It often happens that a scientist finds a rare artifact, and then spends decades trying to understand what it is. It seems that some things are specially created in order to modern man I racked my brains over them. Pravda.Ru offers the reader a list of the six most mysterious discoveries that have been made over the past one hundred and fifty years.
Compared to our ancestors, we live much better. Instead of small, smoky houses without sewerage, we have comfortable apartments, and we treat diseases not with bloodletting or crushed frogs, but with pills. However, in some ways the ancient people surpassed us: they left riddles for humanity that scientists still cannot solve.
Some things seem to be specially created for modern man to puzzle over them. For example, Voynich manuscript- an ancient book written about 500 years ago. Neither the author nor the language of this manuscript have yet been identified. And these are not notes from a madman - no! This is a clear structured book with specific organization and detailed illustrations.
It seems that the language in which the Voynich manuscript was written is real, but no one has ever encountered it before. There are no guesses about the history of the creation of the manuscript. Military experts, cryptographers, mathematicians, linguists - no one could even come a millimeter closer to the solution. Some say that this is a code for which you just need to find the key and everything will become clear, some say that it is a fake, written specifically for the purpose of mocking descendants, and some say that this is a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence recorded by man. contactee. However, there is another version, according to which the Voynich manuscript was written in Old English by a person who had a very vague understanding of the rules of grammar.
Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in 1902 on a sunken ancient ship near the Greek island of Antikythera. The date of its creation is considered to be approximately 100 BC. The mechanism contains bronze gears and parts not found in any other device of the time.
The purpose of the Antikythera mechanism is still not clear. Why? Firstly, it is unclear where it was made and who designed it. The first thing that comes to mind is that the mechanism was created by the Greeks, since it was found near a Greek island. However, researchers are inclined to believe that the device was made in Sicily.
It has now been established that it consists of 82 fragments - X-ray equipment made it possible to look inside and reveal hidden details. The most likely version is that the Antikythera mechanism is a “cross between” a calculator and an astrolabe, but no one can yet say exactly what it is.
In one of the regions of China, so remote that it is unlikely that people have ever lived there, there is a mountain with three mysterious triangular holes on the top. They are laid hundreds of ancient pipes(today rusty) of unknown origin. Some of them lead deep into the mountain, some lead to a nearby salt lake. What's special about this? And the fact that the pipes were laid, judging by the findings of archaeologists, at a time when people did not yet know how to cook on fire, and they had not even dreamed of cast iron pots. In addition, despite the fact that the pipes are thousands of years old, there is no debris in them, which indicates that they were used. But who? It is impossible to live in those places!
Scattered throughout Costa Rica perfectly spherical stones. Some of them are small, a few centimeters in diameter, but there are some that reach 2.5 meters in diameter and weigh several tons. It is not clear what the stones turned by unknown craftsmen were used for.
Local residents have already made attempts to figure out this mystery on their own: they blew up stones, thinking they would find gold, coffee beans or even babies there. Alas and ah! The balls did not hide anything like that. All that the researchers managed to find out is that the balls are cut from volcanic rock.
Baghdad batteries were found on the territory Ancient Mesopotamia. Their age is estimated at more than two thousand years. They are the same age as our calendar. When archaeologists came across them, they initially thought that they were just clay vessels for storing food. However, this theory was rejected after a copper rod was discovered in the vessels. Remembering physics lessons at school, we can assume that the vessels obviously contained some kind of liquid, which, interacting with copper, produced electric charge. If this is true, then the find is the first known battery.
Everything would be fine, but what were these batteries needed for?! There are few assumptions. Some say that ancient healers used them to impress their patients, others say that experiments with gold were carried out with the help of these batteries.
Over the past 10 years, many amazing discoveries and achievements have occurred in the world of science. Surely many of you who read our site have heard about most of the items presented on today’s list. However, their importance is so high that once again it would be a crime not to at least briefly recall them. They need to be remembered at least for the next decade, until new, even more amazing scientific achievements are made on the basis of these discoveries.
Stem cells are amazing. They perform the same cellular functions as the rest of the cells in your body, but, unlike the latter, they have one amazing property– if necessary, they are able to change and acquire the function of absolutely any cells. This means that stem cells can be turned into, for example, erythrocytes (red blood cells) if your body lacks them. Or into white blood cells (leukocytes). Or muscle cells. Or neurocytes. Or... in general, you get the idea - in almost all types of cells.
Despite the fact that the general public has known about stem cells since 1981 (although they were discovered much earlier, at the beginning of the 20th century), until 2006 science had no idea that any cells of a living organism can be reprogrammed and transformed into stem cells. Moreover, the method of such transformation turned out to be relatively simple. The first person to figure out this possibility was Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who turned skin cells into stem cells by adding four specific genes to them. Within two to three weeks from the moment the skin cells turned into stem cells, they could be further transformed into any other type of cell in our body. For regenerative medicine, as you understand, this discovery is one of the most important in modern history, since this area now has a virtually limitless source of cells needed to heal the damage your body has sustained.
The “blob” in the center is our solar system
In 2009, a group of astronomers decided to find out the mass of the black hole S5 0014+81, which at that time had just been discovered. Imagine their surprise when scientists learned that its mass is 10,000 times greater than the mass of the supermassive black hole located in the center of our planet. Milky Way, effectively making it the largest currently known black hole in the known universe.
This ultramassive black hole has the mass of 40 billion suns (that is, if you take the mass of the Sun and multiply it by 40 billion, you get the mass of the black hole). No less interesting is the fact that this black hole, according to scientists, was formed during the earliest period of the history of the Universe - just 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery of this black hole contributed to the understanding that holes of this size and mass are capable of increasing these figures incredibly quickly.
It already sounds like a seed for some Nolan’s “Inception,” but in 2014, scientists Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu manipulated the memory of a laboratory mouse, replacing negative memories with positive ones and vice versa. The researchers implanted special light-sensitive proteins into the mouse's brain and, as you might have guessed, simply shined a light into its eyes.
As a result of the experiment, positive memories were completely replaced by negative ones, which were firmly entrenched in her brain. This discovery opens the door to new treatments for those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or are unable to cope with the emotions of losing loved ones. This discovery promises to lead to even more surprising results in the near future.
This was considered something fantastic just a few years ago, but in 2014, IBM introduced the world to a computer chip that works on the principle human brain. With 5.4 billion transistors and requiring 10,000 times less power to operate than conventional computer chips, the SyNAPSE chip is capable of simulating the functioning of your brain's synapses. 256 synapses, to be exact. They can be programmed to perform any computing task, which can make them extremely useful for use in supercomputers and various types distributed sensors.
Thanks to its unique architecture The effectiveness of the SyNAPSE chip is not limited to the performance that we are used to evaluating in conventional computers. It comes into operation only when necessary, which allows you to significantly save on energy and maintain operating temperatures. This revolutionary technology could truly change the entire computer industry over time.
Also in 2014, 1,024 tiny “kilobots” were tasked with combining into the shape of a star. Without any additional instructions, the robots independently and together began to complete the task. Slowly, hesitantly, colliding with each other several times, but they still completed the task assigned to them. If one of the robots got stuck or “lost”, not knowing where to go, neighboring robots came to the rescue and helped the “lost” ones find their way.
What is the achievement? Everything is very simple. Now imagine that the same robots, only thousands of times smaller in size, are introduced into your circulatory system and united to fight any serious disease that has settled in your body. Larger robots, also teaming up, are sent on some kind of search and rescue operation, and even larger ones are used for the fantastically fast construction of new buildings. Here, of course, one can recall some script for a summer blockbuster, but why escalate it?
According to scientists, this mysterious matter may contain answers that explain many as yet unexplained astronomical phenomena. Here is one of them as an example: let’s say, in front of us is a galaxy with the mass of thousands of planets. If we compare the actual mass of these planets and the mass of the entire galaxy, the numbers do not add up. Why? Because the answer lies much deeper simple calculation mass of matter that we can see. There is also matter that we are not able to see. This is precisely what is called “dark matter”.
In 2009, several American laboratories announced the discovery of dark matter using sensors immersed in an iron mine to a depth of about 1 kilometer. Scientists were able to determine the presence of two particles whose characteristics correspond to the previously proposed description of dark matter. There's a lot of double-checking to be done next, but everything points to these particles actually being dark matter particles. This may be one of the most surprising and significant discoveries in physics in the last century.
Maybe. In 2015, NASA published photographs of Martian mountains with dark stripes at their base (photo above). They appear and disappear depending on the season. The fact is that these stripes are irrefutable evidence of the presence of liquid water on Mars. Scientists cannot say with absolute certainty whether the planet had such features in the past, but the presence of water on the planet now opens up many prospects.
For example, the presence of water on the planet can be of great help when humanity finally assembles a manned mission to Mars (sometime after 2024, according to the most optimistic forecasts). In this case, astronauts will have to carry much fewer resources with them, since everything they need is already available on the Martian surface.
The private aerospace company SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, was able, after several attempts, to soft-land a spent rocket onto a remotely controlled floating barge in the ocean.
Everything went so smoothly that landing spent rockets is now considered a routine task for SpaceX. In addition, this allows the company to save billions of dollars on the production of missiles, since now they can simply be sorted out, refilled and reused (and more than once, in theory), instead of just being sunk somewhere in Pacific Ocean. Thanks to these rockets, humanity has immediately become several steps closer to manned flights to Mars.
Gravitational waves are ripples in space and time that travel at the speed of light. They were predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity, according to which mass can bend space and time. Gravitational waves can be created by black holes, and they were detected in 2016 using the high-tech equipment of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or simply LIGO, thereby confirming Einstein's century-old theory.
It's really very important discovery for astronomy, since it proves much of Einstein's general theory of relativity and allows, with the help of instruments such as LIGO, the prospect of detecting and monitoring events of enormous cosmic proportions.
TRAPPIST-1 is a star system located approximately 39 light years from ours. solar system. What makes her special? Not much unless you take into account its star, which has 12 times less mass than our Sun, and at least 7 planets orbiting it and located in the so-called Goldilocks zone, where life could potentially exist.
As expected, there is now heated debate around this discovery. It even goes so far as to claim that the system may not be at all suitable for life and its planets look more like unsightly, worn-out cosmic boulders than our future interplanetary resorts. Nevertheless, the system deserves absolutely all the attention that is now focused on it. Firstly, it is not so far from us - only some 39 light years from the Solar System. On a cosmic scale - around the corner. Secondly, it has three Earth-like planets located in the habitable zone and are perhaps the best targets today for the search for extraterrestrial life. Third, all seven planets may have liquid water, the key to life. But the probability of its presence is highest on the three planets that are closer to the star. Fourthly, if there really is life there, then we can confirm it without even sending a space expedition there. Telescopes like JWST, which is set to launch next year, will help answer this question.
An international team of physicists has discovered why beta decays in atomic nuclei occur more slowly than in free neutrons. Scientists have been struggling to solve this mystery for 50 years, according to a press release on Phys.org. Researchers studied the transformation of the isotope tin-100 into indium-100. These two elements have the same...
2019-03-12 521 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists from the USA 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 electromagnetic waves with azimuthal polarization 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 record 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 plasma-destabilizing booster current was reduced by almost four times, and the plasma confinement time was increased to 160 milliseconds. At the moment this is best result among stellarators. ..
2018-06-04 22440 0 Scientific discoveries
Physicists at the University of Maryland have discovered an exotic superconductor, YPtBi, 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 identified the mechanism of operation of the anomalous superconductor strontium titanate, which is capable of conducting electricity without resistance despite the fact that it is not a metal. Science Alert reports this. 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 naked 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 revealed the processes occurring in the human brain during the dying process. It turned out that the “brain tsunami” - a wave of depolarization of nerve cells that spreads uncontrollably across the cerebral cortex and causes the death of neurons - can be blocked. ..
2018-03-06 6302 0 Scientific discoveries
American physicists were the first to experimentally register 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 have 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. This is reported...
2018-02-14 5483 0 Scientific discoveries
Biologists from Moscow State University have discovered a “molecular timer” - a special mechanism for regulating protein synthesis that prevents the formation of abnormal molecules through stuck ribosomes. According to scientists, the discovery will help create therapeutic methods to combat cancer. This was reported 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, consisting of four cells. This made it possible to identify 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 created in collisions of heavy ions or in strong magnetic fields neutron stars. Physicists from Imperial College London theoretically examined 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, makes it possible 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 that could...
2017-12-12 3698 0 Scientific discoveries
For the first time, physicists have 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 gravitational force and pressure forces electromagnetic radiation, write the authors of the work published in Nature Physics. Effect..
2017-12-11 3412 0 Scientific discoveries
An international team of researchers has proven the existence new form matter - excitonia. It is a condensate of excitons—electrons and “holes” bound together. 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 managed to reverse 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 proceed only in the direction of increasing...
2017-12-05 3125 0 Scientific discoveries
Extended version of the main physical theory- The Standard Model predicts that charged particles can polarize a vacuum and emit photons. The Brazilian theoretical physicist studied 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 to two Hilbert problems. The research was published in the journal of the European Mathematical Society EMS Surveys in Mathematical Sciences. The first problem, about the solution..
2017-11-28 3623 0 Scientific discoveries
Spanish scientists first transmitted using photons quantum states between a cloud of cold rubidium-87 atoms and a Pr3+:Y2SiO5 crystal. The article was published in Nature. To build a quantum network, it is necessary not only to store quantum states over time, but also to transmit...
From year to year, strange, sometimes simply incredible events occur in our lives. And the past year was no exception in this regard.
A huge stone ball, discovered in mid-March 2016 by archaeologist Semir Osmanagic in Bosnia, has generated much debate about whether it was created by the hands of people from a long-extinct ancient civilization or is it the result of Mother Nature's work.
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