6 Discoveries that science can't explain

[Felipe Bidó]

I was meaning to post this article a while ago:

http://www.cracked.com/article_16871_6- ... plain.html

Some of the discoveries have been given very good explanations, though

...and The Bloop?. yes, we know what it was.

[Doc Stier]

Go figure!?

Doc

[shawnsegler]

I like a big unexplainable universe. I used to didn't...now, the mystery feels like home.

S- beaten down like that.

[Bär]

The (sic) are balls everywhere and serve no apparent purpose, like a swing club on Gentlemen's Night.

[Bär]

...and The Bloop?. yes, we know what it was.

Can this riddle be solved by non-Euclidean geometry?

[Darthwing Teorist]

I like a big unexplainable universe. I used to didn't...now, the mystery feels like home.

S- beaten down like that.

+1

[Darthwing Teorist]

That is clearly Elfish.


PS:

The stone chick is actually hot.

[Darthwing Teorist]

The mechanism, aside from placing you at serious risk for severing a finger, was supposedly used to figure out astronomical positions. The problem with that is that at the time this thing was made, no one had yet discovered laws of gravity or how heavenly bodies moved.

Which shows that either:
A) Modern people are not the shit and a good part of our discoveries were ancient knowledge, lost. (I read a few times that if our civilization were to collapse today, in a 1000 years there will be nothing to indicate our level of technological advancement).
B) Accurate predictions can be made using a different paradigm for knowledge
C) All of the above

[Royal Dragon]

From what I understand, modern man has been on earth for roughly 180,000 years. Our society today stems from an agricultural revolution that began only 14,000 years ago. Agriculture allowed us to stay in one place so learning art and sciences could flourish, eventually leading to the world we know today.

Now, lets say the theory that crude oil is formed underground by some sort of enzyme that lives deep in the earth.

Lets also, for the sake of discussion, assume man has risen, and been blasted back into the stone age 6 times.

That means that every 30,000 years, man goes from a state of being a hunter gatherer, to modern technology man, and when the current stock of oil runs out, back to hunter gathering. Possibly we blow ourselves up fighting over the last drops of oil.

Maybe we have left this earth, conquered space and returned.

When you figure Homosaipens are the youngest of the human like primates, maybe Neanderthal, or Cromagdon(sp?) man also evolved to technology based societies as well, and they too fell back to hunter gatherer societies, or wiped themselves out.

Maybe out ancestors 150,000 years ago conquered space, and have populated the stars already. Maybe they were on mars at one time.

Given the cyclical nature of man,and how far we have come in 14,000 years, it is quite possible that this is not the first time our species has gone down this road. Infact, maybe prophecies of Armageddon are really passed down from the ancients who have lived through the cycle, and realize man's cyclical nature dooms us to repeat our ancient past, over, and over again.

[Steve James]

Well, if we accept the geologist's estimation of the age of the earth, it's about 4-4.5 billion years old. The oldest fossils we know of (from the geological record) are 3.5 billion years old. Otoh, we only have dinosaur fossils going back 250 million years. But, that's the point. We have really old fossils, but we haven't found a "homo" fossil as old as the dinosaur fossils. We have dino fossils up to about 60 million years ago. So, maybe it's safe to argue that there weren't human civilizations capable of space travel (and presumably buried their dead, had museums, and all the other stuff that 'we" would have if we could travel to the other planets).

Ok, let's say that the homo species arose right at the end of the Cretaceous (and the mass-extincion of the dinosaurs). Maybe they could have, in a million years, developed an advanced, space-traveling, civilization. Well, then we should really expect them to have left a lot more record than we have of the much older dinosaurs.

Let's say, then, that these advanced humans left earth for the stars. Maybe they are the aliens that keep "visiting" us? Okay, but can't prove that one way or the other.

Of course, these advanced humans might already be in our fossil record. I mean, the 130,000 year record we have of modern man. Er, I watched Planet of the Apes with everybody else. But,I dunno. Opposable thumbs seem necessary, even to use that antich..whatchamacallit mechanism. I.e., we assume, when we run into all these unexplained mechanisms/writings, that someone "like us" must have constructed it.

Personally, I think that "people" (homo sapiens) have always been about as smart as they are now. But, it's like Galileo and the authorities: i.e., there is always someone who sees further or deeper than everyone else, but is shut down. The reason we can't explain those things is because we just aren't as smart as some of our ancestors. None of us are Leonardos, and most of us couldn't be rocket scientists, either. Hey, though, I'll bet they thought the first guy to say "why don't we make a wheel" was out of his mind. Then again, how smart can we be when so many of us can't live without an iPod or internet access.

[chud]

The mechanism...was supposedly used to figure out astronomical positions. The problem with that is that at the time this thing was made, no one had yet discovered laws of gravity or how heavenly bodies moved.

I am very interested in ancient archaeology questions like this. There are several conclusions that have been reached.

Some say that aliens (which the ancient civilizations referred to as gods) jump started human civilization by giving us the knowledge necessary to create things like the Nazca Lines, the great pyramids of Egypt, the Baalbek Platform, and other things that seem to be more advanced than the civilization they came from. For more on this, watch StarGate, or read "The 12th Planet" by Zechariah Sitchin.

Others say that our solar system has an additional body, such as 1) a second sun on a 26,000 year orbit which positively affects our environmental cycles and consciousness every time it passes, and gives us a physical/mental/spiritual boost taking us out of whatever dark age we're in, into a golden age, or 2) an additional planet, which has the remnants of our celestial forefathers, who imparted knowledge to us in ancient times. Or, 3) that we are what's left after the Watchers/Nephilim - mentioned in Genesis 6, and extensively in the Book of Enoch - were defeated. They are still around, and commonly referred to as UFOs or aliens today (rumor has it a Nephilim giant was killed in Afghanistan recently).

A) ..a good part of our discoveries were ancient knowledge, lost. (I read a few times that if our civilization were to collapse today, in a 1000 years there will be nothing to indicate our level of technological advancement).

True, we don't build things that last anymore. Digital data would go bye bye in a nuclear exchange, washed away like mud tablets being power blasted in a car wash. The ancients actually did a better job of preserving data, google "cylinder seals" for more info...there were ancient cylinder seals made that have detailed renderings of the solar system, long before anyone here on Earth could have had the technology to know what it looked like.

I have some more book titles and links on shit like this...to quote Ahnold, "I have detailed files".

-- chud (wannabe X-Files case worker)

[Michael]

I was just watching "2001: A Space Odyssey", awesome movie, amazing how 40 years later it is still a masterpiece. Never read the book, but to me the film is suggesting that aliens jumpstarted and accelerated human technological advancement by simply giving us enough info. to compete inter-tribally. Once we saw the need to maintain an advantage, we became more and more inventive. It seems to me that humans are far from alone in the universe or even on this planet. Lots of interesting stuff going on.

[Iskendar]

The mechanism, aside from placing you at serious risk for severing a finger, was supposedly used to figure out astronomical positions. The problem with that is that at the time this thing was made, no one had yet discovered laws of gravity or how heavenly bodies moved.

Bollocks. The Greeks had centuries of recorded observations and were pretty good at maths. Even without a decent physical models for the movement of the planets, you can build a decent prediction model from all of the recorded periodicities. Which is probably what they did. Astronomy was hot shit at the time, both for agricultural and political problems. Given the level of superstition, knowing how to predict an eclipse was very valuable.
And we do know how it worked, here's a working reconstruction:

Which shows that either:
A) Modern people are not the shit and a good part of our discoveries were ancient knowledge, lost. (I read a few times that if our civilization were to collapse today, in a 1000 years there will be nothing to indicate our level of technological advancement).
B) Accurate predictions can be made using a different paradigm for knowledge
C) All of the above

All true.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

John Dee created the Voynich manuscript, then sold it to raise funds. lol. It's not a scientific mystery and rosicrucians have been giggling about that one everytime it gets mentioned.

The Antikythera mechanism was deiscovered this year to be a device that calculates the orbits of the planets i relation to the sun. It's essentially a planetarium on miniature scale.


giant stone balls exist all over the planet and not just costa rica and may be a completely natural formation. they show no tool marks for one thing. Interesting, but hardly insane.

the baigong pipes are really interesting. I don't know much about them having only heard about the this year.

"bagdhad" batteries were most likely used to plate swords with gold or silver. This was not an unknown process even in ancient times.

The Bloop could've also been a sub surface sinkhole of large proportions. Interesting, but not insane.


P.S, I love this stuff but hate Sitchin and Von Daniken because they are asshats who confuse everything.

[Michael]

During the time of Emperor Qin Shi Huang of China, more than 2000 years ago, they were plating swords with chrome, which I believe we techno-philes in the USA didn't figure out until 1938. When the tomb mounds near Xi'an were discovered around 1938 (some coincidence, huh?), voila, un-rusted swords, sharp as a mo-fo.

Now Omar can pop in with more details, I hope. Calling Baiji Bomber of Xi'an, come in.