13 more things that don't make sense. Cookies on the New Scientist website close Our website uses cookies, which are small text files that are widely used in order to make websites work more effectively.
To continue using our website and consent to the use of cookies, click away from this box or click 'Close' Find out about our cookies and how to change them Log in Your login is case sensitive I have forgotten my password close My New Scientist Look for Science Jobs 13 more things that don't make sense (Image: Loungepark / The Image Bank / Getty) Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us. Axis of evil Radiation left from the big bang is still glowing in the sky – in a mysterious and controversial pattern Dark flow Something unseeable and far bigger than anything in the known universe is hauling a group of galaxies towards it at inexplicable speed Eocene hothouse Tens of millions of years ago, the average temperature at the poles was 15 or 20 °C. Fly-by anomalies Hybrid life Morgellons disease.
5 Ways To Hack Your Brain Into Awesomeness. Learn More While You Sleep So say you haven't followed that first step up there and choose to continue sleeping like other mere mortals.
A very minor change in your schedule can still let you use your sleep patterns to your advantage, by making you smarter. Holy Shit, How Can I Do It? No, we're not talking about those scams where they have you put a tape recorder under your pillow and let it teach you Spanish while you're asleep. What scientists have found out is if you need to remember a bunch of information (say, for a big exam), do NOT study right up until time for the exam. Note: "Sleep on it" is simply an expression. They did a study at Harvard that proved this technique works. No, the participants who slept on it and had 24 hours for the information to fester in their brain did the best on the test, while those who only had 20 minutes did the worst.
Wasting your time, nerds, go to sleep. How Does It Work? Believe Something Happened (That Totally Didn't) Memory is a funny thing. The 6 Creepiest Places on Earth. Remember when we said Aokigahara was the Niagara falls of suicide?
Well, for centuries the abbot in the small Czech town of Sedlec has been the Niagara Falls for dead people, regardless of cause of death. Ever since someone sprinkled soil from the Holy Land on the local cemetery in the 13th century, people from all over Europe started demanding to be buried there and the Sedlec graveyard kept growing until 1870, when the priests decided to finally do something about all those surplus bones lying around. Something insane. Bam! Chandelier full of bones! Today, the Sedlec Ossuary is a chapel famous for being decorated with tens of thousands of human bones. We realize this is the Czech Republic and all, but it has been 27 years, surely Poltergeist was released out there already. At this point, does it really surprise anyone that the church became the inspiration for Dr.
A hotel? Come on dude, don't be a pussy, this place looks legit. We also would've accepted "Our nightmares. " 6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain. The Giant Stone Balls of Costa Rica The Mystery: Costa Rica and a few surrounding areas are scattered with giant stone balls.
They are smooth and perfectly spherical, or nearly so. Some of them are quite small, a few inches in diameter, but some of them are as large as eight feet in diameter weighing several tons. They have been chiseled to perfection by persons unknown, despite the fact that Costa Rica is still not scheduled to enter the Bronze Age until 2013. And God said, "It's nice, but could use some more purposeless balls. " Some of the balls have been blasted apart by locals hoping to find gold, coffee beans, or even babies. Why Can't They Solve It? About the most useful information anyone has gotten is that there are not, under any circumstance, any quarries anywhere near the balls.
Our Guess: In 1,000 years the eggs of the stone men will hatch, and their offspring will emerge to rule the Earth. The Baghdad Batteries Source. Take them to Egypt. And then someone forms the head.