What about how the Aztecs, IIRC, knew that Sirius (the Dog Star) is a double-star system and knew the period of revolution of the binary system! However, the companion to Sirius is too dim to detect with the naked eye? Was it just as dim in their day? Was it once an eclipsing binary? Never saw such questions being considered…
This falls into the category of the various Stonehenge-like arrangements found in various places in the world. Oh, and I’d lump in the mysteries of Easter Island, along with many other civilizations, too. - Jinx
You may indeed have heard the story attributed to the Aztecs, but the Dogon of the African nation of Mali are generally given the credit for knowing of the existence of Sirius B. Of course, those spoilsport skeptics beg to differ, as is their wont…
A favourite subject of mine is “ghost lights”, also known as “spooklights”. Searching for some of the more famous ones (such as the Tri-State Hornet Light, Brown Mountain Lights, etc.) can yield only a few scientific articles. There is one up by the Missouri Dept. of Conservation that is interesting:
Fierra and I are thinking of staking out the Hornet Light to do an investigation, but have not decided when.
Earthquake lights are also pretty cool.
There is supposedly evidence of copper and iron deposits in the Great Lakes area having been smelted long before the technology should have existed here in NA, and there is a lack of finding any tools resulting from the process.
Historical cryptozoology can be interesting. There is supposedly a huge rock drawing of a “Thunderbird” along the Missouri river that vanished - due to erosion - reputedly looking exactly like a pteradactyl. I’ve seen a sketch of it that was done in the 1800’s when it was still up, but have no graphic now. I’ve also heard that other rivers claim to have similar rock drawings.
With all due respect, I’d suggest not wading through Mr. Sheldrake’s works. I’ve met him, and read his stuff, and also met some of the people who have actually investigated his claims or tested them experimentally or looked over his data from a scientific point of view. In my view, there’s no problem knowing where to put him - he’s a silly self-deluded evanglist for several crank theories.
Where to start? The ‘knowing someone is staring at you’ theory. Rupert can bang on about it all he likes, but unless there’s actually a phenomenon then there’s nothing to explain or start writing silly books about. And there’s no evidence of the phenomenon whatsoever. Yep, lots of people will say they know when someone is looking at them, but that’s not the point. The point is whether they really can. So Dr. Richard Wiseman at the University of Hertfordshire set up a formal scientific experiment to see if people really could tell when they were being looked at. Result: no, they can’t. The subjects scored no better than chance.
What next? ‘Pets know where their owners are coming home’. I have met one woman who featured prominently in Sheldrake’s reports of this ‘phenomenon’. Very pleasant woman. Obviously hadn’t a clue what constitutes evidence or reasoning. Rupert claims he made a videotape with two cameras (one with the dog, one with the owner) with synchronised on-screen clocks, wyhich showed that the dog went to the window to welcome his owner home when she was approaching. He was quite keen to play bits of this tape on chat shows and suchlike. Two points that dear old Rupert never mentions. First, if you watch all of the tape, you see that the dog is moving around all the time, and doing various things (sitting up, going to the door, looking out the window, barking…) every few minutes. Any of these things could be cited as ‘welcome home’ behaviour. And the period when the owner is deemed to be ‘approaching home’ could cover a fairly long chunk of time, from the moment she even turns in the direction of her home to the several minutes she takes traversing her own street and actually putting her key in the door. So there’s plenty of opportunity to find a bit of tape that makes it look as if the dog is behaving in a significantly responsive way at the right time.
Second point, dear old Dr. Wiseman reproduced the experiment perfectly, same dog… same owner… same conditions. Found no evidence whatsoever to support the contention.
So it goes on. I agree RS isn’t an intentional deceiver. But he’s a triumph of self-deluding enthusiasm.
What about Tesla’s thunderbolt (or whatever) in Colorado and his claims of beign able to power the earth from a single source and all that. Claiming he destroyed his notes ala daVinci and the helicopter. It does seem pretty accurate to say Edison stole a bunch of his best ideas and repressed the others.
Any of this true?
Or Buckminster Fuller, didn’t he like Tesla invent things that have since been destroyed and not recreated?
Or even Strativarius, is it actually true that modern technology has not figured out how to make violins of similar quality?
Probably a bunch of GQ topics there, but this seemed like a semi-appropriate place.
Haven’t read into it as much as I would like, but I am mightily intrigued by the idea of a message about bison hunting, written in the ancient celtic script of Ogham, in the Basque language, on a stone in West Virginia… in 600 AD (give or take).
Agreed, but they have a different focus; Sacks’s books generally recount stories of his patients, while Ramachandran’s book is somewhat more of a direct “What we know about the brain and phantom limbs/phantom pain” narrative. I think both authors are extremely interesting and well worth reading, but the books by Sacks are more … emotionally involved, is perhaps the phrase. Which author I like better depends on what I’m in the mood for.
Oh, and one really great thing about Ramachandran’s book is that it provides some fascinating experiments you can perform to experience what he’s talking about. For example, in one part he talks about how the brain creates its sensory map of the body, and then he describes a (relatively) simple experiment you can do to “reconfigure” your brain’s body-map, so that your brain thinks a table surface is part of your body, for instance. It’s loads of fun for a rainy Sunday afternoon.
First of all, Anthracite - I’ve seen the Brown Mountain lights many times, while camping in the Lost Cove/Wilson Creek area of North Carolina. Please e-mail me if you want to compare notes.
To the OP - please follow pfbob’s suggestion and read what you can on Tesla.
I have studied him for years. Some of his ideas (ball lightning and earth resonance, for example) have never been fully explained. Many of his experiments have never been duplicated. pfbob, you’re quite correct that Edison stole ideas from others. Edison was a big proponent for DC power as opposed to AC - in fact, he held public meetings where he would electocute dogs with AC to show how dangerous it was … and Tesla pioneered the AC motor. I’m getting off track here, but I’m still personally upset that Edison is taught in schools as an electrical pioneer, while Tesla is forgotten. Also – Marconi’s radio patents were taken away in the 1940s, when proof of Tesla’s work came to light.
For a big, unexplained mystery, Tesla was experimenting with a huge killer laser beam-type weapon when Peary was at the North Pole for the first time – he said it would make war obsolete. He told Peary to expect a message from him. Around this time, a large area in Siberia was obliterated. Theories abound to this day, and include a huge meteor. When Tesla heard the news, he dismantled his “Death Ray” device immediately. So what really happened in Siberia? Anyone have a good explanation?
Caveat - - some Tesla fans are quite out of their heads. Some claim he’s from Venus, for example. But you can’t go wrong with a good Tesla biography for an insight into some 20th Century research which had never been duplicated.
Some day, I’ll learn to insert links into my posts. In the meantime you’ll have to use Google.
On a slightly more scientific side of things, here are two events observed by professional scientists that haven’t been repeated (not for lack of trying):
The “Wow!” signal, an incredibly strong, non-terrestrial radio signal which occurred exactly once.
Magnetic monopoles, most notably the “Cabrera Event” mentioned at the top of the page. Such particles would be like electrons, only carrying magnetic instead of electric charge. More background info (somewhat technical) can be found here.
Ball lightning - no one has proved its existence yet, or explained the possible physics behind them, but there is much anecdotal evidence. I heard a story about someone who flew with his father in a P-38 many years ago, near or in storm clouds. He said he say balls of light forming in front of the leading edge of the wing, then whizzing down the wing & flying off of the wingtip.
The “missing” colony. I don’t have cites, but I’ve heard a few times that a nearby native tribe years later had some people with european names, and they figured that the colony went to live with them.
Bucky Fuller did have a few inventions which are not used for political reasons, such as the Fuller projection. Unlike the commonly-used Mercator projection, which has 40% distortion in some areas, the Fuller projection has, IIRC, a maximum of 3%. It’s the most accurate way to approximate a 3-dimensional sphere surface on a 2D surface, but due to some kind of copyright, national borders cannot be drawn on it. (or so I understand, I may be mistaken). Fuller was an anti-nationalist, and wanted everything he created to benefit all mankind. He also built a car that carried 11 people and got something like 32 miles per gallon, in the thirties. Another cool idea was a house that was to be built on assembly lines like cars…you could by an efficient house for about what a mid-level car costs. They were designed to be delivered by helicopter.
Tesla had some great ideas, but some of them were a bit loony, like his electricity-transmission idea. It’s unfortunate how much pseudoscience hooey is written about Tesla. Many think he deserves credit for inventing the radio.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, there was some discussion of the mystery of Oak Island, Nova Scotia. One side of my family is from Nova Scotia, and I am quite familiar with the Province, its land, and such legends. However, one BIG question is begging to be asked:
When trying to find buried treasure on an island only feet above sea level, did anyone STOP to think they need to pump the water out the deeper they dig down? I have never heard this detail mentioned in the many written accounts of digging for the buried treasure. In fact, it is just the opposite! Repeatedly, written reports claim efforts were foiled by the infiltrating waters…
Surely we have the technology. Maybe it’s a question of whether or not the tremenedous effort to squeeze this orange is really worth the potential juice we can squeeze out? - Jinx
A buddy of mine mentioned to me that experiments were conducted around 1900 to find out how much the “human soul” weighed. According to the doctor who measured the weights of his dying patients (just before, during, and after death) he found that the “human soul” weighs 2/3rds of an ounce. Has anyone else heard of this? Also thanks to all who have posted mysteries, keep 'em coming!
P.S. Plexuss, you seem to be hinting at a conspiracy theory regarding Telsa and the Tuscan (was that the name???) explosion around the early 1910’s- how far out is that theory?
What did you intend these particular links to be “examples” of, Erroneous? His stuff in general, or his stuff that has “slightly more wack sources”? If the latter, I have to say I’m not sure aht you’re getting at. They all seem pretty ordinary to me (Baltimore Sun, Science News, AP…).
If you just mean general examples of his work, then disregard my question. Your sentence left things unclear.
