Inexplicable mysteries of the planet (20 photos). Mysteries of Space

Every year is a crazy period of time for one reason or another, and no one will deny that. Drug lords constantly manage to organize impossible escapes, Jon Snow from Game of Thrones is strangely reborn, and the most inexplicable objects we have ever seen are constantly being found in the oceans. It seems we have everything we need to think about, it seems there is nothing to surprise us!

And the more time passes, the less chance we have of solving some of Earth's most baffling mysteries. They accumulate for centuries! For example, 2016 is no different from all previous years, and many inexplicable things also happened in the world. Here are 10 secrets that prove our planet is a crazy place.

Space debris

It's no surprise that all kinds of space debris are orbiting around us. In fact, many of these items pose a real danger to astronauts and even the well-being of the Earth itself! In October 2016, scientists noticed a huge piece of space debris and named it WT1190F. Everyone thought that it would actually enter the Earth's atmosphere and fall straight into the Indian Ocean, but our earthly shell is much stronger. The object was burned to the ground as soon as it approached Earth last November, but one thing is unclear - scientists still don't know what it was! They think it could be a rocket fragment, but they have no idea what kind. It's still a mystery!

Where is Hayat Boumediene now?

The woman has been charged in connection with the deadly terrorist attacks on Paris in January 2016. She was the wife of one of the three attackers who organized it all. While three of them were killed, Boumediene escaped and her whereabouts are still unknown. Investigators believe she traveled to Turkey and then went to Syria, where she is allegedly hiding from authorities to this day. She is one of the most wanted criminals in the world!

Puzzle that is 8000 years old

Dmitry Dey noticed these geoglyphs while searching for ancient pyramids using maps on the Internet. Scientists have no idea why they were built! The oldest of the objects was built 8,000 years ago, and many believe they were used to track the movements of the sun. NASA was so puzzled by this discovery that it is now working to unravel the mystery using the latest technology.

The Great Escape of El Chapo

No one thought it was possible to escape from the Altiplano maximum security prison, but Mexican drug trafficking leader Guzman, also known as El Chapo, has pulled off the impossible escape. He drilled a hole in the shower chamber and escaped on a bicycle through a specially made underground tunnel! He was in a safe place long before the guards noticed he was missing. This story is worthy of a TV show! His whereabouts remained a mystery for a long time until he was recaptured during a raid by Mexican Marines.

Ghost ships filled with corpses

More than a dozen boats filled with corpses sailed to the northwestern shores of Japan. They were all filled with decomposing bodies, but there was no evidence that they had been killed and specifically placed in the boats. The authorities could not understand the reason why the people on the wooden ships died, and also could not find out where the ships came from. Some of them bore the remains of a North Korean flag, but investigators still can't figure out exactly what happened. The first boats appeared in 2013, and they are still arriving on the shores!

Life on Saturn's moon

NASA's Cassini spacecraft reached Saturn and its 62 moons last October. The brave piece of space technology even made a daring dive into an icy eruption on Enceladus, one of the planet's moons that is an extraterrestrial ocean. It's a shame that Cassini isn't equipped with gadgets that can detect life forms.

120,000 antelope died in just two weeks

More than a third of the entire antelope population died out in Kazakhstan in just two weeks. This is the biggest and most tragic case of this kind! Scientists still don't know what caused it, although it may have been due to significant biological and environmental problems. Many blame rocket fuel and noise pollution that have been caused by many space rocket launches.

What happened to flight MH370?

Back in March 2014, a Boeing 777 plane took off on flight MH370 from the Malaysian capital and disappeared from radar. The fact that a plane could disappear with all modern technology left the whole world in shock. A tiny piece of this aircraft recently appeared off the coast of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Investigators believe it is part of a flaperon from an airplane. However, where the rest of this huge aircraft is is still unknown!

Siberian failures

Something really strange has been discovered on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. An unexplained explosion created a 100-meter hole. After some time, several more failures appeared. Scientists believe that the formation of these holes may be caused by gas explosions. But they still don't know what exactly caused these holes to appear. They even sent a team to explore one of these holes to confirm their theories, but alas! They still can't prove anything.

What's hidden under Stonehenge?

Good old Stonehenge still has a few tricks up his sleeve. New underground mapping technologies have revealed something truly strange - it appears that hidden beneath the ruins of Stonehenge are shrines, pits and mounds that are more than 5,000 years old. Historians have always believed that it was an autonomous structure, but new research changes everything! This new information could completely change what we know about the Stonehenge complex.

Despite active study and exploration, space is still full of mysteries for humanity. Only quite recently, gravitational waves were considered only a theory, but today their existence has already been scientifically proven.

Despite active study and exploration, space is still full of mysteries for humanity. Only quite recently, gravitational waves were considered only a theory, but today their existence has already been scientifically proven. Who knows what secrets are hidden in these dark, dark depths of the Universe. However, even among what has already been discovered by scientists is full of extremely amazing things, the existence of which is difficult to believe...

Alcohol

This discovery was recently made by an international group of scientists working on a 30-meter telescope in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. They found that Comet Lovejoy, codenamed C/2011 W3, contains as many as 20 types of different organic molecules, including sugar and alcohol molecules. This periodic comet was discovered in November 2011. By all indications, its diameter should be at least 500 meters. In addition, it is one of the brightest comets known to science. It is not yet entirely clear where all this organic matter came from in the gas and dust tail of Comet Lovejoy. It is quite possible that they were “picked up” somewhere during the comet’s journey through space.

Another version says that these compounds could have arisen from a huge interstellar molecular cloud that formed the Solar System.

Planet made of diamonds

An exoplanet with the complex name PSR J1719–1438 b was discovered in 2009. It is located in the constellation Serpens at a distance of 3900 light years from our solar system. But what is remarkable about this planet is that, according to all calculations, it consists almost entirely of crystalline carbon. PSR J1719−1438 b was one of the first of its kind, but far from the only one. To date, scientists know of at least five similar carbon planets. It is assumed that they also have an iron-containing core, but the basis of their surface is mainly silicon and titanium carbides, as well as pure carbon. According to scientists, on such planets there may be areas completely covered with kilometers of diamonds.

Huge rain cloud

And here, without any metaphors, this is truly a gigantic accumulation of moisture, which can conditionally be called a cloud. This cloud is located 10 billion light years away and is believed to be enveloping a supermassive black hole. Moreover, when the term “huge” or “giant” is applied to something in space, this should be understood on a completely different scale. No, this cloud is not the size of the continent of Eurasia, for example. It is so huge that it is approximately 100,000 times the size of the Sun.

Cold stars

A hot ball that, using a thermonuclear reaction, produces a huge amount of energy, light and heat. In any case, our native Sun is exactly such a star. But the truth is that some stars can have conditions that are completely unusual for them. Such stars, for example, are brown dwarfs. These are, so to speak, dying stars, whose reserves of nuclei are almost completely used up. Thermonuclear reactions still occur in them, but not with such activity and not with such strong heat release.

For example, the star WISE 1828+2650. It is the coolest of all known brown dwarfs. Its surface temperature is only 25 degrees Celsius. Quite comfortable to walk around the star in shorts and a T-shirt.

Possible ocean of life

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the most likely candidate for discovering an entire ocean of extraterrestrial life. At least that's what NASA scientists think. Conditions on the surface and in the atmosphere of this satellite are extremely harsh. The average temperature is minus 170–180 degrees Celsius. In some places, methane-ethane rivers flow and even lakes form. And most of the surface consists of water ice. However, in the conclusions of researchers, Titan is very often compared with our native Earth in the early stages of its development. It is possible that the simplest forms of life may exist on the satellite, in particular in underground reservoirs, where conditions can be much more comfortable than on the surface.

Lightning

Modern science is already well aware that lightning is not only an earthly phenomenon. Electrical discharges have been recorded in the atmospheres of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and other planets. But few people know that the strongest lightning occurs not on planets, but around black holes. Those same relativistic jets or jets that erupt from the centers of quasars, black holes and radio galaxies can, in fact, also be considered lightning. Extremely powerful, huge. Their nature is still very little studied. Scientists believe that such discharges are formed due to the interaction of magnetic fields with the accretion disk around a black hole or neutron star.

Real hell

If there is a real hell somewhere, then it definitely has to be the planet CoRoT-7 b. It orbits the star COROT-7 in the constellation Monoceros, which is approximately 489 light-years away. The problem of the planet is that it is too close to its star and always faces only one side towards it. Due to such conditions, a huge ocean of hot lava has formed on the illuminated side of the planet. Its temperature is +2500-2600 degrees Celsius, which is higher than the melting point of most known minerals. Therefore, on the “warm” side of the planet, almost everything melted.

Moreover, the entire atmosphere of CoRoT-7 b mainly consists of this evaporated rock, which then falls onto colder areas in the form of rock sediments. It is assumed that this planet was once a gas giant the size of Saturn, but the star literally “evaporated” it to the core. Now it is only one and a half times larger than the Earth.

Magnetars

Our Sun rotates on its axis in about 25 days, gradually distorting the magnetic field around it. Now imagine a dying star, which in its death throes collapses and shrinks into a tiny lump of matter. A huge, gigantic star, sometimes larger than the Sun, turns into a ball with a diameter of only a few tens of kilometers. All this time it is spinning faster and faster. Like a spinning ballerina who presses and spreads her arms, this star also spins along with its magnetic field.

According to scientists' calculations, sometimes the magnetic field of a magnetar can be a million times stronger than the earth's. By comparison, a magnetic field of this strength could destroy your phone at a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers. It would seem that what’s so terrible about it is that you just need to keep your electronic devices away from magnetars. But this magnetic field is so strong that it can influence matter itself, twisting atoms into thin cylinders.

Orphan planets

Ever since school, everyone knows that there are stars around which planets revolve, around which, in turn, their satellites can revolve. However, there are exceptions to all rules. Imagine that in the vast cold space there are planets that are not tied by gravity to either the stars or other planets. They are usually called orphan planets or wanderer planets. Interestingly, if an orphan planet is located in a galaxy, then even if it is not tied to the stars, it still revolves around the galactic core. Of course, the circulation period in such cases is very long. But it may also be that the planet is in completely empty intergalactic space and then it does not orbit anything at all.

Time Machine

In general, the entire cosmos and the entire Universe are imagined as one big time machine, in which even distance, for clarity, is measured in years, light years, of course. However, given that the size of our galaxy is about 100,000 light years, any event that happens on one edge of it will be noticeable on the other only after 100,000 years. But this does not mean that the speed of information propagation in the Universe is limited only by the speed of light. If you look at space in the infrared range, you can see something that has not yet happened for us. A simple example: the famous “Pillars of Creation” - a region in the Eagle Nebula. According to the Spitzer infrared telescope, the Pillars of Creation were destroyed by a supernova explosion approximately 6,000 years ago. But since the nebula itself is located at a distance of 7,000 light years from Earth, we will see them for about a thousand years, although they themselves have been gone for a long time.

Top 5 mysterious events on our planet. The mysteries of the Earth do not leave scientists alone. For many centuries, amazing and mysterious events took place on our planet, not all of them could be explained by specialists, scientists or experts.

1. Puzzle that is 8 thousand years old
Geoglyphs were discovered using the Internet. Dmitry Dey looked for pyramids on the map, and found the most ancient formations. Until now, scientists cannot explain the origin and purpose of the objects found, and NASA was so interested in the discovery that it used the latest technology to uncover this mystery. The oldest of the objects was built about 8 thousand years ago. Presumably, the buildings were used to track the movement of the sun.

2. Ghost ships filled with corpses
In 2013, more than a dozen boats filled with corpses sailed to the northwestern shores of Japan. The bodies were badly decomposed, but no evidence of premeditated murder was found. It is not clear why they were put in the boats and whether this was done on purpose. Objects of North Korean origin were found on some of the remains, however, investigators are still completely bewildered.
Boats continue to sail to the shores of Japan from time to time!

3. 120 thousand antelopes died within two weeks
In Kazakhstan, the antelope population died out in just 14 days, more than a third of the animals disappeared. This case is the most tragic of its kind. Experts still cannot understand the reason for the mass death of antelopes. It is believed that noise pollution and rocket fuel were to blame, and significant environmental and biological problems contributed to the disaster.

4. Siberian failures
In Yamal, underground gas explosions have been occurring over the past decades. Huge sinkholes, some of them up to 100 meters in size, appear throughout the peninsula. Scientists are convinced that the formation of holes is caused by explosions. However, it is not entirely clear what could have provoked the explosions themselves and how failures could turn out in the future.

5. What is hidden under Stonehenge?
Modern underground mapping technologies have made it possible to determine that under the ancient structure there are shrines, pits, and mounds that are more than 5,000 years old. New information could completely change our origins about the entire Stonehenge complex.

Scientists are constantly trying to unravel the mysteries of our planet. Today we decided to recall the most interesting mysteries of the past, to which science managed to find an answer.
1. The secret of the moving stones in Death Valley


At the bottom of the dried-up Racetrack Playa lake there are so-called moving stones weighing up to 300 kg. Some invisible force forced them to move, leaving behind traces in the dried mud. No one has ever seen these stones in motion. In 2011, scientists installed cameras and a weather station at the bottom of the lake to measure wind gusts. In December 2013, the secret was revealed. After rains and snowfalls, the water level rose to 7 cm. At night, the water froze, forming floating ice floes, and then gusts of wind (15 km per hour) dispersed both the ice floes and stones. Traces of the movement of stones became visible later, when the bottom of the lake dried up.

2. How a giraffe’s body weight is supported by its thin legs


Giraffes weigh about 1000 kg, and they have incredibly thin leg bones that do not break under such weight. Scientists studied the limbs of giraffes (samples from dead animals), subjecting them to weight loads, but they did not break and remained in an upright position. The reason for its endurance is the suspensory ligament (fibrous tissue that connects bones) that runs along the entire length of the giraffe's shin bones. The ligament provides support because it is elastic tissue, not muscle. The animal does not get tired because it does not use muscles to support the weight.

3. Singing sand dunes

There are 35 sand dunes in the world that can “sing.” This singing is more like a low cello sound. At first, scientists thought that the sound was produced by the vibrations of the lower layers of the dune, but then this sound was recreated in the laboratory by allowing sand to roll down an inclined surface. Actually, it is the sand that “sings”. Sound is the vibration of sand grains rolling down. The speed of moving sand also matters. When the grains of sand are the same size, then they have the same speed. When the grains of sand are different, they move at different speeds, resulting in a wider sound range.

4. Bermuda Triangle for carrier pigeons


This mystery dates back to the 1960s, when a professor studied the ability of pigeons to find their way home from previously unknown places. He released pigeons throughout New York State and they all made it home except the ones released at Jersey Hill. Nowadays, this secret has been revealed, although debates around it are still ongoing. Bird navigation can be called an internal biological compass and map. A compass is the position of the Sun or the Earth's magnetic field, and a map is infrasound (low frequency sound), a kind of radio beacon. When the birds got lost in Jersey Hill, the infrasound signal was high in the atmosphere due to temperature and wind, so the pigeons could not hear it.

5. The Unique Origin of Australia's Only Active Volcano


Australia's only active volcanic area stretches 500 km from Melbourne to Mount Gambier. Over the past 4 million years, approximately 400 volcanic events have been recorded, with the last eruption approximately 5,000 years ago. The answer from scientists is that most volcanoes on Earth are located at the edges of tectonic plates that are constantly moving in the upper part of the Earth's mantle. But in Australia, the reason for this is fluctuations in the thickness of the continent and its slow drift to the north (7 cm per year).

6. Fish that thrive in polluted water


From the 1940s to the 1970s, plants discharged polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into New Bedford Harbor (Massachusetts). Eventually, the harbor was designated a Superfund cleanup area. However, local waters have become a biological mystery to which the answer may already have been found. Despite the high level of toxic pollution, the small fish Atlantic Heterandria continued to live and actively reproduce in the harbor, which simply genetically mutated, adapting to PCBs and learning to metabolize them. It is possible that these fish will now simply not be able to live in clean water.

7. How underwater waves are formed


Underwater waves (internal waves) are hidden from our eyes. They raise ocean waters by 5-10 cm, so only a satellite can record them. The largest internal waves (up to 170 m) form in the Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines; they mix the less saline and warm upper ocean waters with the salty and cold deep water, distributing heat throughout the entire thickness of the world's oceans. Scientists have long wanted to unravel the mystery of their formation, so they conducted experiments in a laboratory tank. Internal waves were generated by applying cold deep water pressure to two ridges located on a seabed simulation model.

8. Why is a zebra striped?


There are many theories about the presence of zebra stripes. Some believe that the stripes are camouflage or a way to confuse predators. Others believe that the stripes help the zebra regulate its body temperature or recognize its relatives. As a result of studying zebras, horses and donkeys, scientists came to some conclusions. By comparing information about the color, location and size of stripes on the bodies of zebras with a map of the habitat of tsetse flies and horseflies, they made the statement that zebras are vulnerable to insect bites because their stripes of different widths repel blood-sucking flies that carry disease.

9. Mass extinction of about 90% of species of living organisms on Earth


About 252 million years ago, the “Great Extinction” occurred of 90% of the species of living organisms on Earth. This is an ancient detective story in which both asteroids and volcanoes were suspects. However, the culprit turned out to be a single-celled microbe called methanosarcina, which feeds on carbon compounds and produces methane. During the Permian period, metasarcina experienced a gene mutation that allowed it to absorb acetate contained in organic matter. As a result, the microbial population exploded, spewing huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere and acidifying the ocean. Most plants and animals on land and sea died.

10. Origin of the Earth's oceans


Water covers 70% of the surface of our planet. Initially, scientists believed that the Earth was dry, and water appeared on it much later as a result of collisions with asteroids and “wet” comets. However, new research has shown that the Earth originally had water on the surface. Scientists compared two groups of meteorites: the most ancient carbonaceous chondrites and meteorites from the asteroid Vesta. Both types of meteorites are similar in chemical composition and contain a lot of water. For this reason, researchers believe that the Earth was formed with water from carbonaceous chondrites about 4.6 billion years ago.

It would seem that we have studied our planet inside and out and the conquest of space is next in line. But no matter how it is. Every day, scientists make discoveries and observe phenomena that prove that this planet still has many surprises.

We didn't reach the Earth's mantle

Seismologists believe that the inner core of our planet is solid, while the outer core is liquid and hot. Above is the mantle, along which the Earth’s crust seems to slide. However, we still don’t know what this mantle is made of, because we have never gotten there. It is located at a depth of 30–2,900 km, and the deepest “hole” that people have dug is the Kola well in Russia, which goes down a mere 12.3 km.

Poles can change

The Earth's magnetic poles can shift and even completely change their direction. By studying volcanic rocks, scientists found that the magnetic field of our planet has changed many times. The last such event occurred almost 10 million years ago and is likely to occur in the future. However, it is still unknown exactly why this happens.

We had 2 moons

According to astronomers, about 4.6 million years ago the Earth had two satellites. The second was about 1,200 km in diameter and rotated in the same orbit until it collided with the “main” Moon. Scientists called this event a “giant slap.” Such a catastrophe could explain why the two sides of today's Moon are so different from each other.

Moonquakes

By the way, about the Earth's satellite. Not everyone knows, but earthquakes also happen on the Moon. True, unlike on Earth, moonquakes are not so strong and occur very, very rarely. There is an assumption that their occurrence is associated with the tidal forces of the Sun and Earth and the fall of meteorites.

The earth is spinning incredibly fast

The earth rotates at a speed of 1,600 km/h. It also revolves around the Sun at an even higher speed - 108 thousand km/h. In reality, we can only perceive movement if its speed changes. Due to the constant speed of rotation of the Earth and the force of gravity, we do not feel it at all.

There is more time

620 million years ago, a day on Earth lasted 21.9 hours. Over time, the Earth slows down its rotation speed, but this happens very slowly, about 70 milliseconds every 100 years. It will take 100 million years for there to be 25 hours in a day.

Strange gravity

Due to the fact that our planet is not a perfect sphere, there are points on Earth with low and high gravity. One of these gravitational anomalies is Hudson Bay in Canada. Scientists have found that the low gravity in this place is associated with the low density of the Earth due to the rapid melting of glaciers.

The hottest and coldest points on Earth

The hottest place on our planet is located in Al-Azizia (Libya). The temperature here rises to +58 °C. And the coldest is Antarctica. In winter, the temperature there drops to -73 °C. But the most extremely low temperature (-89.2 °C) was recorded at the Russian Vostok station on July 21, 1983.

The planet is heavily polluted

This may not be news to many. However, what is interesting is that, according to astronauts, the view of the Earth from space in 1978 was very different from now. Due to the large amount of space debris and waste, the green-white-blue planet turns brown-gray-black.

Earth is made of iron, oxygen and silicon

If we wanted to divide the planet by composition, it would look like this: 32.1% - iron, 30.1% - oxygen, 15.1% - silicon and 13.9% - magnesium. It is believed that most of the iron (about 90%) is located in the nucleus. And oxygen is most abundant in the earth’s crust (about 47%).

Once upon a time the earth was purple

Ancient plants did not use chlorophyll to absorb sunlight, but another pigment - retinal. Thanks to retinal, they absorbed green light and reflected red and purple light, which when mixed produced violet. By the way, retinal exists to this day in some bacteria.

Hidden Ocean

At a depth of 410–660 km below the Earth's surface, scientists have discovered a huge reservoir of water 2.7 billion years old. This liquid was found thanks to the ringwoodite rock, which makes up the earth's mantle. The water is under enormous pressure, and its quantity is enough to fill all the oceans of the Earth 3 times. Thanks to this discovery, the theory emerged that the earth's oceans emerged from an underground ocean that burst out.