The Most Incredible Discoveries That Baffled Scientists
The Most Incredible Discoveries That Baffled Scientists - Ancient Chinese Trumpets Pretty Women Life
One of the most incredible discoveries steel ancient pipes in China. In a distant Chinese region, there is a mountain with three strange triangular holes, inside of which a large number of ancient rusty pipes were found. As it turned out, some of them lead into the mountains, and some into a salt lake located nearby. The most interesting thing is that no garbage was found in the pipes, that is, they were used for some purpose, but who ?, because it is simply impossible to live there!
Another interesting discovery was the Antikythera Mechanism, discovered in 1902 on an old ship that sank near the Greek island of Antikythera. purpose this device still remains a mystery, as the 2000 year old mechanism consists of 82 fragments, including bronze gears and parts that were not used in any device of that time. Scientists suggest that it may be a cross between an ancient calculator and an astrolabe (the oldest astronomical instrument).
Mysterious ocean sound recorded by staff National agency for the study of oceanic phenomena in the United States, was also a very interesting discovery. This sound was picked up by 2 microphones 3,000 miles apart. Having determined the wave characteristics of such a sound, scientists came to the conclusion that it was emitted by some kind of living creature, although so far science has not known a single animal that is capable of reproducing such a loud sound.
The Baghdad batteries found on the territory of Ancient Mesopotamia are another amazing discovery. The estimated age of the find is over 2000 years. At first, they were identified by archaeologists as old clay vessels for storing food. However, during the research, a copper rod was found inside. Scientists suggested that the vessels could contain some kind of liquid, which, when interacting with copper, could give an electric charge. If their theory is correct, then the found device is the world's first battery.
Underwater pyramids at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle. This incredible discovery was made in the 20th century by Charles Berlitz. His expedition discovered the pyramid at a depth of 400 meters under water, near Bermuda. The put on pyramid was 3 times higher than the largest known at that time Egyptian pyramid Cheops and had smooth glass edges. It is very interesting that the pyramid does not consist of blocks, because no seams and cracks are visible on it, but it seems that it is carved from a monolith. Despite the fact that the US authorities have classified this information, a new message has recently appeared, which says that 2 more pyramids of a similar origin and shape were found in areas of the Bermuda Triangle. According to preliminary data, the age of unknown structures does not exceed 500 years.
An international group of physicists has found out why beta decays in atomic nuclei proceed more slowly than in free neutrons. Scientists have been struggling to solve this riddle for 50 years, according to a press release on Phys.org. The researchers studied the transformation of the tin-100 isotope into indium-100. These two elements have the same...
2019-03-12 521 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists from the US and China have for the first time calculated the contributions to the proton mass associated with various effects. For calculations performed within the framework of lattice QCD, scientists used the Titan supercomputer with a performance of about 27 petaflops. As a result, the researchers found that the quark condensate provides about ..
2019-02-26 574 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists from Germany proposed using azimuthally polarized electromagnetic waves to overcome the diffraction limit and accurately measure the position of a nanoparticle on a glass substrate. By observing the scattering of such waves on a spherical particle, scientists were able to fix a displacement of just ..
2019-02-26 426 0 Scientific discoveries
The Wendelstein 7-X stellarator proved its performance in a series of experiments conducted in 2016-2017 - the destabilizing plasma boostrap current was reduced by almost four times, and the plasma retention time was brought up to 160 milliseconds. At the moment, this is the best result among stellarators. ..
2018-06-04 22440 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists at the University of Maryland have discovered an exotic YPtBi superconductor, inside which electrons interact with each other to form high-spin quasiparticles. This was reported in the journal Science Advances. Scientists analyzed the electronic structure of a material made from yttrium, platinum..
2018-04-10 7361 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists from Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have figured out how an anomalous superconductor, strontium titanate, is able to conduct electricity without resistance despite not being a metal. This is reported by Science Alert. Strontium titanate is an oxide, however..
2018-03-27 5487 0 Scientific discoveries
Mathematicians from the University of California at Berkeley have found a condition for the existence of bare singularities in black holes, in which the laws of physics are violated. This conclusion calls into question the strong principle of cosmic censorship, when a naked singularity should be unattainable for any..
2018-03-06 6277 0 Scientific discoveries
Neurologists from the Charite University Hospital in Berlin have uncovered the processes that occur in the human brain during the process of dying. It turned out that the "brain tsunami" - a wave of depolarization of nerve cells that spreads uncontrollably through the cerebral cortex and causes the death of neurons - can be blocked. ..
2018-03-06 6302 0 Scientific discoveries
American physicists have for the first time experimentally registered bound states of three photons. The formation of trimers unusual for photons occurs when a laser beam passes through a cloud of cooled rubidium atoms due to the formation of intermediate polariton states, scientists write in Science. In contrast..
2018-02-18 4630 0 Scientific discoveries
Scientists at Northwestern University in the US found that terminally ill people suffering from Huntington's chorea have an 80 percent reduced risk of cancer. It turned out that tumor cells are sensitive to a defective form of the huntingtin protein, which also causes the death of nerve cells. It is reported..
2018-02-14 5483 0 Scientific discoveries
Biologists at Moscow State University have discovered a "molecular timer" - a special mechanism for regulating protein synthesis, which prevents the formation of abnormal molecules by sticking ribosomes. According to scientists, the discovery will help create therapeutic methods to combat cancer. This was announced in a press release..
2018-02-05 4953 0 Scientific discoveries
Scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have deciphered the genome of one of the simplest multicellular life forms, the green algae Tetrabaena socialis, which consists of four cells. This made it possible to determine the genetic mechanisms that contributed to the emergence of multicellularity. An article by biologists was published in the journal ..
2018-02-05 4297 0 Scientific discoveries
Hypothetical magnetic monopoles can be produced in heavy ion collisions or in strong magnetic fields of neutron stars. Physicists from Imperial College London theoretically considered these processes and calculated the lower limit for the possible mass of monopoles - it turned out to be slightly less than the mass ..
2017-12-14 3833 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists have developed a shell that, due to magnetohydrodynamic effects, allows you to completely suppress all disturbances in the flow of water around moving objects. In a paper published in Physical Review E, the scientists also proposed a way to create such a device, which could be...
2017-12-12 3698 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists for the first time experimentally measured the force of attraction that acts on individual cesium atoms from a black body. This force turned out to be several times greater than the gravitational force and the pressure force of electromagnetic radiation, write the authors of a paper published in Nature Physics. Effect..
2017-12-11 3412 0 Scientific discoveries
An international team of researchers has proven the existence of a new form of matter - excitonium. It is a condensate of excitons - electrons and "holes" connected to each other. This state of matter was first predicted almost 50 years ago. The scientists' article was published in the journal Science. About it..
2017-12-11 4204 0 Scientific discoveries
An international team of physicists has succeeded in reversing the passage of time for a pair of interconnected particles. Researchers have proven that for quantum interconnected qubits (quantum bits), the second law of thermodynamics is spontaneously violated, according to which in isolated systems all processes go only in the direction of increase.
2017-12-05 3125 0 Scientific discoveries
An extended version of the main physical theory - the Standard Model - predicts that charged particles can polarize vacuum and emit photons. A Brazilian theoretical physicist investigated this effect, known as vacuum Cherenkov radiation, and used it to set limits on certain parameters.
2017-11-30 2942 0 Scientific discoveries
Professor of Nizhny Novgorod state university named after Nikolai Lobachevsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Yaroslav Sergeev, in an interview with TASS, announced the solution of two Hilbert problems. Research published in the journal of the European Mathematical Society EMS Surveys in Mathematical Sciences. The first problem, about solving..
2017-11-28 3623 0 Scientific discoveries
Spanish scientists have for the first time transmitted quantum states between a cloud of cold rubidium-87 atoms and a Pr3+:Y2SiO5 crystal using photons. The article was published in Nature.To build a quantum network, it is necessary not only to store quantum states for a long time, but also to transmit..
Newborns usually have about 270 bones, most of which are very small. This makes the skeleton more flexible and helps the baby move through the birth canal and grow quickly. As we grow older, many of these bones fuse together. The skeleton of an adult consists of an average of 200-213 bones.
2. The Eiffel Tower grows 15 centimeters in summer
The huge structure is built with temperature expansion joints, thanks to which the steel can expand and contract without any damage.
When steel is heated, it begins to expand and takes up more volume. This is called thermal expansion. Conversely, a decrease in temperature leads to a decrease in volume. For this reason, large structures such as bridges are built with expansion joints that allow them to change in size without being damaged.
3. 20% of oxygen comes from the Amazon rainforest
Flickr.com/thiagomarraThe Amazon rainforest covers 5.5 million square kilometers. The Amazonian jungle produces a significant portion of the Earth's oxygen by absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide, which is why they are often referred to as the lungs of the planet.
4. Some metals are so reactive that they explode even on contact with water.
Some metals and compounds - potassium, sodium, lithium, rubidium and cesium - exhibit increased chemical activity, therefore they can ignite with lightning speed upon contact with air, and if they are lowered into water, they can even explode.
5. A teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh 6 billion tons.
Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars, consisting mainly of a neutron core covered with a relatively thin (about 1 km) crust of matter in the form of heavy atomic nuclei and electrons. The cores of stars that died during a supernova explosion were compressed under the influence of gravity. This is how superdense neutron stars were formed. Astronomers have found that the mass of neutron stars can be comparable to the mass of the Sun, despite the fact that their radius does not exceed 10–20 kilometers.
6. Each year, Hawaii moves closer to Alaska by 7.5 cm.
The earth's crust consists of several huge parts - tectonic plates. These plates are constantly moving along with the upper layer of the mantle. Hawaii is located in the middle part of the Pacific Plate, which is slowly drifting in a northwesterly direction towards the North American Plate, on which Alaska is located. Tectonic plates move at the same speed as human nails grow.
7. In 2.3 billion years, Earth will be too hot for life to exist.
Our planet will eventually become a vast desert, similar to today's Mars. For hundreds of millions of years, the Sun has been heating up, getting brighter and hotter, and will continue to do so. In about two billion years or more, temperatures will become so hot that the oceans that make Earth habitable will evaporate. The whole planet will turn into an endless desert. As scientists predict, in the next few billion years, the Sun will turn into a red giant and completely swallow the Earth - the planet will definitely come to an end.
Flickr.com/andy999 Thermal imagers are able to identify an object by the heat it radiates. And polar bears are experts at keeping warm. Due to the thick layer subcutaneous fat and a warm coat, the bears are able to endure even the coldest days in the Arctic.
9. It takes light 8 minutes 19 seconds to travel from the sun to the earth.
It is known that the speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second. But even with such dizzying speed, it will take time to overcome the distance between the Sun and the Earth. And 8 minutes is not so much on a cosmic scale. It takes 5.5 hours for sunlight to reach Pluto.
10. If you remove all the interatomic space, humanity will fit in a sugar cube
In fact, more than 99.9999% of an atom is empty space. An atom consists of a tiny, dense nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons that proportionally occupy more space. This is because electrons move in waves. They can only exist where the crests and troughs of the waves add up in a certain way. The electrons do not stay at one point, their location can be anywhere within the orbit. That is why they take up a lot of space.
11. Gastric Juice Can Dissolve Razor Blades
The stomach digests food thanks to caustic hydrochloric acid with a high pH (hydrogen index) - from two to three. But at the same time, the acid also affects the gastric mucosa, which, however, is able to quickly recover. The lining of your stomach is completely renewed every four days.
Scientists have many versions of why this happens. The most likely: due to huge asteroids that have affected its course in the past, or due to the strong circulation of air currents in the upper atmosphere.
13. A flea can accelerate faster than a space shuttle.
Flea jumps reach breathtaking heights - 8 centimeters per millisecond. Each jump gives the flea an acceleration that is 50 times the acceleration of the spaceship.
And what Interesting Facts do you know?
Usually, on New Year's holidays, all scientific and popular science media, including Nature and Science, make up the hit parades of the most-most scientific events, discoveries or publications of the year. But science is attractive not only for large-scale events, but also for its quirks. the site decided to compile its own list of discoveries, which, perhaps, do not have a global significance, but are lovely to those who write about them because of their unusualness.
"Ghost" at a five-kilometer depth
Scientists made several interesting discoveries at once in the field of living and long-dead nature. So, in February, American scientists discovered a completely charming white translucent deep-sea octopus, which has no mantle fins, and suckers on the tentacles are arranged in one row. This animal lives at a depth of almost five kilometers - it was there that the camera of the Okeanos Explorer research apparatus took it. Without saying a word, everyone began to call this animal Casper: the octopus turned out to be very similar to a cartoon character. Alas, in December, scientists have already announced that the baby is extinction.
"White and fluffy"
Amazing discoveries can be made not only in the laboratory. One of the most important discoveries for scientific journalists, not only of the year, but of the decade, perhaps, was made ... in a jewelry store. In Myanmar (Burma) they bought a piece of amber, in which 99 million years ago the tail of a baby dinosaur. Fluffy tail. Micro-CT has already shown the surprisingly fine structure of feathers. Well, imagine a white and fluffy tyrannosaurus rex! An outstanding discovery is published in the journal Current Biology.
Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM/R.C. McKellar)
Tip of a surviving dinosaur tail fragment in amber
Our sharp-toothed ancestors
And in pursuit of the discovery, "softening" the appearance of "terrible lizards", you need to add, of course, the opposite discovery. Paleontologists from several US universities marsupial, Didelphodon vorax, which lived simultaneously with dinosaurs and had the strongest jaws among mammals. By the way, these animals, which lived about 70 million years ago, enjoyed eating small dinosaurs with pleasure.
The most extravagant death
The event itself, which will be discussed, we saw on Earth already the year before last. An automatic survey of the sky recorded a very bright flash, ASASSN-15lh, which, as it turned out, had been walking towards us for four million years. And it's good that it happened so far: at the moment of its greatest brightness, ASASSN-15lh shone 20 times brighter than our entire galaxy! In 2015, scientists considered that this outbreak was more or less an ordinary supernova, the death of a star with the formation of a black hole, it was just that the star was very massive. However, after new observations in 2016, things were more unusual.
Indeed, it could not have done without a black hole, but a small star could still live and live, it just flew too close to the supermassive black hole at the center of its galaxy. The fall of a star into a black hole and the ejection of excess matter gave rise to this unusually bright flash.
Between a neuron and a neutron star
If we talk about particles composed only of neutral baryons - neutrons, then until now we know only the neutron itself, which lives in free form for only 15 minutes and neutron stars live much longer. Recent experiments at the Japanese RIKEN Institute and the work of an international group of scientists with Russian participation suggest that a tetraneutron can exist for a very short time (about 10-22 seconds) - four neutrons combined into one neutron "atom".
Antimatter becomes clearer
And more beautiful news from the world of exotic matter. Antiparticles - positron, antiproton and others - have been known since the 1930s. They learned not only to obtain, but also to use in practice: the formation of positrons and their annihilation underlie such a powerful diagnostic method as positron emission tomography. In 1995, CERN managed to “assemble” an antihydrogen atom from an antiproton and a positron. And now, more than two decades later, scientists are measuring the spectrum of antihydrogen and comparing it with the spectrum of ordinary hydrogen.
Finding "Terror"
Everything about this archaeological news is unusual. Firstly, another major discovery was made by underwater archaeologists, secondly, the unusual name of the object found, and thirdly, the well-known name of the person associated with the find.
We are talking about the discovery of the second ship of the expedition of the famous British traveler and polar explorer John Franklin that disappeared 168 years ago (for some reason, in our country it is still sometimes confused with another Franklin from a hundred dollar bill). In 2014, underwater archaeologists have already discovered the Erebus ship of the missing expedition. Now "Terror" has been found. The most amazing thing is that the ship has been preserved so well that, according to the researchers, it is worth lifting it from a depth of 24 meters, pumping out water, and it will be able to swim again.
The outgoing 2016 will be remembered for historical scientific events. The ball is ruled by physicists and astronomers: they have made the most discussed and exciting discoveries related to black holes, relativity and other worlds. Biologists, modifying genomes and experimenting on humans, have also achieved a lot. Lenta.ru recalls the most important scientific results of the year.
Caught a wave
On February 11, 2016, the whole world learned about the existence of gravitational waves - their experimental discovery was announced. Foretold yet general theory relativity of Albert Einstein, they eluded the instruments of scientists for decades. And on September 14, 2015 at 05:51 am Eastern Summer Time (13:51 Moscow time), gravitational waves were recorded for the first time at the LIGO observatory (laser-interferometric gravitational-wave observatory). They were born from the merger of two black holes into one massive black hole. This happened 1.3 billion years ago, but the gravitational perturbation of space-time has only just reached Earth.
LIGO is a system of two identical detectors carefully tuned to detect incredibly small displacements from the passage of gravitational waves. The detectors are located three thousand kilometers apart in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The project was proposed in 1992 by a group of American scientists, which included Kip Thorne, known for his participation in the creation of the film Interstellar. LIGO, which cost $370 million, started work back in 2002, but it was only possible to catch the gravitational wave after the modernization carried out in 2010-2015.
Second Earth
In August, the journal Nature published an article by astronomers at the European Southern Observatory about the discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet near the closest star to the solar system, Proxima Centauri. The celestial body, called Proxima b, is 1.3 times heavier than the Earth, revolves around Proxima Centauri in an almost circular orbit with a period of 11.2 days and is at a distance of 0.05 astronomical units (7.5 million kilometers) from it. What makes this planet similar to Earth is that it is in the habitable zone of its sun. That is, the conditions on Proxima b may resemble those on Earth. If it turns out that the planet has a magnetic field, a dense atmosphere and oceans of liquid water, then the likelihood of life there is very high.
Image: ESO / M. Kornmesser
go play go
The Go board game is considered one of the most difficult to master by artificial intelligence. However, AlphaGo, developed by DeepMind, managed to beat Korean world go champion Lee Sedol in four out of five games.
AlphaGo uses so-called networks of values to evaluate the positions of pieces on the board and networks of rules to choose moves. These neural networks learn how to play by analyzing known games, as well as through trial and error when playing alone. Before taking on Lee Sedol, the AI had beaten other programs 99.8 percent of the time and then surpassed the European champion.
The third is not superfluous
In April 2016, a child was born in Mexico, conceived with the participation of mitochondrial DNA third person. The "three parents" method involves the transplantation of mitochondrial DNA from a donor woman into the mother's egg. Scientists believe that this avoids the influence of mutations on the part of the mother, which can cause diseases such as diabetes or deafness.
The operation was performed by American surgeon John Zhang. He chose Mexico because in the United States the use of this technique is prohibited. The child was born healthy, no negative consequences have been noted so far.
Ninth planet
On January 20, astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena reported the discovery of an object the size of Neptune, which is 10 times heavier than the Earth, outside the orbit of Pluto. The minimum distance between the Sun and this celestial body is 200 astronomical units (seven times greater than between Neptune and the Sun). The maximum removal of Planet X is estimated at 600-1200 astronomical units.
Scientists discovered the planet by analyzing data on its gravitational effect on other celestial bodies. Brown and Batygin estimate the probability of error at 0.007 percent, but officially solar system will acquire the ninth planet only when it is seen through a telescope. To do this, astronomers have reserved time at the Japanese Subaru Observatory in Hawaii. Confirmation of the existence of a celestial body will take approximately five years.
Stars with a surprise
Image: capnhack.com
In the outgoing year, astronomers discovered another star with irregularly changing brightness - EPIC 204278916. In 2015, a single star in the constellation Cygnus KIC 8462852 was identified with a very unusual behavior. Its luminosity dropped by 20 percent and remained at this low level for various periods of time (from 5 to 80 days). This indicates that there is a swarm of densely packed large objects around the star, and some researchers have suggested that KIC 8462852 is surrounded by astroengineering structures, such as a Dyson sphere.
EPIC 204278916 also surprised scientists. The brightness of the star, according to the Kepler space telescope, decreased to 65 percent of the maximum within 25 days of observations. Strong dips in the light curve mean that the star was obscured by an object comparable in size to it. As in the case of KIC 8462852, this is unlikely to be caused by a dense cloud of comets: it would take several hundred thousand comets with giant nuclei.
In 2017, scientists will try to find a regularity in the changes in the star's brightness and establish their true nature. If this does not happen, we will have to admit that astronomers are faced with something quite incredible.
Gene revolution
On November 16, the journal Nature reported that Chinese scientists have modified the genome of a living person for the first time. Of course, not all, but a small part of it. A patient with metastatic lung cancer was modified with T-lymphocytes using CRISPR technology, turning off the gene encoding the PD-1 protein, which reduces the activity of immune cells and promotes cancer development.
According to the researchers, everything went well, and the patient will soon receive a second injection. In addition, 10 more people will take part in the trials, each of whom will receive two to four injections. All volunteers will be observed for six months to see if the treatment can cause serious side effects.
Minimum
In March, in the journal Science, scientists reported that they had succeeded in creating a bacterium with a synthetic genome, removing from it all the genes that the body could do without. For this, the mycoplasma M. mycoides was used, whose original genome consisted of approximately 900 genes that were classified as essential or non-essential. Based on all available information and with the help of constant experimental tests, scientists were able to determine the minimum genome - the necessary set of genes that are vital for the existence of a bacterium.
As a result, a new strain of bacteria was obtained - JCVI-syn3.0 with a genome halved compared to the previous version - 531 kbp. It encodes 438 proteins and 35 types of regulatory RNA - a total of 437 genes.
Turn into an egg
Another achievement of biotechnology is associated with stem cells obtained from mice. Japanese scientists from the University of Kyushu in Fukuoka have for the first time achieved their transformation into eggs (oocytes). In fact, they received a multicellular living organism from stem cells.
The oocyte refers to cells with totipotency - the ability to divide and turn into cells of all other species. The scientists subjected the resulting oocytes to in vitro fertilization. The cells were then transferred into the bodies of surrogate females, where they developed into healthy babies.
The mice created in the laboratory were fertile and could give birth to healthy rodents. In addition, embryonic stem cells could be reproduced from eggs obtained in culture and fertilized in vitro.
tricky bucket
NASA engineers sensationally confirmed the operability of the EmDrive engine, which "violates" the laws of physics. The article was peer-reviewed and published in the journal Journal of Propulsion and Power.
The article reports that the EmDrive in a vacuum is capable of developing 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt of thrust. The reviewers could not find fault with the design of the test bench and the unit, and the authors of the work could not find the reverse force that responds to the jet thrust developed by EmDrive. That is, the engine moves, but does not emit anything. The retroactive force is required by the law of conservation of momentum.
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that Chinese scientists have announced successful tests of EmDrive aboard the Tiangong-2 space laboratory and are now going to use it on orbiting satellites. Nevertheless, many experts are still skeptical and believe that the authors of the article may have missed the influence of some additional factors in the calculation.
