few months, they might as well say, ‘Okay, now build the chicken part.’ It works, and there hasn’t been any pressure to find a better way. Eventually, we get to the later stages where those instructions finally say, ‘Alright, you can drop the tail now, we don’t need that anymore, ‘ and things start to look more human. It’s wild that you can literally watch our evolutionary history play out in the growth of a fetus.
You’re talking about the ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ principle. I remember covering this in paleontology, but I’m pretty sure it’s considered outdated now. I’m too rusty to explain why, but the Wikipedia entry on it is a good read if you want the details.
RE: Fact #37 (Cocoliztli Epidemic Cause Mystery) – The book “1491” offers a great look at what the Americas were actually like before Europeans showed up. It wasn’t empty land; it was home to millions. That “more than half” figure really doesn’t capture the scale of it, considering some estimates suggest 90% of the population vanished due to the wave of diseases that followed.
RE: Fact #32 (Labor Trigger Biological Mystery) – The trigger for labor is definitely a mystery. We know the process of birth, but not the specific switch that starts it. A common theory is that signals from the infant’s maturing lungs tell the placenta to get things moving.
RE: Fact #21 (Oumuamua Acceleration Space Mystery) – We’ve found three so far: 1I/ʻOumuamua, 2I/Borisov, and 3I/ATLAS. Since we’ve spotted three in less than a decade and we weren’t even watching the whole sky, there are likely many more we’ve missed. They probably aren’t that rare. I expect that once we hit double or triple digits, people will stop claiming they’re alien spacecraft every single time a new one is found.
If it meant I didn’t have to hear Avi Loeb’s nonsense every time a major news outlet wanted to talk about space, that would be enough for me.
Watching him berate others on his astrophysics committee was something else. The guy might work at Harvard, but he’s kind of a loon.
RE: Fact #21 (Oumuamua Acceleration Space Mystery) – Personally, I blame the UN for trying to fire our nukes at it. Julie Mao took that personally.
RE: Fact #30 (Acetaminophen Mechanism Medical Mystery) – It is actually common for a drug’s mechanism of action to remain unknown. The FDA doesn’t require companies to prove they know how a drug works to approve it.
RE: Fact #29 (Infant Colic Cause Mystery) – The cause is unknown simply because if anyone ever identified a specific cause, it wouldn’t be called colic anymore. The term is really just a placeholder for when we don’t know why a baby is crying so much.
RE: Fact #33 (AD 536 Climate Event Mystery) – Is anyone else surprised they never heard of this before? It seems like a massive historical event to just gloss over.
Yeah, especially since my history education was basically: Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, massive mysterious catastrophe, and then suddenly Columbus lands in America.
You actually learned about the Greeks and Romans? Lucky. For us, history was just: nothing important happened until George Washington showed up and fought the British.
I didn’t know about the climate event, but I did know the Plague of Justinian happened right around that same time. Some historians think that plague explains why the Roman Empire never reached its former glory again, even with leaders like Justinian and Belisarius. It might also explain why the Muslims were able to expand through the Middle East without being blocked by the Romans. Maybe the dust cloud played a part in all that too.
The Muslims were able to take over the Middle East because the Eastern Romans and Persians had worn each other out with centuries of war, though the plague certainly made things worse. Personally, I’m not a fan of Justinian; he overreached by getting his empire into too many conflicts. He was lucky to have Narses and Belisarius as generals. Speculating on how history might have changed without the dust or the plague is pointless. The butterfly effect makes those ‘what if’ scenarios meaningless, a tiny change would mean that entire generations of people simply wouldn’t exist.
RE: Fact #25 (pH Letter Meaning Mystery) – He introduced the concept in 1909 and didn’t pass away until 1939. How did nobody just walk up and ask him?
When he first presented the scale, he apparently said, ‘And obviously, we all know what the p stands for, ‘ and everyone just pretended to know so they wouldn’t look clueless until he passed away.
I’m definitely the person who would have raised my hand and said, ‘Professor, I suspect there are people here who don’t know what the p stands for but are too afraid to ask. I’m not one of them, but please, tell us!’
No one in this thread mentioned he created this while working for Carlsberg, they developed it for brewing beer. Too bad their beer still tastes like water and piss.
RE: Fact #34 (Dhaka Muslin Lost Craft Mystery) – Wasn’t it revived, though? My grandmother has a long muslin scarf that’s of lower quality, but it’s still so smooth and vibrant after 120 years that it’s surreal. Apparently, it was a wedding gift from a Rajah to my great-grandparents. It was later used as a veil, and the fabric is so thin you can fold it down to the size of an iPod, even though it’s longer than a person.
RE: Fact #13 (Anesthesia Mechanism Brain Mystery) – I’ve been under general anesthesia a few times, and it definitely isn’t like sleeping. It feels more like being turned off. There’s just a flicker of realization right before you go under, and then suddenly you’re waking up days later in a ton of pain.
RE: Fact #15 (Haff Disease Toxin Mystery) – Rhabdo is no joke. I almost died from it, and it was easily the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. People often say it’s way worse than childbirth.
What caused yours? I’ve heard it happens to marathon runners and CrossFit people.
Not the person you asked, but I got it from a personal trainer who pushed me way too hard. We were doing two sessions a week with zero breaks, and I was going in while still sore from the previous workout. Since I had never really exercised before, I had no clue how dangerous that was. I eventually couldn’t move my arms and ended up in the ER for three days getting flushed out.
RE: Fact #10 (Texas Inland Sea Ecosystem Mystery) – “We have discovered a miracle of nature! A one-in-a-million phenomenon, totally unique on Earth.” “Wow! Let’s build a parking lot over it.” “Alright.”
Welcome to the Texas Panhandle. If it isn’t dirt or dead grass, it is pavement.
RE: Fact #43 (Curling Stone Motion Mystery) – It seems like a few factors are at play. A study by J. Murata found that asymmetric friction due to velocity, combined with the point-like contact between the stone and the ice, is the main reason for the curl.
RE: Fact #6 (Fibromyalgia Cause Medical Mystery) – My grandmother had this for years. She hated being hugged because she was in so much pain. She eventually developed mild dementia and now has zero pain symptoms. I wouldn’t say it’s a good trade, but if you’re going to be forgetful, it’s almost better to be forgetful and pain-free.
My mother has suffered from this for decades. Her prescribed meds ruined her stomach to the point where she could only keep down rice and water. She started using cannabis oil a few years back, and seeing her go to town on a BBQ lamb last Christmas actually made me tear up.
Just a heads up for everyone: there’s a condition called cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, or cyclical vomiting syndrome, caused by marijuana, most common in daily users. I see it constantly in the ER. It’s weird, but it’s real and many people haven’t heard of it. Since people react differently to drugs, while cannabis helps some with nausea, it definitely causes it in others. If you’re dealing with terrible nausea, it might be worth taking a break from MJ for a few weeks to see if that’s the culprit.
I hate to bring this up, but chronic pain can actually shrink the brain, so there might be a legitimate link between her pain and her dementia. Chronic pain stress disrupts the HPA axis, leading to changes in neurons and glial cells that reduce the volume of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that handles emotions and behavior. This leads to a decline in GABA neurotransmitters. There’s a lot of ongoing research on this. Sorry.
My grandmother had it too. I remember her rubbing Vicks VapoRub all over herself and complaining about the pain all day, and everyone thought she was just overreacting. Now that I have it myself, I finally understand what she was going through. Poor thing, she really suffered.
RE: Fact #16 (Strasbourg Dancing Plague Mystery) – People think it was probably ergot poisoning from bread, which is related to LSD.
A lot of these spooky historical mysteries can likely be chalked up to ergot poisoning. The Salem witch trials are another example.
The Salem witch trials were really more about people trying to steal their neighbors’ land.
RE: Fact #3 (Encephalitis Lethargica Epidemic Mystery) – There’s still a debate about whether it was caused by the Spanish Flu, a different strain of flu, or if it was a totally separate illness that just happened to coincide with the pandemic.
A more recent study suggests it was caused by an enterovirus.
Also, it’s called the Spanish Flu because Spain was the only country reporting on it while others covered it up to keep people from panicking. Maybe that secrecy is related to the mystery of its origins, if the two diseases are connected.
RE: Fact #31 (Sleep Purpose Biological Mystery) – A better question is why we spend so much time awake. Sleep is the natural state; we only wake up to find food or for sex, then it is back to sleep. I heard that on a PBS special before it put me right to sleep.
RE: Fact #3 (Encephalitis Lethargica Epidemic Mystery) – What I think is extra weird is that many people died immediately, but some were apparently cured only to turn into statues years later. FYI, this is the disease featured in the movie and book “Awakenings.”
Sounds like a viral disease. Many viruses hide in cells dormant after the initial infection is fought off and provoke outbreaks later.
RE: Fact #26 (Parry-Romberg Disease Cause Mystery) – The idea that the face ‘melts off’ is totally wrong. That term doesn’t appear anywhere on the site. It’s a condition that can slowly get worse over 20 years before it finally stabilizes.
It doesn’t sound like it’s fatal, and it seems like some of the damage can be repaired once things stabilize. It’s still a rough situation, but not as horrific as the headline makes it out to be.
RE: Fact #35 (Sonoluminescence Light Physics Mystery) – On a molecular level, isn’t the explanation that the sound wave increases the molecules’ energy, causing electrons to jump into higher orbits and then release photons when they drop back down? That is what usually happens when a material emits light.
RE: Fact #8 (Disappearing Polymorph Chemistry Mystery) – This reminds me of the concept of a [False Vacuum], where the universe exists in a metastable state that could be tipped into a lower-energy, more stable state by something like a black hole. If it happened, it would propagate across the universe at the speed of light, effectively unraveling reality. Talk about a potential end-of-universe event. Sleep tight!
Since it only moves at the speed of light, it would not necessarily destroy the entire universe at once; if it happened late enough, it might only wipe out a local cluster.
So you are suggesting the universe could have already ended, and we just haven’t seen it yet? Like cosmic voids?
RE: Fact #7 (Tully Monster Identity Mystery) – This feels like one of those situations where, in 200 years, people will look back at our theories and say, “Check out what those idiots thought the Tully Monster looked like. Look at this drawing!”
Actually, in this case, they found fully intact fossilized specimens that look exactly like that. It’s not like the Iguanodon, where they had to guess how the pieces fit together and got it wrong. It really is just that weird.