Tag: unexplained phenomena

12 Unsolved Mysteries from 2023

This past year featured an array of peculiar events and curious cases that defied explanation. From a wondrous piece of artwork (seen above) found near Las Vegas that was visible from space and an eerie black vertical line seen in the sky over a British town to an exhumed nun’s body that was found to be intact four years after her death and a series of drone incursions that left a Maryland family unsettled, 2023 saw a slew of inexplicable incidents emerge and leave us scratching our heads. With that in mind, here are 12 unsolved mysteries from 2023 that remain truly confounding…

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Mysterious cosmic ray observed in Utah came from beyond our galaxy, scientists say

Space scientists seeking to understand the enigmatic origins of powerful cosmic rays have detected an extremely rare, ultra-high-energy particle that they believe traveled to Earth from beyond the Milky Way galaxy.

The energy of this subatomic particle, invisible to the naked eye, is equivalent to dropping a brick on your toe from waist height, according to the authors of new research published Thursday in the journal Science. It rivals the single most energetic cosmic ray ever observed, the “Oh-My-God” particle that was detected in 1991, the study found.

Cosmic rays are charged particles that travel through space and rain down on Earth constantly. Low-energy cosmic rays can emanate from the sun, but extremely high-energy ones are exceptional. They are thought to travel to Earth from other galaxies and extragalactic sources.

“If you hold out your hand, one (cosmic ray) goes through the palm of your hand every second, but those are really low-energy things,” said study coauthor John Matthews, a research professor at the University of Utah.

“When you get out to these really high-energy (cosmic rays), it’s more like one per square kilometer per century. It’s never going through your hand.”

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Omagh’s mystery hum keeps Tyrone residents awake

Council officials are looking at calling in noise specialists in an attempt to locate a mystery hum disturbing residents of a Co Tyrone town.

People in Omagh have been reporting a persistent low level hum or buzz in the town for several weeks.

Noise officers have been sent out to investigate it and have heard it, but have so far been unable to identify the source.

Senior official at Fermanagh and Omagh council John Boyle told a recent meeting the issue would “not be an easy one to crack”.

He said existing equipment was not sensitive enough to find the source and they would either have to buy new equipment or employ a specialist contractor.

Among the potential culprits being investigated are air-conditioning units or power lines.

The council has been in contact with the company responsible for electricity distribution.

The issue was first raised by Alliance councillor Stephen Donnelly. He said he has received multiple reports from a wide area of the town.

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EUROPEAN SATELLITE SPOTS MYSTERIOUS GLOW COMING FROM MARS

A European Space Agency satellite has detected a mysterious glow coming from Mars. Measured in the visible spectrum with the NOMAD-UVIS instrument on board the European Space Agency (ESA) Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) satellite, the unexpected glow emanates from the night side of Mars and was observed in the planet’s upper atmosphere.

A similar glow was witnessed by the same research team using a satellite orbiting Venus. Like that visible light signal, the researchers believed the mysterious glow coming from Mars resulted from oxygen interacting with the planet’s upper atmosphere. That’s mainly because they also saw a similar mysterious glow coming from Mars, only in the daytime.

“Back in 2020, we were already able to detect the presence of a green emission between 40 and 150 km in altitude, present during the Martian day,” explained Jean-Claude Gérard, a planetologist at the Laboratory for Planetary and Atmospheric Physics (LPAP) at the University of Liège (BE), where the research team was headquartered. “This was due to the dissociation of the CO2 molecule, the main constituent of the atmosphere, by ultraviolet solar radiation”.

However, the researchers soon discovered that this unexpected mysterious glow coming from Mars was originating from the nighttime side. They also figured out it was caused by something else entirely.

“This emission is due to the recombination of oxygen atoms created in the summer atmosphere and carried by the winds towards the high winter latitudes,” explained Lauriane Soret, a researcher at LPAP.

Once at higher altitudes, the atoms recombine with CO2 molecules when they come in contact. This reaction, the researcher explains, produces an oxygen molecule “in an excited state” that relaxes, causing it to emit light “in the visible range.”

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The Mystery of the World’s Largest and Deepest Gravity Hole

DEAR INDIAN OCEAN, PLEASE DON’T take offense, but: Why is your gravity hole so big? That question had been baffling scientists ever since the hole was discovered back in 1948. Now a team from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) thinks they have found the answer: The “hole” in the Indian Ocean is caused by fragments from the sunken floor of another, much older ocean.

In a mysterious part of the Indian Ocean, the pull of gravity is much weaker than anywhere else on Earth. This gravity hole, the world’s largest (and deepest) gravitational anomaly, is officially known as the Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL). (A geoid is a theoretical model of sea levels worldwide, with its irregularities corresponding to variations in the Earth’s gravity.)

There’s nothing mysterious per se about gravitational variation, which corresponds to differences in the density of the subsurface (and submarine) layers of rock. What was unexplained, was the size and amplitude of the anomaly in the Indian Ocean.

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Revisiting the Ball Lightning Explanation for UFOs

Several years ago I began researching the phenomenon of ball lightning since it comes up so frequently in discussions of the UFO phenomenon. (Or unidentified anomalous phenomena, UAP, as the U.S. government insists we say these days.) In recent months I have gone back to investigate some of the more current research material and reports available on this topic and I’ll provide some updates on both the historical and newer information that has become available here.

It’s worth noting that “ball-shaped” UFOs (as ball lightning is typically described) are among the most common sightings reported. This is no longer just an anecdotal assumption. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) website confirms this in a recently published morphology chart. They even provide a verified and still unidentified video of one of them filmed by a drone over the Middle East. Those “orbs” are frequently described as being silver or metallic in appearance, but recently advanced theories suggest that in some cases, particularly at night, they might exhibit some sort of field around their surface, giving them the appearance of fire or even electrical “lightning.”

People have been reporting sightings of such objects for quite some time. Rather than being a recent phenomenon, something fitting the description of ball lightning was first reported in the 12th century, written by Benedictine monk Gervase of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury in 1195. Suggesting that the phenomenon has an affinity for religious institutions (or just that churches had most of the people who were literate back then), ball lightning reportedly struck the church of St. Pancras in Widecombe-on-the-Moor, England during a severe thunderstorm in 1638. Church records indicate that the fireball came through a window, knocked the minister off of his feet, and singed his clothing. While it melted metal around him, it left the wood of the church untouched. The event was considered to be potentially miraculous.

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Truth about my ‘alien’ encounter… How I found bombshell interstellar objects a mile beneath the sea – and their limitless potential for life on Earth, by scientist AVI LOEB

Every scientist dreams of making a great discovery. A eureka moment when all the signs point to a conclusion that breaks new ground, that potentially changes everything.

I believe I had such a moment this week, when a team of scientists I led revealed their preliminary analysis of 700 extraordinary fragments recovered from a 2014 meteor crash site during an expedition that I organized this summer.

These fragments – tiny metallic spheres – were discovered off the coast of Papua New Guinea, and what they’ve revealed is revolutionary on two fronts.

First, the evidence indicates the fragments are of interstellar origin, from beyond our solar system.

This is a truly historic moment: no human has ever laid hands on materials from outside our solar system before.

Second, and far more significant, through analysis my team discovered that the make-up of these metals is unlike anything we’ve seen.

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Massive ‘Gravity Anomaly’ Caused by Ancient Sea Remnants Deep Inside Earth, Study Says

The Indian Ocean features a massive gravity anomaly that has puzzled scientists for years. Now, a new study proposes that the ancient remains of another ocean that sank deep into the Earth itself gave rise to the Indian Ocean geoid low (IOGL), as the anomaly is called. 

The IOGL is a region covering nearly two million square miles south of the Indian peninsula where the ocean surface plunges over 300 feet. The anomaly was first discovered in 1948, Scientific American noted in its coverage of the new study. But while scientists agree it must be due to gravity and the physical properties of Earth itself—which in reality looks more like a lumpy ball of dough than a smooth sphere—the exact mechanisms of the IOGL’s formation have long eluded a definitive explanation. 

A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters and authored by researchers Depanjan Pal and Attreyee Ghosh from the Indian Institute of Science used mantle convection models covering the Mesozoic era, which ended 60 million years ago, to the present in order to narrow down the solution. The result was that the IOGL is mainly caused by a geological formation known as a large low-shear-velocity province (LSVP) under Africa, also called a “blob.” According to the study, this region was “perturbed” by sinking slabs of the sea floor belonging to the ancient Tethys Ocean. 

The Tethys Ocean does not exist anymore, but in prehistoric times it was situated between the ancient landmasses of Gondwana and Laurasia. When these continents broke up and shifted, Tethys disappeared, and the modern Indian and Atlantic oceans were formed. The slabs that made up the ancient Tethyian sea floor sank into the Earth’s mantle, producing plumes that reach the upper mantle. 

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The Strangest Aspect of the Men in Black & Women in Black: They Don’t Know How to Eat or Drink

Hollywood did a very good job of creating a series of MIB movies that entertained and excited audiences the world over – and made those same audiences laugh loud and hard, too. But, there is nothing to laugh about when it comes to the real Men in Black. In the movies, the MIB are in the employ of an agency more powerful, and far more secretive, than even Edward Snowden’s old “friends” at the National Security Agency.  But, we should not forget that the Men in Black movies are fiction. As is so unfortunately often the case, the real world often outdoes the domain of fiction – and seldom in a positive fashion. The so-called “modern era” of UFOs began in the summer of 1947, specifically on June 24. That was the date upon which a pilot named Kenneth Arnold encountered a squadron of strange-looking aircraft flying near Mount Rainier, Washington State – as the man himself noted in his 1952 book with Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers. As an experienced pilot, Arnold was deeply puzzled that he was unable to identify the things ahead of him. As he got closer, Arnold realized exactly why he was unable to figure out what the objects were: they were not regular airplanes, but futuristic-looking half-moon shaped vehicles that resembled absolutely nothing in the United States’ arsenal at that time. And that was surely the case for the Russians, too. It was not long before word of Arnold’s encounter reached the eyes and ears of the media – in fact, less than a day. The terms “flying saucer” and “flying disk” all-but-immediately became the talk of 1947. Today, the term “UFO” is far more popular than the now largely antiquated flying saucer.

Although the latter part of the 1940s proved to be a period in which sightings of apparent unearthly craft abounded, it wasn’t until the early 1950s that the Men in Black stepped out of the shadows – in force –and set about snaring us, manipulating us, and ultimately digesting us. And, no, the “digesting” term is not an exaggeration. Over the years there have been numerous investigators of the Men in Black phenomenon, such as UFO researchers Gray Barker, Jim Keith, and Harold Fulton – all of whom are now long gone. None of them, however, came anywhere close to Albert K. Bender – the man without whom our knowledge of the MIB and their agenda would be sorely lacking, and who created the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB). Born in 1922, Bender was someone who served his country during the Second World War in the United States Army Air Corps. Post-World War Two, Bender lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a somewhat creepy-looking old house that stood at what was, at the time, the junction of Broad Street and North Frontage Road. Today, the house is no more, the secrets it once held now being just memories and stories in books.

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Strange sounds recorded high in Earth’s atmosphere have scientists baffled

Scientists have detected sounds high in Earth’s atmosphere that can’t be identified.

A solar-powered balloon mission launched by researchers from Sandia National Laboratories carried a microphone to a region of Earth’s atmosphere found around 31 miles (50 km) above the planet called the stratosphere. This region is relatively calm and free of storms, turbulence and commercial air traffic, meaning microphones in this layer of the atmosphere can eavesdrop on the sounds of our planet, both natural and human-made.

However, the microphone in this particular study also heard strange sounds that repeat a few times per hour. Their source has yet to be identified. The sounds were recorded in the infrasound range, meaning they were at frequencies of 20 hertz (Hz) and lower, well below the range of the human ear. “There are mysterious infrasound signals that occur a few times per hour on some flights, but the source of these is completely unknown,” Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratories said in a statement.

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