Despite all the advances of science, there still exists a lot of white spots. The magazine New Scientist published a list of mysterious phenomena, explain that scientists are not able to.
1. Placebo effect
This - the placebo effect: somehow part of anything can have a very powerful impact. Doctors know about the placebo effect for a long time. But besides that, apparently, he has a biochemical nature, we do not know anything. One thing is clear: the mind can affect the biochemistry of the organism.
2. Horizon problem
Our universe is inexplicably united. Look at the space from one edge of the visible universe to another, and you'll see that throughout the microwave background radiation in space has the same temperature. This is not surprising as long as you do not remember that the two edges at a distance of 28 billion light years away from each other, and our universe is only 14 billion years.
Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, so it is impossible that the thermal radiation could traveled between the two horizons, and to balance the hot and cold zones, formed during the big bang, setting a thermal equilibrium we see now.
From a scientific point of view of the same temperature of background radiation is an anomaly. Explain it could be a recognition that the speed of light is not constant. But even in this case we are still powerless against the question: why?
3. Ultra-energetic cosmic rays
For more than ten years of physics in Japan, observe cosmic rays, which should not exist. Cosmic rays - a particle that travels in the universe at a speed close to the speed of light. Some cosmic rays come to earth as a result of violent events, such as a supernova explosion. But we know nothing about the origin of high-energy particles observed in nature. Even this is not a real mystery.
When cosmic ray particles move in space, they lose energy in collisions with photons of low energy, for example, from the cosmic microwave background radiation. However, the University of Tokyo have discovered cosmic rays with very high energy. Theoretically, they could have come only from our galaxy, but to find the source of cosmic rays in our galaxy, astronomers can not.
4. The phenomenon of homeopathy
Madeleine Ennis (Madeleine Ennis), a pharmacologist at Queen's University Belfast - a disaster for homeopathy. She objected to the statements of homeopaths that the chemical agent may be diluted to such an extent that the sample will not contain virtually nothing but water, and at the same time possess healing powers. Ennis decided once and for all prove that homeopathy is just chatter.
In his latest work, she describes how her team in four different laboratories investigated the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on the white blood cells involved in inflammation. To the surprise of scientists found that homeopathic solutions (diluted to such an extent that, apparently, did not contain even one molecule of histamine), worked as well as histamine.
Prior to these experiments, no homeopathic remedy has never worked in clinical trials. But the Belfast study shows that after all something is happening. "We - says Ennis - can not explain our findings and report on them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon."
If the results will be real, she says, the consequences could be very significant: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.
5. Dark Matter
Take the best of our knowledge of gravity, apply it to the rotation of galaxies, and you will immediately discover the problem: according to our knowledge, the galaxies should decay. Galactic matter revolves around a central point, because its gravitational attraction creates centripetal forces. But for the observed rotation of galaxies do not have enough mass.
Vera Rubin (Vera Rubin), an astronomer at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, noted this anomaly in the late seventies of last century. The best answer, which could give physicists, is to assume that the universe has more matter than we observe. The problem was that nobody could explain what is this "dark matter".
Explain its scientists can not yet, and it is an unpleasant gap in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must be about 90% of the mass of the universe, and yet we are astonishingly ignorant as to what kind of 90%.
6. Life on Mars
July 20, 1976. Gilbert Levin (Gilbert Levin) sits at the edge of his chair. At a distance of millions of miles away, on Mars landing spacecraft Viking took samples of soil. Equipment Levin mixed them with a substance containing carbon-14. Scientists involved in the experiment, consider that if the soil to light emissions of methane which contain carbon-14, then Mars should be life.
Analyzers "Viking" give a positive result. Something absorb nutrients, convert them, and then allocates gas containing carbon-14. But why no celebration?
Because the other analyzer, designed to identify organic molecules that are essential signs of life, found nothing. Scientists sostorozhnichali and announced the opening of "Viking" false positive. But is it?
Results transferred from the last NASA, shows that in the past the surface of Mars will almost certainly contain water and therefore has been favorable for life. There are other proofs. "Every mission to Mars, - says Gilbert Levin - provides data to support my conclusion. None of them does not contradict him. "
Levin defends his views are no longer alone. Joe Miller (Joe Miller), a microbiologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, analyzed the data again and believes that emissions show signs of the circadian cycle. And this is a high degree of probability implies the existence of life. Whether these scientists are right - still unknown.
7. Tetraneutrons
Four years ago, were found six particles that should not exist. They were called tetraneytronami - four neutrons, which are in communication that ignores the laws of physics.
A team of scientists led by Kahn from Miguel Marquez, Francisco (Francisco Miguel Marquès) assaults blasted beryllium nucleus of a small carbon target and analyzed their trajectories through the detectors. Scientists expect to see that four different neutrons will fall into different detectors. Instead, they found only one flash of light in one detector.
The energy of this outbreak revealed that all four of the neutron hit the same detector. Maybe it's just coincidence, and four neutrons accidentally fell into the same place at the same time. But it is ridiculously unlikely.
However, such behavior is not likely to tetraneytronov. True, some may argue that according to the standard model of elementary particle physics, tetraneytrony simply can not exist. Because of the Pauli principle, the same system does not exist even two protons or neutrons, which could have identical quantum properties. Holding them together nuclear force is such that it can not even keep two single neutron, not to mention four.
Marquez and his team were so stunned with the results, that "buried" the data in scientific work, which had read about a certain probability of opening tetraneytronov in the future. After all, if we begin to change the laws of physics, to justify the connection of four neutrons, there will be chaos.
Recognition of the existence tetraneytronov would mean that the combination of elements formed after the Big Bang, is not consistent with the fact that we now observe. And, worse, formed elements become too heavy for the cosmos. "Probably, the universe would have collapsed before it began to grow", - says Natalya Timofeyuk (Natalia Timofeyuk), a theorist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, United Kingdom.
However, there are other evidence of speaking in favor of that matter may be composed of multiple neutrons. This - a neutron star. They contain a vast number of neutrons, and this means that when neutrons gather in masses to come into effect is still unexplained to us strength.
8. Pioneer Anomaly
In 1972 the Americans launched the spacecraft Pioneer-10. On board was a message from extraterrestrial civilizations - a plate with the images of men, women and layout of the Earth in space. A year later, after it went to Pioneer-11. To date, both the device should already have been found in deep space. But in an unusual way, their trajectories strongly deviated from the calculated.
Something is beginning to pull (or push), with the result that they began to move with acceleration. It was tiny - smaller than a nanometer per second, equivalent to one ten shares of gravity on the Earth. But that was enough to shift the Pioneer-10 of its trajectory at 400 000 kilometers.
From Pioneer-11, NASA lost contact in 1995, but until the moment he deviated from its trajectory in the same way as his predecessor. What was the reason? Nobody knows.
Some of the possible explanations have already been rejected, including software errors, the solar wind and fuel leakage. If the cause was a kind of gravitational effect, we have this know nothing. Physicists are just at a loss.
9. Dark energy
This is one of the most famous and most intractable problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding with increasing speed. Previously it was believed that after the Big Bang expansion of the universe is slowing.
Reasonable explanation to this discovery, scientists have not yet been found. One suggestion - a phenomenon responsible for some property of empty space. Cosmologists call it dark energy. But all attempts to identify it failed.
10. Tenth Planet
If you go on a journey to the edge of the solar system, in the cold zone of the space for Pluto, you'll see something strange. After passing through the Kuiper Belt - the area of space, replete with ice cliffs - you suddenly see an empty space.
Astronomers call this boundary the Kuiper cliff, because after that the density of the stone belt sharply decreases. What is the cause? The only answer to this may be a tenth planet in our solar system. And, to clear the area because of garbage, it must be as massive as Earth or Mars.
But, though the calculations and show that such a body could have caused the existence of the Kuiper Belt, no one has ever seen this legendary tenth planet.
11. Space signal WOW
It lasted 37 seconds and came from outer space. August 15, 1977 on a printout of a radio telescope in Delaware recorders drew up: WOW. And the twenty-eight years later, no one knows what was the cause of this signal.
Pulses come from the constellation Sagittarius at a frequency of 1420 MHz. Programs in this range are prohibited by international agreement. Natural sources of radiation, such as the thermal emissions from planets, covered a much wider range of frequencies. What was the cause of the radiation of these pulses? The answer is still no.
The nearest star to us in this direction is at a distance of 220 light years. If the signal came from there, then it should be a huge astronomical event, or advanced extraterrestrial civilization with a surprisingly powerful transmitter.
All subsequent observations in the same area of the sky or led nowhere. Signal WOW this is no longer registered.
12. Such non-permanent permanent
In 1997 astronomer John Webb (John Webb) and his team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, analyzed the light coming to Earth from distant quasars. In his journey lasting about 12 billion light years through interstellar clouds composed of metals such as iron, nickel and chromium. Researchers have discovered that these atoms absorb photons of quasar light, but not those that had been expected.
The only more or less reasonable explanation for this phenomenon lies in the fact that the physical constant called the fine structure constant, or alpha, has a different value in the passage of light through the clouds.
But this is heresy! Alpha is an extremely important constant that determines how light interacts with matter, and it should not be changed! Its meaning, among other things, depends on the charge of an electron, speed of light and Planck's constant. Is it possible that some of these parameters really changed?
None of the physicists did not want to believe in the correctness of measurements. Webb and his team for many years trying to find errors in their results. But they still failed.
Results Webb - not only proving that in our understanding of alpha something wrong. A recent analysis of the only known natural nuclear reactor to operate almost 2 billion years ago, where there is now Oklo in Gabon, also suggests that in the interaction of light with matter, something changed.
The proportion of certain radioactive isotopes, developed in such a reactor depends on alpha, and therefore analysis of the fission products remaining in the soil Oklo, makes it possible to determine the value of the constant during their education.
Using this method, Steve Lamor (Steve Lamoreaux) and his colleagues from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, suggested that since the action in the Oklo alpha decreased by more than 4%. And this means that our understanding of the constants may be incorrect.
13. Cold fusion (NTS)
After sixteen-year absence, he returned. Although, in fact, the NTS has never disappeared. Since 1989, the U.S. Navy lab conducted more than 200 experiments designed to determine whether nuclear reactions at room temperature to generate more energy than it uses (it is believed that this is only possible inside stars).
Controlled nuclear fusion could solve many of the world's energy problems. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Energy so interested in it. In December last year after a lengthy consideration of all evidence, it stated that open to suggestions for new NTS experiments.
This is a fairly sharp turn. Fifteen years ago, that same Ministry has concluded that the initial results of the NTS received by Martin Fleischmann (Martin Fleischmann) and Stanley Pons (Stanley Pons) from the University of Utah, and solemnly presented at a press conference in 1989, it is impossible to confirm, and thus they probably are false.
The basic principle of the NTS is that immersion palladium electrodes into heavy water (in which the oxygen is connected with the heavy isotope of hydrogen) can release large amounts of energy. The trouble is that all of the generally accepted scientific theories believe that nuclear fusion at room temperature is impossible.
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