Whether we refer to the act of living or to all sentient beings in this world, life has always been a difficult concept for humans to understand. Even when life has preceded us on this planet for 3.5 billion years—and we ourselves have roamed Earth for plenty of millennia—there are many questions about it that we still cannot answer. What is the meaning of life? Is there life after death? These, among many others, are typical questions of any philosophical debate, questions as old as humankind itself.^[1]

But then we have strange questions, unconventional doubts about life that do not usually come to our minds on a normal day. Have you ever wondered what Earth would be like if it were devoid of all life? Then this article is for you. If not, keep reading anyway; some of the answers, or the questions themselves, exposed here will certainly not leave you indifferent.

10 How Much Life Has Ever Existed?

Currently, the human population is slowly approaching eight billion people. That is certainly quite a number, but it does not even compare with the 100 trillion ants under our feet. And it is estimated that, at any given time, there are five nonillion bacteria in the world—that’s a “5” followed by 30 zeros. There is no doubt that there are so many living organisms on Earth that trying to count them all would be an unachievable task. And again, all this is just about the currently existing life-forms. But what about all the life that has existed in the past?

Determining how many creatures could have inhabited Earth throughout the history of the planet is extremely difficult. It is believed that complex life has been around in this world for at least 570 million years. And the fossils we have managed to recover are a minimum percentage compared to the prehistoric remains that are either out of our reach or have been destroyed by geological processes. But using their ingenuity, scientists have come up with a correlation between the number of fossils and the currently known species to estimate the total of life that has ever existed. Today, the experts are pretty convinced that 99.9 percent of all species on Earth are extinct.

This number is understandable, considering that the Earth’s biosphere has suffered five mass extinctions during the last 400 million years. On average, more than 80 percent of all living beings were erased from the face of the Earth in each of these five events. And a significant part of the scientific community believes that today, we are facing a sixth mass extinction. Estimates say that species disappear 100 times faster today than before our existence, and in the last 50 years, humans have eliminated 60 percent of animal life. So, unfortunately for us, death is much more common than life in this world.^[2]

9 Is Life On Earth Of Alien Origin?

Today, most scientists are sure that all life on Earth comes from a common ancestor. This primal being would have been nothing more than a unicellular organism, created by random chemical reactions in the early Earth. However, what scientists do not yet understand is exactly how these processes took place. And all their attempts to replicate the origin of life have failed so far. Perhaps the answer to this mystery could be found in a theory called lithopanspermia.

The theory of panspermia suggests that early life-forms were brought to Earth from somewhere else in the universe, such as nearby planets. Within the same idea, lithopanspermia states that rocky fragments of another world containing microbial life were ejected into space after some kind of planetary impact. Millions of years later, those rocks reached Earth, and the life they carried inside began its evolutionary cycle here. The concept behind panspermia appeared several centuries ago in France, and since then, it has been an object of scientific study, although other theories generate more interest nowadays.

Nevertheless, there are several indications supporting the possibility that lithopanspermia really occurred. Using collision simulations, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have concluded that it is statistically possible that a space rock containing microbes can travel from one planet to another by ejection.^[3] Of course, there is the problem that space is too hostile to allow the survival of life, due to factors such as radiation and extreme temperatures. But we know that there are multiple bacterial species capable of resisting the harshest environments, from the hottest places on Earth to the nothingness of outer space.

In addition, a recent study shows that the main elements that make up life on Earth are common in stars, existing more abundantly toward the center of our galaxy than in our planetary region. In short, the matter we are formed from literally comes from another region of the universe. So life may not be so special across the cosmos after all.

8 Is It Possible To Be Dead And Alive At The Same Time?

The answer to this question has nothing to do with some kind of quantum theory, where someone can be in two states at the same time. Nor does it refer to whether we can be like zombies, the classic description of the “living dead.” We can say that, yes, some creatures seem to be alive and dead at the same time. But everything has to do with the inability of scientists to agree on what exactly differentiates a living being from dead matter.

Some scientists understood that all life-forms must share immutable similarities in their nature and behavior. So in 1997, they proposed a list of seven conditions that something must meet to be considered a living being. Every living organism must have a complex chemical composition and be made up of basic structures called cells. It must be able to grow, reproduce, and respond to external stimuli. The creature must also have a metabolism to produce its own energy and be able to adapt to the environment.

Now let’s consider the case of viruses. Generally, and even from the scientific point of view, viruses are considered to be biological entities—that is, they are living beings. A virus has complex genetic material inside and definitely adapts to the environment. But a virus cannot grow or produce its own energy. (It feeds on the energy already produced by its host.) It also does not reproduce but replicates itself using the cells of the host. In fact, a virus is not even made of a single cell, and it remains to be seen if it responds immediately to external stimuli.^[4] So we know that a virus is alive, but it does not meet most of the requirements to be alive, sharing more similarities with a machine instead.

It happens that many inert objects partially fulfill several of those conditions, too. Even fire could once have become a tricky phenomenon when it came to differentiating it from a true living being. As our knowledge of the elemental processes of life increases, we will be able to make the difference clearer.

7 How Much Does All Life Weigh?

Compared to the rest of our solar system, anyone who sees the Earth from space can quickly notice that it is a planet covered in life. More than 30 percent of the continents of our world are covered by green vegetation. This, along with the blue of the oceans, makes Earth look like a living oasis in the midst of emptiness. But then one might wonder what the real, physical weight that life exerts on our planet is. For obvious reasons, until recently, it was very difficult to estimate the total mass of life on Earth. But studies conducted in 2018 show that even all living creatures put together are negligibly small in comparison to the vastness of our world.

In May 2018, American scientists published a report containing measurements of the mass of all carbon-based life on Earth.^[5] Since all known life-forms are carbon-based, and carbon is an abundant element inside every living being, using it to estimate the total biomass seems appropriate. The results showed that in total, life on this planet weighs at least 550 gigatons of carbon, or, to simplify, 550 billion tons. Considering that the whole Earth weighs approximately 6.57 billion gigatons, that means that all living beings combined account for about one ten-millionth of the total mass of the planet.

As we can see, living nature is just a tiny portion of everything that makes our world. In this estimate, plant life represents more than 80 percent of the total biomass. Meanwhile, humans only represent 0.01 percent among all life. This is surprising, considering that our cities and buildings cover at least three percent of the Earth’s land surface, a huge proportion compared to the effect of other species. That means that although we are few, we are good at what we do, whether it’s something good or bad.

6 Is The Universe Itself Alive?

There are several philosophical theories that point out that the universe is in itself a living entity. For example, hylozoism holds that all matter is alive, while panpsychism is the idea that every object in the cosmos has a certain degree of consciousness. Over time, these theories were left aside, after the acceptance of new concepts such as evolutionism. But now, new discoveries and theories have allowed the idea of a sentient universe to gather strength again.

First, we have the case of some experts who have hypothesized about how consciousness could be an intrinsic part of any existing structure.^[6] British physicist Roger Penrose theorized that human consciousness is the product of quantum processes within small regions of our brain cells. Taking this into account, astrophysicist Bernard Haisch conceived the possibility that “quantum fields”—the elementary structures that make up the universe—are capable of producing consciousness. In other words, any structure in the universe (be it a person or a star) can be sentient, since quantum properties are part of its own nature.

On the other hand, both its very structure and behavior serve as possible evidence that the cosmos really is a thinking entity. According to a 2005 study, the intricate structure of the material universe looks strikingly similar to the neural network in our brains. In addition, it has been known for a long time that the structure of an atom is similar—even in proportional distances—to the planetary arrangement of our solar system. And as if that were not enough, new studies show that certain stars make unexpected corrections in their orbits across the galaxy. More information will be needed to confirm if the latter behavior is common in the rest of the universe, but the idea of a living cosmos is captivating science now more than ever.

5 Is It The Same To Die As To Stop Living?

The short answer is no, it is not the same. Here comes the long answer: The concept of death has constantly changed over the centuries, becoming more accurate as our knowledge and technologies advance. For example, in the 19th century, a person was pronounced dead after simply ceasing to breathe. A hundred years ago, someone was officially dead once their heart stopped beating. And today, we believe that death occurs when our bodies suffer irreversible cell damage—that is, our vital functions can no longer be reactivated.

But even after a person dies and their body begins to decompose, that does not mean he or she is entirely dead. In fact, new research indicates that some processes occurring in a corpse challenge our understanding of death. A group of American and European scientists discovered in 2017 that after certain animals die, many of their cells are still fighting to survive. And they not only remain alive for days after death, but in some types of cells, their activity increases.

Everything points to the fact that, in an attempt to repair themselves, the cells in a dead body accelerate the process by which they transform DNA into instructions to make new proteins. And stem cells in particular are able to continue living not for hours or days but for weeks after the death of the creature. It is understandable if we take into account that every animal is a being composed of multiple populations of different cells. For this reason, some cells are more resilient than others, even after the apparent death of the body. And the same researchers state that this behavior occurs in all multicellular beings, including us.^[7] So it is clear that the line between life and death is much more blurred than we thought.

4 Why Is Life So Diverse?

So far, scientists have discovered and studied nearly two million different living species. Among these, humans are part of a handful of 5,000 known species of mammals. In comparison, we know 360,000 species of plants and one million different types of insects. However, our knowledge about Earth’s biodiversity is very limited, and today, the scientific community believes there could be up to two billion life-forms on this planet. Knowing this and that, as previously mentioned, at this point, almost all life on Earth is extinct, one cannot help but wonder, why is there so much diversity of living beings?

We can say that life has a tendency to continue to multiply, no matter what, even if that means to radically change its nature. Since the emergence of life, the Earth has undergone multiple mass extinctions, hundreds of minor ice ages, and constant fluctuations in the sea level (on the order of hundreds of meters). Yet here we are, and studies indicate that in our time, biodiversity has expanded more than ever, at an exponential scale.

This is primarily due to the fact that every time a cataclysm erases much of life on the planet, survivors tend to adapt to the new environment, resulting in new species.^[8] A clear example is the explosive increase of mammal species after the Cretaceous extinction event, 66 million years ago. It is also well-known that in order for an ecosystem to survive, its different life-forms will have to specialize and help each other. The air we breathe and the food we eat, for example, are conditioned for our consumption thanks to the work of other living beings such as plants and insects. Even forests are more resistant to disasters when they are composed of multiple tree species. So in a few words, try to erase life, and it will grow even more instead.

3 Which Organisms Have The Shortest And The Longest Life Spans?

As we have just seen, life-forms on Earth are so diverse that the concept of a long life varies between species. What can be synonymous with longevity for one creature is only a fleeting moment in time for another. So in the following point, it will be more appropriate if we see some life spans of organisms very different from each other.

Let’s start by looking at the life spans of bacteria. As they do not grow in the way other living beings do, it is difficult to determine the age of a bacterium. But we do have a fairly precise estimate of its reproduction, the generation time. This term refers to the time that passes before a cell multiplies. If we presume that a bacterial population remains stable over time, then a bacterium will live at least as long as its generation time. In this case, the shortest-lived bacterium is the microbe Clostridium perfringens. It is estimated that its generation time is just 6.3 minutes. In the time it takes you to read four points of this list, a Clostridium perfringens has already lived and died.

In the animal world, the mayfly Dolania americana is surely one of the animals that lives the least. If we only consider the adult stage of its life in which the insect is fully developed, D. americana emerges, reproduces, and dies in 30 minutes or less. On the other hand, a clam found in Iceland in 2006 had lived for 507 years and could have lived longer if it hadn’t been killed as a result of being collected.^[9]

Of course, we can’t leave out plants, which we know are among the most perdurable beings in the world. In fact, the oldest-known individual tree is a bristlecone pine from California that is more than 5,060 years old. When the humans of antiquity were beginning to develop writing, this tree was a youngling in its early years. On the other hand, the shortest-lived plants are believed to be the so-called ephemeral plants. Among these, plants of the genus Boerhavia can complete their entire life cycle in less than four weeks.

2 What Would The Earth Be Like If Life Did Not Exist?

So it is true that, in quantitative terms, life is a tiny part of what makes our planet. But it’s one thing to measure living beings according to their mass or volume and quite another to determine the effects these beings produce on Earth. So, what would happen to the Earth if life did not exist? Well, we can be pretty sure that without life, our good blue planet would no longer be good or blue.

The Earth’s atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen, an essential element for life-forms like us. But oxygen is an unstable gas that tends to combine quickly with other elements. Plant life on the surface is what replenishes the atmosphere with oxygen, filtering the gas constantly. If life on Earth did not exist, only small traces of oxygen would remain in the environment, while the atmosphere would be mostly composed of carbon dioxide. By this process, the temperature on the Earth’s surface would end up rising drastically.

In turn, higher temperatures would cause the melting of the polar ice caps and the subsequent rise in the sea level by tens of meters. Without life on the planet, the landmasses would suffer rapid erosion, and the mountainous regions would be seriously affected. After a long time, it is believed that the Earth’s temperature would rise to at least 290 degrees Celsius (554 °F). At this point, the oceans would end up boiling, leaving the planet completely uninhabitable. In a period of millions of years, a thick layer of clouds would cover the planet, aggravating the greenhouse effect and making the Earth look more like Venus.^[10] If this sounds crazy, scientists believe that Venus—the same planet that today is pretty much Hell—once had liquid water and a pleasant temperature on its surface.

1 When Do We Start To Die?

The aging process occurs, in broad terms, because the number of new cells in our bodies is not enough to replace the number of cells that are dying. So when too many cells have died or no longer function, and therefore our organs can no longer function properly, we finally die. In short, we do not begin to age and die as long as our body can maintain a balance in the vitality of its cells. And even in fewer words, death happens when aging becomes too much for us. But then, when do we begin to age?

Certain literary authors and prominent figures have said over time that we begin to die from the moment we are born. That may be a thought-provoking reflection (and a good phrase, of course), but science would say that is not entirely true. For a child to become an adult, countless billions or even trillions of body cells will have to be formed, multiplied, and replaced in the meantime. And during such time, the person does not show tangible signs of aging but becomes more capable both physically and mentally.

In fact, we now know that until around the age of 25, the new cells outnumber or at least equal the number of cells that die in the body.^[11] It is from the age of 25 that the cells begin to die faster than they can regenerate, thus causing our aging. In addition, studies show that at the age of 24, the brain also starts to lose cognitive speed. So aging, the process that eventually worsens to an unsustainable degree and causes our death, begins in our mid-twenties.

Economy student, passionate about Graphic Design, an avid enthusiast of the art of writing.

Ten curious questions you never thought to ask, and their answers:

Q: If a smoker goes in to a coma for long enough, do they wake up without a craving to smoke?
A: It takes around 8 days for nicotine to completely leave the bloodstream, taking with it the physical craving. If a person is in a coma for longer, they would not have cravings for nicotine when they wake up, though they may still feel the effects of the habitual nature of smoking.

Q: What is the temperature at the tip of a burning cigarette?
A: 1292 Fahrenheit (700 celsius) when the smoker inhales. It is cooler between puffs.

Q: When will the world end?
A: Unless a major catastrophe occurs beforehand, in 4.4 billion years the sun will cease to provide heat and light.

Q: If you fell out of a space ship and held your breath, how long would it take you to die?
A: Holding your breath in space is likely to damage your lungs. You have about 15 seconds before your pass out and die in Space, due to lack of Oxygen.

Q: What are the average wages of a porn star?
A: From 50 – 1,500 dollars per scene. Women generally earn more than men, and successful stars can earn six figure salaries.

Q: In which countries is prostitution legal?
A: Parts of Australia, Parts of the USA, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and a number of other nations. For a more complete list (in case you are planning your vacation) try this Wikipedia article.

Q: What country is Timbuktu in?
A: Timbuktu is in Mali, West Africa

Q: How much does a mail order bride cost?
A: $5,000 is about the overall going rate

Q: Who invented the drinks can?
A: Ermal Fraze of Dayton, Ohio, invented it in 1963. It us US Patent 3,349,949

Q: If you tied buttered toast to the back of a cat and dropped it from a height, what would happen?
A: The cat would land on its feet as they can twist in mid-air to ensure they land feet down. Toast only has mythical power to land butter side down.

The world is full of unexplained events and discoveries. People are, naturally, intrigued by unknown occurrences and controversial subjects. The current rise in technological advancement and DNA testing has raised questions in the field of archeology and world history. In many cases, these discoveries have been documented, but information surrounding the artifacts or historical event is hidden behind a wall of mystery. This article will be examining ten historical, theoretical and scientific questions that will make you think. The answers to most of these questions are supported by some scientific research, theory and historical documentation, while others are largely rhetorical. This list is longer than the usual but, as you will see, it really benefits from the extra information.

The question: What did Louis Keseberg do?

On April 14, 1846, a group of pioneers known as the Donner Party began their voyage to relocate from the U.S. state of Illinois to California. The trip covered 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) over the Great Plains, two mountain ranges and the deserts of the Great Basin. The voyage took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed because they decided to follow a new route called Hastings Cutoff. The group was told that Hastings Cutoff was a shortcut, but, in fact, it was a longer and more treacherous path. Ultimately, 87 people made the journey through the cutoff, which crossed Utah’s Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert. In all, 37 of the pioneers were members of the Reed and Donner families, while German emigrants Louis and Philippine Keseberg were also traveling with the group.

During the voyage, many of the pioneers documented their daily activities. Louis Keseberg was frequently mentioned in these journals. The connotation surrounding his activates was almost always negative. Louis Keseberg was routinely confronted for abusing his wife and children. Keseberg’s behavior was suspicious to the other travelers and he was regularly accused of theft, malingering and murder. In fact, the Donner Party journals are full of animosity, violent events and war.

After intense snow storms struck the Donner Party, it soon became evident that the group was not going to make it over the mountains before winter. To fend off the cold, all of the families built shelters in the area surrounding Truckee Lake and Alder Creek. By December 13, there was 8 feet (2.4 m) of snow. By the middle of January, most of the group’s food was gone and all that remained was dead human bodies. To stay alive, certain members of the Donner Party began to eat each other. Human bodies were labeled with the names of the deceased and the area became a “Cannibal Camp.”

On February 18, a seven-man rescue party scaled Frémont Pass and reached the Donner camps, which by this time were completely buried in snow. “The first two members of the relief party to enter the camp saw Trudeau carrying a human leg. When they made their presence known, he threw it into a hole with other dismembered bodies.” Twenty-three people were chosen and taken by the rescuers, but the pioneers were weak and some died on the long voyage to California. Dozens of people remained at the Truckee Lake and Alder Creek camp sites. One of these individuals was Louis Keseberg. Little is known about what Keseberg did during this time, but claims have been made that he became a predator.

The final rescue party didn’t reach the camp until April 21, 1847. When they arrived, Louis Keseberg was the only survivor. He was surrounded by dismembered bodies, gallons of blood, and had a fresh pot of human flesh over the fire. The men also found George Donner’s pistols, jewelry and $250 in gold in Keseberg’s cabin. The rescue group threatened to lynch Louis Keseberg, but he was ultimately taken to California. Upon return, Keseberg sued Ned Coffeemeyer for slander and for allegedly spreading stories about his deeds at the Donner camps. Keseberg won his case, but was awarded only $1 in damages. This was evidently all the judicial system felt his reputation was worth. During his lifetime, Louis Keseberg saw over ten of his children die in a number of different ways.

The question: Why Should You Avoid Grapefruit Juice When Taking Certain Drugs?

Many people don’t realize that grapefruit and grapefruit juice has the potential to negatively interact with many drugs and prescribed medications. This happens because the organic compounds in the grapefruit interfere with the intestinal enzyme cytochrome P450 isoform CYP3A4. This causes either an increasing or decreasing bioavailability. The interaction can be witnessed in a number of therapeutic, medical and recreational drugs. Grapefruit juice does not influence injected drugs, only oral substances that undergo first-pass metabolism by the enzyme.

Some of the most common examples of these drugs are a number of sedatives, slow release drugs, ingested marijuana, Codeine, Valium, Norvasc, Pravachol, Cordarone, Viagra, Zoloft, Allegra, and Lipitor. People should not take large amounts of grapefruit while ingesting these medications. When a physician prescribes a specific dose of a drug to a patient, they are working under the assumption that the person will absorb the drug at a specific rate. This calculation is based on the individual’s body type and weight. This information will inform the physician on how much medication to prescribe.

Grapefruit juice has an influence on the enzymes in your gastrointestinal tract that bring food and oral medications into your body. For this reason, grapefruit juice seems to affect both the rate of the drug coming into your body and how quickly it is removed. The end result can be an overdose or an uneven dosage for your size. Grapefruit extends the half life of some drugs, interfering with the body’s ability to break down the substance. The interaction caused by grapefruit compounds lasts for up to 24 hours and the reaction is greatest when the juice is ingested with the drug.

The question: When will Humans Be Pushed into the Uncanny Valley?

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. The theory holds that when robots, human clones, or computers have characteristics that are similar in appearance to that of humans, it causes a feeling of revulsion and anger. The feeling can be so overwhelming that the person has a need to assault and damage the artificial intelligence. The term has been traced to Ernst Jentsch’s concept of the uncanny, which is a psychological instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.

For example, if you owned a robot that was human like in appearance and intelligence, the simple fact that it was in your house, staring at you, would make you feel uneasy. Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the person due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time.

This often leads to an outright rejection of the object. The uncanny valley theory states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached and we enter the uncanny valley, beyond which the response quickly becomes that of a strong revulsion. Take a look at the picture of this realistic looking robot and tell me what emotional response you feel.

In many people, it will elicit a strange feeling and reaction. It has been hypothesized that these feelings are due to a biological response that is innate to all humans. As we enter the age of 3D advancement, design studios routinely consider the idea of the uncanny valley. Animation companies follow a set of rules when developing characters, making sure that they do not make them to realistic.

The question: Who is Behind the Superdollar?

The superdollar, or superbill, refers to a very high quality counterfeit United States $100 bill that has been circulating around the world. After investigations by the United States, Great Britain, China and other world powers, certain crime syndicates and federal governments have been suspected and implemented in creating the notes. The U.S. Government believes that the counterfeit one hundred-dollar bills are most likely being produced in North Korea. However, other possible sources include Iran or criminal gangs operating out of China. Some have even suggested the possibility of an American CIA involvement.

It has been determined that high ranking government officials or organized crime organizations are responsible for the notes because they are extremely high quality and practically intractable. In fact, they are called superdollars because the technology used to create the counterfeit bills is more advanced and superior to the original. The notes are said to be made with the highest quality ink and paper. They are designed to recreate the various security features of United States currency, such as the red and blue security fibers, the security thread, and the watermark. The notes are printed using the intaglio and typographic printing processes.

The United States has based its accusations against North Korea on the accounts of North Korean defectors, who allegedly described the operation, and on South Korean intelligence sources. Certain witnesses have claimed that the factory where the notes are printed is located in the city of Pyongsong, North Korea, and is part of Division 39. The United States government has suggested that the superbills are being distributed by North Korean diplomats and international crime syndicates. In 2004, The U.S. prohibited Americans from banking with Banco Delta Asia. Since that time, the United States has regularly threatened North Korea with sanctions over its alleged involvement with the counterfeit operation.

On February 2, 2006, banks in Japan voluntarily enforced sanctions on Banco Delta Asia identical to those imposed by the U.S. Some have estimated that 1 in 10,000 US$100 bills are counterfeit. The American $100 bill is the most counterfeited currency in the world. To fight the abuse, the U.S. government has developed a new $100 bill that is more secure. The new design has a complex printing process and holds a new 3D blue security stripe. The bills were initially set to be released in early 2011, but the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve suffered a major setback when 1.1 billion new one hundred-dollar bills were printed with a flaw. The release of the new $100 bill has been pushed back until the printing problem can be fixed.

The question: Did Miniature Humans Populate Earth 12,000 Years Ago?

In 2003, a team of Australian-Indonesian archaeologists made a remarkable discovery in Liang Bua Cave, which is located on the Island of Flores, in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The group was searching for evidence of the original human migration when they discovered a collection of unusual hominoid bones and artifacts. Partial skeletons of nine individuals were unearthed, including one complete cranium. These remains have been the subject of intense research and debate as they appear to have human features, but are miniature in size.

This has caused some scientists to claim that the bones represent a species distinct from modern humans. The new species has been labeled Homo floresiensis (nicknamed Hobbit). The hominoid is noted for its small body and brain size and for its relatively recent survival. Recovered alongside the skeletal remains were stone tools from archaeological horizons ranging from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago. Some of the tools are sophisticated stone implements. The artifacts are all of the size considered appropriate for a 1-meter-tall human population.

Archaeologist Mike Morwood and his colleagues have proposed that a variety of features, both primitive and derived, identify these bones as belonging to a new species. A study of the bones and joints of the arm, shoulder and lower limbs concluded that H. floresiensis was more similar to early humans and apes than modern humans. Some less obvious features that might distinguish H. floresiensis from modern Homo sapiens is the form of the teeth, and the lesser angle in the head of the humerus (upper arm bone). Each of these distinguishing examples has been heavily scrutinized by certain members of the scientific community.

Aside from a smaller body size, the overall specimen seems to resemble Homo erectus. Additional features used to argue for the discovery of a new population of previously unidentified hominids include the absence of a chin, the relatively low twist of the arm bones, and the thickness of the creature’s leg bones. The feet of H. floresiensis are unusually flat in relation to the rest of the body. As a result, when walking, the creature would have to bend its knees further back than modern people do. For this reason, it was not able to move very fast.

The species toes have an unusual shape and the big toe is very short. Local geology suggests that a volcanic eruption on the Island of Flores approximately 12,000 years ago could have been responsible for the demise of H. floresiensis, along with other local fauna, including the elephant species Stegodon. In early December of 2004, paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob removed most of the Hobbit remains from their repository. The priceless artifacts were damaged upon return. The only pelvis was smashed, ultimately destroying details that reveal body shape, gait and evolutionary history.

The question: Why are Humans Creating and Releasing Genetically Modified Mosquitoes?

Operation Drop Kick was a 1956 U.S. entomological warfare field testing program that modified and deployed the yellow fever mosquito. The goal of the project was to use the mosquito to carry and release a biological warfare agent. The concept was simply to drop a large collection of diseased mosquitoes over a populated area. Operation Drop Kick included a 1956 test in Savannah, Georgia, where uninfected mosquitoes were released in a residential neighborhood, and another 1956 test in Avon Park, Florida, where 600,000 diseased mosquitoes were released on the city.

Between the years 1956-1957, several U.S. Army biological warfare experiments were conducted in the city of Avon Park. In the experiments, Army biological weapon researchers released millions of mosquitoes on the town in order to see if the insects would spread yellow fever and dengue fever. The residents of Avon Park were not notified of the deadly experiments. Hundreds of residents contracted a wide array of illnesses, including fevers, respiratory problems, stillbirths, encephalitis and typhoid. Army researchers pretended to be public health workers, so that they could photograph and perform medical tests on the victims. Several people died as a result of the program.

The experiments in Avon Park were concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, in areas that were predominantly black with newly constructed housing projects. In 1978, a Pentagon document titled, Biological Warfare: Secret Testing & Volunteers revealed that similar experiments were conducted in Key West, Florida. Many people have raised the question of why the U.S. government was playing around with the Dengue fever virus. Dengue fever is an infectious disease that causes a number of symptoms, including severe headaches, a petechial rash and muscle and joint pains. In a small proportion the disease progresses to life-threatening complications. Since the middle of the 1950s, the rates of Dengue fever infection have increased dramatically, with approximately 50-100 million people being infected yearly. The disease has become a global epidemic in more than 110 countries with 2.5 billion people living in areas where it is prevalent.

In 2009, the British biotechnology giant Oxitec announced that they had developed a genetically-modified (GM) mosquito (OX513A) that, apart from a specific chemical antibiotic, is unable to successfully repopulate. After intense media scrutiny, the company gave a statement which indicated that the GM mosquitoes may help fight the spread of dengue fever by reducing or eliminating the wild mosquito population. In 2009, Oxitec released millions of the OX513A test mosquitoes over the Cayman Islands. Many people have questioned the decision to fight the spread of Dengue fever by using more infected mosquitoes. Nobody knows for sure what will happen when the new GM mosquitoes interact with animals and human life, or how the mosquitoes altered genes will disrupt the environment.

The question: How did David Berg Convince Women that Flirty Fishing was Acceptable?

In 1968, a man named David Berg developed a new religious movement named the Children of God. The group devoted their time to spreading the message of Jesus’ love and salvation. With the enforcement of strict regulations, David Berg preached about the de-Christianization and decay of moral values in Western society. He viewed the trends towards a New World Order as setting the stage for the rise of the Antichrist. Remarkably, Berg lived in seclusion, communicating with his followers and the public via nearly 3,000 Mo Letters.

In the 1970s, the Children of God began to expand to all areas of the world. David Berg discussed a message of salvation, apocalypticism, and spiritual revolution against the outside world, which the members called the System. The group’s liberal stance on sexuality led to concerns and investigations regarding child abuse. However, the most publicized practice organized by David Berg and the Children of God was named Flirty Fishing. Flirty Fishing is a form of religious prostitution that was practiced by the Children of God from 1974-1987. The term refers to Matthew 4:19 from the New Testament, in which Jesus tells two fishermen that he will make them “fishers of men.”

Cult leader David Berg extrapolated from this that women in his movement should be flirty fishers, with the targeted men being called “fish.” The cult published several documents with instructions for young women. Flirty Fishing was defined as using sex appeal for proselytizing. If masturbation, oral, or penetrative sex ensued, this was termed as “loving sexually” and counted as more brownie points within the group. The Children of God claimed that the purpose of Flirty Fishing was for women to show God’s love to men, to win converts for the group, and to garner material and financial support.

The cult members regularly lived in communes, traveled around the world and spent their time proselytizing rather than earning a regular income. For this reason the financial aspect of Flirty Fishing soon became dominant. The cult used the practice to curry favors with local men of influence such as business men, politicians or police. Women who objected to being what the cult itself blatantly described as “God’s whores” or “hookers for Jesus” were admonished not to “let self and pride enter in.” They were continually reminded that their body didn’t really belong to them as according to 1 Corinthians 6:19–20. Many of the Flirty Fishers had boyfriends or were married, or had children.

In family publications, Flirty Fishers and Escort Services frequently reported that they found their work hard, dangerous and exhausting. The financial benefit of Flirty Fishing quickly led to a regular Escort Servicing (ESing) operation within the cult. The Children of God practiced Flirty Fishing and Escort Servicing from 1974 until 1987, when it was officially abandoned, partially because of the AIDS epidemic. During this time, the women were expected to keep an exact record of their “fruits.” A 1988 statistic showed that more than 223,000 men had been “fished.” The cult generally discouraged birth control and for this reason many of the ladies became pregnant. Among the Children of God organization (today’s Family International), the unwed children were labeled Jesus babies.

The question: Who Died at Skeleton Lake?

One of the greatest mysteries of the Himalayas is a small glacial lake named Roopkund. The lake is located in the Uttarakhand state of India, at an altitude of about 5,029 meters (16,499 feet). The area surrounding the lake is completely uninhabited and the water is a five day treacherous hike from civilization. In 1942, Roopkund gained the name Skeleton Lake when over five hundred human skulls, bones and artifacts were discovered surrounding and inside the ice. These human bones have baffled scientists for decades because historians don’t understand who these people were or what they were doing so high in the mountains. Roopkund was never a historically significant region and no traces of any trade routes to Tibet have been found.

The documentary Skeleton Lake, made by the National Geographic Channel, claimed that Roopkund was the venue for the Garhwali religious festival called Nanda Jaat yatra, which is held every 12 years, but facts supporting this claim are limited. It was originally believed by specialists that the people died from an epidemic, landslide or blizzard, but after an archaeological team examined the site in 2004, it was determined that the skulls contained severe head trauma. Based on this evidence it has been hypothesized that the people died from a sudden hailstorm. It has been suggested that the hailstones were as large as tennis balls, and with no shelter in the open Himalayas, all of the people perished in the storm.

Probably the most remarkable discovery came after scientists conducted DNA tests on the bones, which proved to have a rich source of DNA material. The bodies were dated to AD 850 with a possible mistake up to 30 years. This date was 600 years earlier than initially reported. Remarkably, the experts have found that the dead individuals belonged to two different teams. One team is marked by a shorter stature of the skeletons, while the other human bones are significantly taller. The recorded DNA genetic mutations have caught the attention of the scientific community. It remains unclear exactly who these people were? What they looked like or why they were traveling in this remote area of the Himalayas?

The question: How many Humans were Left on Earth after the Toba Supereruption?

Lake Toba is the largest volcanic lake in the world. It is located in the middle of the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, with a surface elevation of about 900 meters (2,953 ft). Lake Toba is the site of a supervolcanic eruption that occurred 69,000-77,000 years ago. The event was followed by a massive climate change on Earth. The eruption is believed to have had a VEI intensity of 8, and is thought to be the largest explosive eruption anywhere on Earth in the last 25 million years. The eruption took place in Indonesia, but it deposited an ash layer approximately 15 centimeters thick over the entirety of South Asia.

Since the discovery of the catastrophe, a wide range of theories have been studied and proposed hypothesizing on how large the explosion was and how it impacted the human population on Earth. The Toba catastrophe theory is an idea that was developed and has been supported by various anthropologists and archeologists. The theory suggests that the Lake Toba volcanic eruption had a massive global consequence on Earth, killing almost all humans and creating a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India. The theory holds that the Lake Toba supervolcanic event plunged the planet into a 6-to-10-year volcanic winter, which resulted in the world’s human population being reduced to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a noticeable effect in human evolution.

It has been argued that the Toba eruption produced not only a catastrophic volcanic winter but also an additional 1,000 year cooling episode. The Toba event is the most closely studied supereruption in history. In 1993, science journalist Ann Gibbons first suggested a link between the eruption and a bottleneck in human evolution. According to the bottleneck theory, genetic evidence suggests that all humans alive today, despite an apparent variety, are descended from a very small population, perhaps between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs about 70,000 years ago. The theory suggests that the volcanic eruption isolated and eliminated entire groups of people, causing worldwide vegetation destruction and severe drought in the tropical rainforest belt.

The Lake Toba supereruption may have caused modern human races to differentiate abruptly only 70,000 years ago, rather than gradually over one million years. However, this theory is largely debated in the world of archeology. Modern research conducted by archaeologist Michael Petraglia and other scientists has cast major doubt on the Toba catastrophic theory. We do understand that a major human migration occurred during this time in history. Recent analyses of mitochondrial DNA have set the estimate for the migration from Africa at 60,000–70,000 years ago, which is in line with the dating of the Toba eruption. During the subsequent tens of thousands of years, the descendants of these migrants populated Australia, East Asia, Europe and, finally, the Americas.

The question: How would your Life be Different if Adolf Hitler Died in 1936?

The Second World War changed the landscape of human life on Earth. In January of 1933, the ailing German leader Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany. Paul von Hindenburg passed various legislative acts that suspended German civil liberties and gave Hitler administrative control over the entire country. In 1933, the era of Nazi Germany began and Hitler laid out plans for world conquest. Adolf Hitler was a master of deception and media propaganda. In 1934, he began to display the message “One people, One Germany, One Führer.” Hitler made sure to trick foreign powers into thinking that Germany was a safe place to live. In fact, Adolf Hitler was named the U.S. Time Magazine person of the year in 1938.

During this time in German history, Adolf Hitler took control over the youth. He passed laws that forced German teachers to use Nazi propaganda. German children were taught to despise Jewish people and to show all loyalty to the Third Reich. He organized a program called Hitler’s Youth, which recruited all kids over the age of nine years. Between the years 1936-1938, over 8 million German children took part in Hitler’s Youth oath of allegiance. In 1935, Hitler passed the first laws against the Jewish population. He ordered that all Jewish people were no longer German citizens. Marriage and sexual intercourse between Germans and Jews was outlawed. At this time, Hitler pushed thousands of white Arian German women into pregnancy. He demanded that teenage girls attend Nuremberg rally camps, where they had sexual intercourse with boys and became pregnant. In 1936, nine hundred girls came home from the Nuremberg rally pregnant. Unwed mothers were knows as the Führer’s brides.

In 1938, Hitler annexed Austria under Nazi rule. This was accomplished because Mussolini’s Fascist Italy made an alliance with the Third Reich and no longer was protecting Austria. Many people welcomed Hitler into Austria, but within days of the move, 70,000 Austrians were sent to concentration camps. During the Second World War German armies occupied most of Europe. Nazi forces defeated France, took Norway, invaded Yugoslavia and Greece and occupied much of the European portion of the Soviet Union. Germany also forged alliances with Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and, later, Finland, and collaborated with individuals in several other nations.

Hitler’s decision to launch Operation Barbarossa and attack the Soviet Union turned the tide of war. Had Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin remained in alliance how would your life be different today? Would the United States nuclear technology have been used in the European Theatre of World War II? How much influence could one man, Adolf Hitler, really have on the rise of the Third Reich in Germany? All of these questions should be considered when examining your ancestry and this dark time in human history.

We know that science doesn’t have the answers to everything, but seeing that it’s 2014 and the future is almost here, there are some questions we really expected it to have answered by now.

10How Does Turbulence Work?

Everyone has gone through a flight where the pilot asks you to tighten your seat belts because of excessive turbulence, but even though it is so important to things like air safety, we just have no idea how it works. It has perplexed scientists to such an extent that Einstein once famously said, “Before I die, I hope someone will clarify quantum physics for me. After I die, I hope God will explain turbulence to me.”

The problem is aggravated by the fact that wherever the need to study turbulence arises—like in jet propulsion—chemical reactions take place alongside the high pressure and extreme conditions, which makes it difficult for researchers to study the exact conditions needed to produce turbulence. If somehow we could figure it out, it could be applied to a variety of uses since turbulence occurs everywhere in nature. Maybe one day we’d even be able to predict hurricanes or other natural disasters with accuracy, thus minimizing the damage and finally scoring one over nature.

9Why Do Cats Purr?

We’ve shown before that cats don’t always purr when they’re happy, but the mystery goes way deeper than that. There is no purring organ in the throat of a cat, and even though extensive research has been done on the function itself, the exact origin of the function in the anatomy of cats is still unknown.

It’s theorized that they might do it by the constriction and dilation of the larynx, but no evidence has ever been provided to prove or disprove that theory. It was, however, found that the frequency of a cat’s purr falls somewhere in the range required to accelerate bone regeneration and healing, so it might just be a healing superpower that we had no idea even existed in the animal kingdom. That might also explain why we take it to be a happy sound, as the frequency is not just beneficial for the cat—it tends to make us happier as well.

8What Causes Hypnic Jerks?

Often when we are about to fall asleep, we experience a kind of a falling sensation which causes us to wake up with a start. It happens to almost everybody, and the sensation is known as a hypnic jerk. It also sometimes happens when you tilt the chair you’re sitting on too far—somehow you can sense when you’re about to fall, and you wake up with a hypnic jerk. We really have no idea what causes them or whether they serve any modern purpose, but science has come up with some interesting theories.

One hypothesis suggests that our bodies developed this mechanism when we used to sleep on branches or high ground, and it was meant to help us avoid a fall. But there is no evidence to support it, and humans rarely slept on trees or precarious cliffs as a matter of habit. Other theories suggest that it happens because of the slowing down of the body’s processes when you fall asleep, but again, there are no scientific studies to support that claim either.

7How Exactly Do Magnets Work?

Magnetism is a widely observed phenomenon in our universe, but a lot of things about it remain unexplained. For example, why do particles charged with electricity create a magnetic field strong enough to physically move things from far away? And when they do, why exactly do they align themselves to two poles, north and south?

Explanations range from “it’s just one of those things” to particle movement at the quantum level, and MIT even has a whole laboratory dedicated to research on nothing but magnetism. We know that it’s happening, and we have a good idea of what exactly is happening, too—the particles align themselves in a way that adds up their charge in one direction, but it’s not very clear as to why the particles emit a magnetic field to start with. The fact that the Earth’s magnetic field is not well understood either further restricts our ability to understand magnetism.

6Why Do Giraffes Have Long Necks?

Many may believe that only giraffes with long necks survived evolution because they had an advantage over the other, short-necked ones, but that’s not really true. Longer necks provide no particular advantage to giraffes because they care more about the type of leaf than the height at which it’s situated. If it’s confusing to you, science doesn’t have much of a clue either. There’s just no consensus on the exact conditions that would have caused long necks to be selected positively among giraffes.

One theory is that the giraffes developed long necks as a mating trait—in other words, it helped with the ladies—but there’s not much evidence to support that hypothesis. On the contrary, big, heavy necks, no matter how good they look, would be a definite disadvantage in the wild and are sure to die out at some point in the future. Another theory says that they had to develop long necks because of long legs, but again, that theory is based less on factual evidence and more on a scientist looking at a giraffe and guessing.

5Why Do Birds Migrate?

We know that birds migrate over really long distances every year to lay eggs or to escape harsh winters. What we don’t know is how they do it at all. The migration of birds remains one of the most mysterious animal behaviors known to science, and even though they’ve been trying hard to solve it for a long time, answers haven’t been easy to come by.

Consider this: Cuckoos migrate and lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, then just fly away to their own business. When the young ones grow up, they make their way to their ancestral lands without any help whatsoever. Scientists do believe that they are able to use a variety of compasses based on the stars and the Earth’s magnetic field, but a compass can only guide you—it can’t tell you the coordinates of a location you should have no idea about. Clearly, cuckoos are one species you don’t want to mess with.

4What Causes Gravity?

Newton pioneered the study of gravity over 350 years ago, and you’d think that we’d have it all figured out by now. But the more we’ve progressed in our knowledge of the world, the more baffling gravity has become for researchers. For starters, we know the causing particle for each of the four fundamental forces of the universe—except gravity. A graviton is believed to be that particle, but we’re pretty far from actually finding it.

Another thing about gravity is that it is the weakest of all the other fundamental forces, yet if we look around the world, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Gravity keeps galaxies together, and it is about 10⁴⁰ times weaker than the electromagnetic force. The fact that it’s so weak makes it all the more difficult to study it in the lab.

3How Do We Store And Retrieve Memories?

Science has come a long way toward understanding how our bodies work, but memories are still one of the most perplexing problems of the human anatomy. We just have no idea exactly what parts of the brain are involved in the storage of our memories, though we do know that a lot of areas of the brain are involved in the process. Even more confusing than memory storage is memory retrieval. Scientists have been looking into how our brains trace a particular memory from our memory bank since at least the ’20s, but it’s still not clear how we do it.

What we do know for sure is that it has something to do with neurons and the connections between them. When we see something that triggers a memory to be traced, many parts of the brain interact with each other simultaneously to make us remember it. Beyond that, though, the whole thing is a mystery.

2Why Do Women Go Through Menopause?

Menopause defies all the rules of evolution. The ability to reproduce in the animal kingdom ensures that the species are able to pass on their superior genes, but in humans, something weird happens. Women decisively lose their ability to pass on their lineage at the age of about 45–50, and science just doesn’t have any idea why. From an evolutionary perspective, it is always harmful for a species to completely give up their ability to reproduce, as survival by natural selection ceases to take place once that happens.

One explanation is the grandmother hypothesis, which says that after a point, women should spend more time caring for their grandchildren than their children, but the benefits of that are far inferior to the benefits of giving birth to your own children. It’s also not abundantly found in the animal kingdom. Apart from humans, only two species of whale completely stop breeding at a certain age and go on to live for a significant amount of time. Other animals that experience deteriorating sexual abilities, however, often die out soon after.

1What Are Dreams?

Dreaming is one thing that’s common to us all. It might differ in the way it happens for some of us, but it’s definitely a resident feature of all of our brains. You’d think that science would be able to figure out why our brains decide to go in LSD mode every night, but sadly, there are no definite answers as to what exactly dreams are. Some people believe that they’re just random images which serve no purpose, while others believe that they carry a deeper meaning, though we’re all pretty much guessing here.

Some theories suggest that dreams are a manifestation of things we’d rather not think about during the day, like sexual fantasies, though many modern scientists don’t agree with that. What they do agree with, however, is that dreams are most likely symbolic of something deep in our psyche, though no one can decisively say what. The jury is divided on whether they serve any purpose at all, and it looks like it’s going to take a long time for us to come to a universally accepted answer.

Check out Himanshu’s stuff over at Cracked or say hi to him on Twitter.

Better Call Saul finished its six-season run earlier this year, making its mark as one of the few TV prequel shows to be considered as good as (or better than) the parent show. Whereas Breaking Bad was a thrill ride of non-stop action, cliffhangers, and plot twists, Better Call Saul was one of the finest character dramas of its era. Not that Better Call Saul didn’t occasionally ratchet up the tension to Breaking Bad levels, but it was mostly lauded for its slow and contemplative pace that allowed for details of the Breaking Bad universe to be painted in.

Even with all the background and character development we saw over 14 years of Breaking Bad, its sequel movie El Camino, and Better Call Saul, there are still some things we’ve been left to wonder about. Here are 10 of those plot points that weren’t explained, leaving the viewer free to theorize about what happened.

A couple of notes before we get started. Bob Odenkirk’s character will be referred to as both Jimmy and Saul, depending on the persona he was using at the time. And spoiler warning—if you’re not caught up on the Breaking Bad universe, major spoilers are to follow.

Related: Top 10 Real-Life Crimes Inspired by the Hit Show Breaking Bad

10 What Happened in Gus Fring’s Past?

Introduced as the ultimate supervillain in Breaking Bad, Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) was at first a business partner to Walter White (Bryan Cranston) but later his mortal enemy. Once Gus was done with Walt, he expressed no qualms about eliminating him, leading to a cat-and-mouse game that left Walt victorious. One of Better Call Saul’s greatest accomplishments was humanizing Gus and getting the audience to root for him in his war against the Salamanca family. But even though we got to know Gus a lot better in the prequel, his past in his home country of Chile is still a major mystery.

The lack of information about Gus’s past was first established in Breaking Bad when the DEA brought him in for questioning. Agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) questions Gus why there’s no record of his existence before the mid-1980s. Gus plays that off as a side effect of Chile being war-torn and in disarray during the Pinochet regime, but Hank remains suspicious. We later find out that Gus fought in that war with Peter Schuler, the German man who is the head of the fast food division of Madrigal (and that the two use Madrigal resources to distribute meth worldwide). A scene in the Better Call Saul episode “JMM” made clear they faced death together in the war, and making it out alive together forged a lifelong bond.

Fans theorize that growing up in poverty (which Gus did confirm in a few lines of dialogue) and the war turned Gus into the calculating criminal mastermind we came to know. But as far as details, we know as much as the DEA.^[1]

9 What Happened to the Kettlemans?

Appearing in the very first episode, white-collar criminals Craig and Betsy Kettleman (Jeremy Shamos and Julie Ann Emery) were major players in the first season of Better Call Saul. Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), the lawyer later to be known as Saul Goodman, hopes to break away from the low pay of public defender work and start his own practice by convincing the Kettlemans to retain him. In the end, Betsy declines because Jimmy seems like the type of lawyer “that guilty people hire.” This line, and its effect on Jimmy’s self-esteem, set in motion the series of events that leads to Saul Goodman becoming the most notorious “criminal lawyer” in America.

Given their importance to the birth of the Saul Goodman alter ego, fans were thrilled to see the Kettlemans return early in the final season. After Craig has served his prison sentence for embezzlement, he and Betsy are now running a tax filing service (and scamming seniors out of their tax refunds). One of the most striking things about their place of business is the giant Statue of Liberty inflatable on top of the building, which would later find a home at the law office of Saul Goodman and Associates.

So, how did Saul acquire the Statue of Liberty? Were the Kettlemans busted again for their financial crimes, leaving the inflatable up for sale? Or did Saul take them on as clients to keep them from getting caught and take Lady Liberty as payment? Something happened, but we’ll have to guess just what it was.^[2]

8 How Did Saul Acquire His Cadillac?

With vanity license plates reading LWYRUP, Saul’s white Cadillac was one of the props most closely associated with him. For the majority of Better Call Saul, Jimmy drives a decidedly less-glamorous and run-down Suzuki Esteem. In the classic season 5 episode “Bagman,” Jimmy goes on a dangerous trip into the desert in the Esteem to collect $7 million of cartel money so that Lalo Salamanca can be bailed out of jail. The Esteem never makes it out of the desert. In the same episode, at the Salamance headquarters, a blood-stained white Cadillac is cleaned up.

It seems reasonable to assume this Cadillac will eventually become Saul’s, perhaps as payment for representing the cartel in court at some point. However, Better Call Saul never filled in any more details on this. The first time we see the Cadillac with the LWYRUP plates is a scene set after the events of Breaking Bad when the FBI seizes the car.^[3]

7 How Is Skyler and Marie’s Relationship These Days?

A lot of the tension in Breaking Bad came from the fact that Walt was DEA agent Hank’s brother-in-law, with Hank spending much of the series just about to discover that Walt was the meth kingpin he was looking for. They were related by way of being married to sisters: Skyler (Walt’s wife) and Marie (Hank’s wife). The relationship was always a bit fraught between the sisters, with a sibling rivalry ongoing through much of the series.

In the Breaking Bad finale, Walt gives Skyler the GPS coordinates where the bodies of Hank and his work partner, fellow agent Steve Gomez, can be found. Walt encourages Skyler to use the information to secure a deal that will absolve her of her prosecution for her part in Walt’s crimes. Near the end of Better Call Saul, Saul’s legal assistant, Francesca, mentions that Skyler did indeed get her deal.

So one is left to wonder just how well Marie took hearing the news of this deal. In the final episode of Better Call Saul, we see that Marie was not happy that federal prosecutors were willing to negotiate a deal with Saul. One can only imagine how she felt about her sister getting a deal by trading the location of her dead husband.^[4]

6 Does Kim Ever Return to Practicing Law?

The breakout performance in Better Call Saul was by Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler, the smart and savvy lawyer who starts the series as Jimmy’s friend and later girlfriend, wife, and finally, ex-wife. While spending much of the early run of the show as the moral counterpoint to Jimmy’s cutting corners and skirting the boundaries of the law, Kim eventually finds herself wrapped up in the scams and misdeeds that gave birth to the Saul Goodman persona.

That is, until someone gets hurt. After Kim and Jimmy work a convoluted scheme to discredit their colleague Howard Hamlin, Howard ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time and is murdered. Unable to cope with this guilt, Kim gives up being a lawyer and breaks up with Jimmy.

Given Kim’s passion for the law and how good she was at being a lawyer, fans naturally rooted for her to return to practice. But by the end of the show, the closest she came was volunteering at a legal aid center. Still, it’s hard to believe that she wouldn’t try to join the bar again at some point.^[5]

5 Will Howard’s Wife Pursue Legal Action?

As part of Kim’s atonement for Howard’s death—which saw her giving up her law license—she also confessed to Howard’s wife, Cheryl. This included the schemes she and Jimmy perpetrated to sully Howard’s reputation and how Lalo shot and killed Howard. While confession is indeed good for the soul, Cheryl accurately pointed out that her confession opened the door for Kim to be held legally liable for her misdeeds.

But will she actually pursue legal action? The last we hear is in the final episode, when Saul’s standby counsel, Bill Oakley, informs him that word on the street in Albuquerque is that Cheryl is looking for a good lawyer. So maybe we’re meant to think Kim will be taken to court. But whether this does happen, or if there will be any consequences for Kim, is left to our imagination.^[6]

4 Does Jesse Stay on Track in Alaska?

While the entirety of the Breaking Bad universe could be described as a neo-Western set in modern times, that description especially applies to the sequel movie El Camino. The film follows Walt’s old meth-cooking partner, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), as he tries to avoid his enemies and law enforcement while raising enough money to pay identity broker Ed (Robert Forster) to set him up with a new life in Alaska. It’s a real “loner hero on the run in the American West” story like many classic Westerns.

In the end, Jesse is successful, and Ed gets him to Alaska. But we have to wonder, what’s next? It’s entirely conceivable that Jesse will do his best to avoid breaking the law and make the most of his new life. But at the same time, the Better Call Saul scenes set post-Breaking Bad show us that living under a new identity in a new place without falling into old habits can be hard. Given Jesse’s history of drug abuse, we hope he can stay on track, but we do wonder.^[7]

3 What Happens to the Albuquerque Criminal Underworld?

Across two TV series and a sequel movie, we really became acquainted with the criminal underworld in Albuquerque. When we were introduced to Saul Goodman and his PI, Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks), in Breaking Bad, it was clear that they had all the connections. Better Call Saul gave us an interesting backstory here, showing that Mike first made a lot of those connections via the veterinarian Dr. Caldera. In the final season, Dr. Caldera lets Jimmy know he will retire from his post as an underworld organizer, and his “little black book” full of criminal contacts is up for sale.

This is the same little black book that we see Saul use in Breaking Bad, so we know he did acquire it from Dr. Caldera at some point. And in Better Call Saul, we find out that the FBI tossed the book into a box when they raided Saul’s house and seized his property. With Dr. Caledera, Saul, Mike, and most of the other criminal elements we got to know all gone by the end of the Breaking Bad timeline, this leaves an opening for a new criminal ringleader. But as to who that could be, any guess is as good as another.^[8]

2 What Became of Lyle?

Gus Fring’s front for his meth empire was his chain of chicken restaurants, Los Pollos Hermanos. And he had no more loyal employee than Lyle. When Gus was called out of work to handle more unsavory business, he was always sure to turn over running the store to Lyle. And unfortunately for Lyle, this also meant that Gus would occasionally take out his frustrations on his most loyal employee.

Lyle never seemed to mind, his dedication to Los Pollos Hermanos and Gus never wavering. So one has to wonder… after Gus died and the chicken franchise was no more, how did Lyle recover? Did he go work fast food somewhere else? Was he even able to recover from the loss of Gus? We’ll truly never know.^[9]

1 How Did Jimmy Get Chuck’s Time Machine Book?

The final episode of Better Call Saul heavily featured a time machine motif. Jimmy/Saul is seen having conversations in flashbacks with three of the most important associates in his life, all discussing regrets and what they would do if they could go back in time. His conversations with Mike and Walt directly pose the time machine question; his talk with his brother Chuck (Michael McKean) dances around the topic until we see Chuck is reading a copy of H.G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine.

Earlier in season 6, we see that Jimmy had this exact same copy at the apartment he shared with Kim. This leads us to wonder how he acquired it since Chuck died in a fire that destroyed the entirety of his house. So just how was Jimmy able to retrieve The Time Machine book? He clearly hung onto it to remember Chuck, but how did the book survive the fire? Did Jimmy actually have a time machine all along and go back to get the book? It’s just another of those details that we’ll never have an answer for.^[10]

The Harry Potter universe captured the imaginations of children and adults around the world, and continues to do so with spin-off material. The idea of a world where magical people not only exist under our feet, but use their own way of doing things and eschew most modern technology is certainly a novel idea. However, it also raises a lot of interesting questions about the world itself due to the way they interact with magic and technology, and there are some fascinating unanswered questions around many of the characters as well. 

10. Would A Gun Be Something Lord Voldemort And Other Wizards Are Prepared For? 

This is something that has bugged many fans for some time, and is a question that may never be entirely put to rest. We all know that Voldemort hates technology of all kinds, despises Muggles, and thinks them stupid and incapable. However, the question is: how much he has researched how to protect himself, even though he thinks them that idiotic? In Prisoner of Azkaban, a man named Sirius Black escapes, and an ad sent out to the Muggles calls a wand a “gun.” Later on in the book, someone from a wizarding family refers to a gun as “a kind of metal wand Muggles use to kill each other.” In other words, he has absolutely zero clue how it works. 

Now, this leads people to wonder if Voldemort, or for that matter any wizard of consequence, is prepared for this kind of threat. A bullet fires very quickly, so many people would argue even a prodigious wizard would hardly even be able to get off a nonverbal spell with a quick hand gesture in time. However, if Voldemort knew about the threat properly, he may have some kind of spell that keeps him constantly shielded from such Muggle threats. It’s also possible he simply underestimates Muggles and does not imagine ever being in a situation where he could be threatened by them, or their technology. 

9. Did Dumbledore Hide His Homsexuality Because It Was A Stigma, Or For Other Reasons? 

In an interview after the seventh book had already been published, J.K. Rowling shocked much of the world by telling the audience that the wizard who wore high-heeled boots and flamboyant purple robes was gay. Many parents were upset because it challenged their personal views, and others were simply upset because they felt she was changing a character after the fact. Now, the truth is that Rowling always planned for him to be gay — we know now that he was in love with the dark wizard Grindelwald. 

However, you don’t need that as evidence to know this was not a retcon. All of the hints were already there long ago, and many of the more well-read fans were not at all surprised. The question many fans had was why Dumbledore seemed to keep it a secret in the books. Now, some might suggest it simply wasn’t brought up, but Dumbledore seems to take flirtatious comments from women occasionally in the books, and he tries to politely deflect without being too flirty back. This would suggest these women were not aware. Now, the question is whether wizards have an issue with homosexuality, or perhaps Dumbledore just hid it because he didn’t want anyone to ever realize his romantic connection to Grindelwald.

8. Did Professor Umbridge, Being Evil In Every Other Way, Also Torture Her Cats? 

Professor Umbridge is one of the most evil characters introduced in the stories. She starts out abusing schoolchildren and making one of them repeatedly scar his hand by writing in his own blood, and eventually graduates to a point in the series where she is in charge of an inquisition to root out people who are not pureblood wizards, and have their souls sucked out by dementors. She takes absolute joy in this job, and has a dark and vicious glee in her voice as she repeatedly mocks people and claims they “are not really wizards” and never have been, because they are not pureblood. At the end of the series, she was apparently tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, but some people may wonder more about the fate of her cats. 

In the Harry Potter stories, we learn that Umbridge has a lot of cat pictures, and likes to display them regularly. This is a woman who likes to keep her surroundings absolutely pristine, and has a nasty personality that can be both passive aggressive — and just plain aggressive — depending on her mood and the situation. It’s hard to imagine such a woman being kind to animals, or putting up with any mess they might make. And according to secondary sources Umbridge hated the cleanup and mess. However, if she learned to hate the mess, did she at one time try to care for live cats? And what kind of horrible person would she have been to a live animal? 

7. Were The Dursleys Evil Because Of The Piece Of Voldemort Inside Harry? 

Some people have pointed out that, in the final book, Ron got upset and awful because he was wearing a horcrux, and that even Hermione and Harry got more irritable while it was on them for an extended period of time. We also know that Harry himself was a horcrux. This has brought some people to speculate that the Dursleys were so evil, and so mean, because Harry — being a horcrux — brought out the worst in them. 

To its detriment, the house was supposed to be well defended magically to protect Harry, so it is hard to imagine how much even seeping influence his presence could have over time. It also begs the question of how the horcrux didn’t turn Harry’s dorm-mates evil or nasty, over time, simply by being around him. In support, though, it is possible it just amplifies existing traits. If Harry’s roommates were normal people it would have no undue influence on them; however, Ron — in a state of heavy resentment while wearing one regularly — could not take the pressure. And the Dursleys were already said to be pretty nasty people, but it does seem plausible that Voldemort’s presence within Harry could have helped amplify their already evil traits. 

6. Should Hermione Have Really Gone With Ron, Harry, Or Someone Else Entirely? 

Not long ago, J.K. Rowling both shocked the world and made a lot of people facepalm by suggesting that Hermione should not have wound up with Ron because she would simply never be happy longterm with him, and should have gone with Harry instead. Now, Rowling is being a little silly here because, well… she already wrote it one way. And also, if Harry goes with Hermione this kind of leaves Ginny out in the cold. Even sillier, it was Rowling herself who used to adamantly be against all of the ‘shippers who kept claiming it should really be Harry and Hermione up until the end. 

Now, she claims she wants to change the outcome of her own story, but just like Rowling herself not being happy with the ending, perhaps the real answer here is that Hermione would not have been truly happy with either of them, or perhaps anyone in the books. Hermione likes being around people to an extent, and she likes having friends and she can talk up a storm, but overall she is a loner and a bookish type. She likes to study, learn and succeed on her own and she is incredibly invigorated by working alone. Such an introverted person, who would also run circles around most people in the room in terms of intelligence, would likely find it difficult to really get along with anyone long term as a partner. Perhaps somewhere deep down, Rowling knows this, because there are a lot of similarities between her and Hermione. 

5. Can Anything Ever Really Redeem Severus Snape For Being So Unapologetically Evil? 

Some people like to romanticize Severus Snape, partly because he was played by a man who was truly kind and charming in real life. Also, people tend to see Snape’s final memories in the story and come away with a touching picture, while many of us just see the sad, wasted life of a messed up person. The memories show Snape knew Lily from a young age, always loved her, and fought Voldemort all along (in secret) in order to keep his love of Lily alive, and even sacrificed a few times to protect Harry himself. 

However, the truth is that Snape was not just a tortured lover — who “lost” a girl he never even had — and used that love to bring him back to the “good side.” He was nasty, and Dumbledore used him to get as much good out of him as he could, but he was never a “good” man. Rowling herself has been pretty clear on this, but some people do not seem to get it. He claimed he loved Lily, but it was a selfish, evil, possessive (and extremely one-sided) love, because he did not truly care about her wishes or her memory. No one could say a mother would want her son abused in such a way, simply because his father was a different man than the man who once courted her. This doesn’t mean he was pure evil, though, and Rowling has said as much. But can any sacrifice make up for so much awful behavior? 

4. What Exactly Happens To The Soul That A Dementor Eats, And What Is Your Afterlife Fate? 

In Harry Potter, we learn in the third installment about horrible beings called dementors. They suck the happiness out of the air around them, and it slowly makes you weaker and weaker. They feed on your despair and sadness, and if they manage to get close enough to you and truly grab a hold of you with their rotting hands, they can give you something called the “dementor’s kiss” where they literally suck out your soul. Now, perhaps to not scare children, Rowling doesn’t really go into details here, so we are left to speculate. 

We know that the afterlife exists in Harry Potter — Sirius Black accidentally enters it through a one way curtain in the fifth book, but that still leaves a lot of details unclear, especially when it comes to dementors. Is the soul “killed” and sent on to the afterlife? Or is it somehow consumed and actually destroyed? Is the person in question killed, their body now just being a husk, or is there some kind of life to it now, being only an animal existence? While it is a kids’ series, and we cannot expect Rowling to address these things in too much detail, it would be interesting to know how it is all really supposed to work. 

3. Did Snape Hate Neville For Being Weak, And A Gryffindor, Or For More Insidious Reasons?

In the early Harry Potter books, we quickly notice that apart from picking on Harry for being himself, and picking on Hermione for being a know-it-all, Snape really seems to enjoy tearing Neville Longbottom into tiny little bits and dissolving him into tears on a regular basis. Now, most people always assume that this was just because Neville was clumsy and stood out as an annoying and awkward Gryffindor, and many of us went through the entire series believing this. But some have read more closely and noticed something interesting that makes Snape even more despicable as a human being. 

In the fifth book, we learn about a prophecy that caused Voldemort to think Harry would have the power to destroy him, so he attempted to murder Harry and his entire family. We also learn this prophecy could have also applied to Neville, but it ended up applying to Harry instead because Voldemort essentially chose Harry as his nemesis. Snape was always well aware of this, and it may have driven his insane hatred of Neville. If Neville’s parents had been attacked, Lily would never have been killed, and if Harry hadn’t been born, Lily wouldn’t have been killed either. According to this theory, as far as Snape was concerned, Neville and Harry were both to blame, with the bonus of Harry being half the kid he wanted to have with Lily, but looking so much like the man who got to be with her instead. What this meant to Snape, of course, was that both boys needed to be systematically punished for as long as they were in his power. 

2. Does The Ministry Know, Or Care, How Ridiculous Their Underage Magic System Is?

In the second Harry Potter installment, we find Harry dealing with a visit from some people Uncle Vernon is trying to get a big drill contract with, and Harry himself being hustled out of sight. A house elf who wants him to stay away from Hogwarts gets him into big trouble with both his aunt and uncle, and the Ministry of Magic as well, by making it look like he used magic in the house. The Ministry warns him that if he uses underage magic again without permission, they will boot him from school. This makes things even worse for him, as he then gets punished severely with his aunt and uncle knowing he cannot retaliate against them with magic. 

Now, Harry is aggrieved because he did not actually use magic, and wonders if the system is not actually very well designed. He later finds out that he is entirely correct. It turns out that the Ministry’s system cannot actually tell who used the magic, just that it was used in the household. That means — presumably — if it was a wizarding household, you could get away with underage magic all the time and no one would ever know. The only people who would get caught are orphans, and they are the ones most likely to panic and use magic because they are vulnerable and have no one to protect them. Instead of sending a Ministry representative to ask why an underage child in a non-wizarding household was using magic, they just send a letter and threaten expulsion after just one little levitation charm. 

1. Is There Any Way To Force Someone To Make An Unbreakable Vow?

In the Harry Potter novels, we learn early on about something called the unbreakable vow. Two people clasp hands while holding their wands and go through an oath about their actions. The vow is literally unbreakable, in that if you cannot find a way out of the wording and you break the oath, you simply die. Ron mentions once that when he was a little kid, his older brother Fred almost got him to do one, and then his mom noticed and came and gave his older brother a spanking he would never forget. We are never told what he wanted him to agree to in this oath. Snape also takes an oath in book six, agreeing to kill Dumbledore if needed instead of Draco — something Snape had already agreed to with Dumbledore in the first place. 

However, apart from these instances, we don’t really know much else about it. It seems unlikely that using the imperius curse would work to force someone into an unbreakable vow, but other methods seem plausible. A big question would be how much the vow “understands” intent, as it talks about Ron being almost tricked into it as a very young child. Also, we don’t know how smart magic is, and whether the spell would recognize conditions of duress or not. Obviously the imperius curse would not work or a dark wizard would have tried that one, but what about simply waving a gun in someone’s face, or threatening their family? Would the unbreakable vow allow such threats to work, and give you life and death control over another human being?

The universe is big. So big, in fact, that even if we learn how to travel at the speed of light and solve all other problems with space travel, we’d still only be able to explore a tiny fraction of what we can currently observe. Of course, even that seems like a thing of the distant, unforeseeable future right now, as our best, most-advanced tools of space exploration today barely allow us to scratch the surface of our own Solar System, let alone the entire universe. 

What our tools can finally do, though, is consistently discover entirely new things that we don’t yet understand. Mounting research is proving that the universe is far from the cold, empty void that we once thought it to be. From weird, scary planets beyond our reach to baffling things going on inside our own galaxy, it’s full of a mind-boggling variety of mysteries and phenomena we just can’t explain…

10. Time

Albert Einstein made quite a few groundbreaking discoveries throughout his career, though his most important contribution to science was his theory of relativity. Contrary to the absolute positions of space and time in Newtonian physics, in Einstein’s view, neither exists without the other, and both are relative to each other as well as the observer. 

While it revolutionized the field of science, it also elevated time from a seemingly uniform dimension of reality to something far more complex. If time is relative and has no meaning outside the fabric of spacetime, then, what exactly is time? 

For now, we can’t say for sure. In fact, we don’t even know if time exists as an absolute function of the universe or not, as every one of our mathematical equations and theories work the same without it. Moreover, we don’t know why it only seems to go forward and always works to increase the amount of disorder in the universe, also known as entropy. That’s why you never see broken pieces of glass coming together to form a complete window, or living cells repairing and fixing themselves over time to get younger. 

9. The Universal Applicability Of Mathematics

One of the most fascinating things about mathematics is its applicability across different, wildly unrelated fields. Fluid dynamics, for one example, doesn’t just help explain fluids and their complex movement. It’s also applicable in economics, military strategy, industrial logistics, banking, and a variety of other areas that don’t seem to be connected in any way.

Within the purview of natural sciences – like physics, chemistry, biology and other fields that deal with observations from nature – this universal applicability of mathematical principles isn’t just odd, it’s downright baffling. It’s easy to find multiple examples of mathematical concepts – like Pi – that work with seemingly distinct areas of study, from spatial geometry to space exploration to banking. It doesn’t make sense – almost like opening a series of locks with a bunch of keys and getting it right in the first or second go every time.

8. Fermi Bubbles

Fermi Bubbles – named after the gamma-ray telescope that first captured them in 2010 – are two humongous, interconnected bubbles of gas, dust and cosmic radiation seemingly emanating out of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Only visible in gamma-ray light, they’re about 50,000 light years in total length. For perspective, the entire Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, making these bubbles perhaps the single largest structure in the galaxy.

For now, that’s pretty much all we know about them, except that they’re also accompanied by unexplained bursts of energy only visible in radio frequencies, along with mysterious hourglass-shaped X-ray structures surrounding the center. One study from May 2020 suggests that they might be related to bursts of gas and dust from the black hole in some way.

7. How Big Is It?

There’s no widely accepted measure of how big the universe really is, or even if it’s measurable with our tools and parameters. From our point of view, we know that it expands to about 46 billion years in every direction, which forms the boundary of what we know as the ‘observable universe’, though that’s hardly its real boundary. In fact, quite a few scientists think that the universe might not have a clearly defined edge at all.

That number merely means that the first ray of light produced after the Big Bang is now 46 billion light years away from us, as the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. There’s no reason to believe that the edge of the observable universe is the edge of the actual universe, though if it’s not, what lies beyond the realm of spacetime? As of now, we have no way to even guess that. 

Its size isn’t the only problem – we don’t know its shape, either. Is the universe spherical? That’s what most of us assume, though again, we don’t have any evidence to prove or suggest that. For all we know, it might not be a uniform, three-dimensional sphere at all, but rather something like a donut.

6. The Center Of The Milky Way

If we’re ever able to journey to the center of our galaxy, we’d likely find quite a few mysterious objects and phenomena we’ve never seen before. One of them is the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A, which only shows up in the photos as a faint, barely visible radio source. That’s only a wild guess, too, as there’s a growing school of astronomers that believes that it might be some other type of matter altogether.

What we do know for sure, though, is that it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. Some astronomers suspect that it’s a Galactic Center Radio Transient – another emerging class of objects observed in other regions of the universe that we don’t really get. 

The center of the Milky Way is also home to huge strands of light – some more than 150 light years across, arranged in symmetrical, artistic patterns that we can’t quite explain. First discovered in the early 1980s, some astronomers think that they’re related to the suspected super black hole at the center, or even the above-mentioned Fermi Bubbles, in some way. 

5. Supervoid

The ‘supervoid’ refers to a humongous region of nothingness about three billion light years from Earth. It’s not exactly empty, but contains 20% less matter than any other part of the universe we can see, spanning across a total distance of over 1.8 billion light years. It’s a part of what the cool scientists are calling exotic physics – a new type of physics that deals with baffling phenomena beyond the frontiers of our knowledge. 

Unlike the more or less uniform distribution of matter in the rest of the universe, the supervoid is unusually under-dense, and we don’t really know why. It’s unusually cold, too, and coincides with another discovery made in 2004 called the ‘Cold Spot’, except the lack of density only accounts for about 10% of the coldness. Moreover, there’s something bizarre at its center that causes any light passing through the void to lose its energy. It’s not a black hole, as black holes emit very clear X-rays and radio waves, though something even emptier and hollower than the rest of the void. 

4. Strange Matter

On first look, strange matter might sound like a general grouping of multiple phenomena we don’t understand – like dark matter or dark energy. Strangely enough, if we may, that’s not the case, as it refers to a specific type of matter that seemingly shifts between the states of matter and antimatter like it’s nothing. First theorized by two MIT scientists back in 1978, strange matter has since been one of the most bizarre phenomena we’ve observed out in the wild.

Of course, we haven’t actually observed it in space, as strange matter is only suspected to be found at the center of neutron stars – super-dense celestial objects formed after the death of stars. At those pressures, even the most fundamental building block of the universe – quarks – cease to exist in their natural form. The only thing that can stay stable at those pressures is the strange quark, or s quark, which can group together and form strange matter.

It’s all hypothetical – as we have no neutron stars lying around in a lab to check for ourselves – though some suspected properties of strange matter have been observed in the lab. Some scientists believe it to be contagious and dangerous, as strange matter could turn other normal types of matter strange, slowly creeping across the universe and engulfing everything in its path until everything is strange. Thankfully for us all, the center of a neutron star is nearly  impossible to escape. For now. 

3. The Darwinian Theory Of Evolution

One of the biggest mysteries of the universe is its seeming emptiness. Why, even after actively looking for so many decades, have we never been able to discover any signs of life other than our own? One could argue that the universe is too big and we’ve only just started exploring it. That might be true, but we’ve still managed to observe quite a large part of it for telltale signs of life. So far, we’ve found none.

According to one fascinating theory, it might just be due to the Darwinian theory of evolution, only applied to universes instead of forms of life. First proposed by the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, it suggests that universes follow the same principles of evolution and natural selection as life on Earth. As stars turn into black holes, according to the theory at least, they give birth to black holes and multiple other smaller universes with slightly different parameters. 

While most of them die without the development of any form of life, ours might have been a more successful specimen, even if it wasn’t too successful. Life does exist here, though only in one random corner of an insignificant galaxy rather than as a general rule of the universe. Who knows, there might even be universes teeming with life in every corner somewhere out there, as well as universes that are even emptier and colder than ours.

2. What Is It Made Of, Really?

Obviously, it’s impossible to know everything the universe is made of. We can’t even observe most things beyond a small circle within our solar system, let alone calculate the chemical composition of colossal objects in the most distant corners of our universe. Still, you’d think that we have some clue.

As it turns out, we really don’t. Visible matter that follows the rules of physics we know constitutes barely 4-5% of the entire universe. Of the rest, 27 percent is taken up by dark matter – a mysterious type of matter we only know about due to its glue-like effect on distant galaxies and other objects. The remaining 68% is dark energy, easily one of the most mysterious forces we know of in the universe. It seemingly permeates everything we can see in outer space, except we don’t know anything about it, other than the fact that it’s the force responsible for the rapid expansion of the universe – sort of like the opposite of gravity. Speaking of gravity…

1. Gravity

Gravity is by far the weakest of all the four main types of force in the universe – the other three being electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces. Yet, it’s the most dominant. You’d find superstructures larger than anything our minds can comprehend in the most distant parts of the universe still following its basic rules. In fact, gravity and electromagnetism are the only two forces with infinite reach, though EM doesn’t even come close to the influence gravity has on reality. It works as an accumulative force, rather than the positive-negative canceling out of the other forces.

What we don’t quite understand, however, is how it works at the quantum level, and that’s putting it simply. We have no clue what gives matter its gravitational properties, or exactly how it interacts with spacetime, even if we definitely know that it does. Time dilation caused by gravity, for one example, is actively accounted for in geo-mapping equipment.

Like time, Einstein was instrumental in shaping up our modern understanding of gravity, and many of his predictions – including gravitational waves – have been proven real in the past few years. We now know that gravity sits at the fundamental core of the nature of our reality, though we’re still no closer to explaining it than he was.

In the past, we have examined some of the mysterious questions that keep historians up at night. And today, we are ready to take a look at 10 more…

10. Who Fired the Shot Heard ‘Round the World?

April 19, 1775, is a date that forever changed the world. It was the day of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first military engagements between the British and the Americans that triggered the Revolutionary War. That opening salvo of bullets that marked the beginning of the battle has become known as the “shot heard round the world,” thanks to a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, but the question is…who fired it?

Unfortunately, the initial skirmish was a mass of chaos and confusion, and nobody is even really sure which side fired the shot, let alone which person. An army of 800 British regulars led by General Thomas Gage entered Lexington at around 5 am that morning, with orders to seize all the weapons and gunpowder stored at Concord. They encountered a militia company of 70 men or so who scattered as the British forces entered the town square. Then, someone somewhere fired that fateful shot. Thinking they were being attacked, the regulars opened fire on the colonists and killed eight militiamen before moving on towards Concord. And thus… the war began.

9. What Happened to the Bermagui Five?

On the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, there is a small town with nice, lovely beaches, with the intriguing name of Mystery Bay. So what mystery does it refer to, exactly? Well, it’s the 1880 disappearance of the Bermagui Five, a group of men who vanished without a trace in that area while conducting a geological survey.

The group was led by a geologist with the New South Wales Mines Department named Lamont Young, who was working out of the nearby town of Bermagui. This was at the time of the Australian Gold Rush. There was lots of money to be made, so geologists like Young surveyed every bit of Australia in the hopes of finding a new goldfield. On October 10, 1880, Young took his assistant and a boat crew of three and traveled northward to explore a new area of the coast. 

Later that evening, a laborer riding along the coast saw the empty boat, which had drifted into a rocky part of the bay. The sail was tied down. Some of their clothes, books, and equipment were still aboard, and there was a lot of vomit on the floor of the ship. The five men, however, were nowhere to be found, and their fate remains a mystery to this day.

8. Was Nauscopie Real or a Scam?

Around 250 years ago, there was a French engineer named Etienne Bottineau who claimed to have invented a new science, which he called nauscopie, that could be used to “discover ships and land at a great distance.” Nowadays, both the man and his strange claim have almost completely faded from memory, found mostly as minor references in other people’s works. But even in his own time, nauscopie was never seriously studied, both because Bottineau never bothered to write down or explain in detail how it worked, and because he lived on the remote island of Mauritius, back then called Isle de France. 

It seems that, for the most part, Bottineau used nauscopie as his secret weapon to winning bar bets, being able to predict the arrival of ships into port up to four days in advance. But in 1782, he alerted the governor that a fleet of 11 ships was approaching the island. Bottineau then advised him that the fleet had changed course. Fearing that the British might be attacking, the governor dispatched a warship to find out what was going on. When it returned, it confirmed everything Bottineau said – a fleet of vessels was heading towards Mauritius, but then it changed course and headed towards India. So the question remains: was Bottineau simply lucky, a conman, or did nauscopie actually work?

7. Where Is Attila the Hun?

Fewer people have had a more sudden, shocking, and violent impact on the world than Attila, leader of the Huns. The origins of these nomadic people are still uncertain, but they appeared in Europe sometime during the late 4th century AD. In just a few decades, they had established a vast empire and became the biggest threat to the hegemony of the Roman Empire. They could have become the leading force in Europe, if not for the unexpected death of Attila, which surprisingly happened during peacetime, while the Hunnic leader was celebrating his latest marriage.

Many cultures have different customs when it comes to dealing with the dead. Some like to build lavish tombs, mausoleums, even pyramids for their leaders. The Huns were exactly the opposite – they believed Attila’s tomb should be a secret. The Hunnic chieftain was placed in three nesting coffins – one made of iron, one made of silver, and the last one made of solid gold. These were filled with jewels and other priceless treasures that signified Attila’s strength and subjugation of other nations. But they didn’t mark the burial site with any kind of monument and they also killed the gravediggers so that the knowledge of the location would die with them. And that location remains a mystery to this day. 

6. What Caused the Puebloan Migration?

The Ancestral Puebloans are one of the oldest Native American cultures, having appeared sometime during the 8th century AD. For hundreds of years, they lived and thrived in the Four Corners region of the United States, comprised of parts of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. But then, during the late 13th – early 14th century, they seemingly disappeared under circumstances that still remain a mystery.

For a while, we thought that the Ancestral Puebloans were wiped off the face of the Earth – maybe by a natural disaster, maybe by enemy tribes. Nowadays, however, scholars are pretty convinced that these ancient people didn’t die out suddenly, they migrated. But there is still the question of what event could determine an entire civilization to pack up and abandon the place they called home for centuries?

It’s still possible that enemy attacks could have been the reason, or a loss of fertile land due to deforestation and soil erosion. Some scientists believe that the culprit was a “megadrought” that made it impossible to grow food in the region. While all explanations are plausible, none have been proven definitively.

5. What Happened to the Joyita?

When it comes to creepy stories about ghost ships, the Joyita has to be right up there. On October 3, 1955, this American merchant vessel left Samoa with 25 people aboard, heading towards the Tokelau Islands. It was supposed to arrive there two days later, but even on October 6, there was still no word from the Joyita. A search and rescue team was dispatched but they were unable to find it.

It was over a month later that another merchant ship stumbled upon the Joyita adrift hundreds of miles off-course. It was partially submerged and listing badly on one side, although it wasn’t in danger of sinking. The people were gone, the cargo was gone, and the interior had sustained a lot of damage. Had the vessel been attacked by pirates, or Japanese fishing boats, or a Soviet submarine? Was there a mutiny or was it all some kind of insurance fraud? No signs of the 25 people aboard the Joyita have ever been found, leaving this puzzle unsolved for the time being.

4. What Happened to Thomas Paine’s Remains?

There once was a time when Thomas Paine was regarded as one of the biggest heroes of the American Revolution. His influential pamphlets inspired many people into action, and when he was finished in America, he traveled to Paris and became involved with the French Revolution, as well. And yet, when he died in 1809, he was broke, childless, and so hated by his peers that only six people attended his funeral. And according to legend, some of his bones were recycled into buttons while the rest were tossed in the garbage. Paine’s ideas and his character have been mostly rehabilitated in modern times, but one question still lingers – what happened to his remains?

Thomas Paine became a pariah in his time mainly due to two reasons. One, his work titled The Age of Reason was seen as an attack on Christianity, and two, following his arrest and detention in France, Paine criticized many of his former revolutionary allies, feeling that they had abandoned him.

When he died, Paine was buried in a modest grave on his farm, but a decade later, a fan of his named William Cobbett arranged for him to be exhumed and shipped to his native England. He hoped to arrange for a grand resting place for Paine but found no takers. Ultimately, Cobbett ended up keeping Paine’s bones in his attic until he died, at which point their fate becomes uncertain. Cobbett’s son sold all his effects at auction, so it is possible that some bones were sold off piece by piece, while others were thrown in the trash. Several people have claimed to possess parts of Thomas Paine, but none have been proven.

3. Where Did the Tamil Bell Come From?

There is a certain category of historical puzzles called out-of-place artifacts and, as its name suggests, it refers to items that have been found in places where they don’t belong. This puts pressure on scholars and scientists to try and explain how they got there, and one of the most prominent examples is the Tamil Bell.

Around 1836, British missionary William Colenso stumbled upon the Tamil Bell in the Northland Region of New Zealand, being used by M?ori women to boil potatoes. After questioning the locals, he found out that they had possessed the bell for many generations, after finding it buried under a tree. Later examinations of the unusual artifact revealed that it was a ship’s bell made of bronze and that it had Tamil writing on it. And it wasn’t modern Tamil, either, but rather an old-fashioned script that had not been used for centuries.

It’s pretty obvious that the bell came from a Tamil ship, but this raises more questions than it answers? Europeans first made contact with New Zealanders in the mid-17th-century, but this was at least a hundred years older than that. Did this mean that the Tamil people and other South Asian cultures knew about New Zealand much earlier than this? Did they have contact with each other or did the bell simply wash ashore following the sinking of a Tamil ship?

2. What Happened to America’s First Black Doctor?

James Durham, sometimes spelled Derham, made history when he became the first Black man in the United States to become a doctor. Unfortunately, most of his life is clouded by mystery and uncertainty, and so is his death, as Durham disappeared one day, never to be seen again.

The future physician was born into slavery circa 1762 in Philadelphia, and for the first two decades of his life, he was owned by several doctors. One of them, John Kearsley, taught James to read and write not just in English, but also in French and Spanish. Durham’s last master was a Scottish physician who lived in New Orleans named Robert Dow. He encouraged Durham to study medicine and also allowed him to practice it on some of his patients.

In 1783, James Durham became a free man. We’re not entirely sure if he paid for his liberation or if Dow granted it, but he was able to open his own practice in the city. It flourished for years, thanks mainly to Durham’s fluency in multiple languages and his willingness to treat patients from all racial backgrounds.

Things were going well for Durham. He even became a correspondent with Benjamin Rush, one of the Founding Fathers and, arguably, the most famous doctor in the country at the time. In 1801, Durham returned to his native Philadelphia. Just a year later, he disappeared and was never heard from again. Some think he moved to practice medicine elsewhere, but others fear that he may have been killed by people who resented his success. 

1. Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Ancient history is filled with mysterious civilizations about whom we know almost nothing, but few of them have had a bigger impact on history than the Sea Peoples. A confederacy of seafaring nations, the Sea Peoples appeared suddenly in the Mediterranean during the 12th century BC and waged war on anyone who got in their way – the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, they all suffered at the hands of this wrathful civilization. 

The Egyptians were the ones who have provided us with the most detailed accounts of the Sea Peoples, as the two sides fought often during the reigns of Ramses II and Ramses III. They also named some of the groups that made up this warring confederation, such as the Tjeker and the Sherden, but this has not helped us pinpoint their origins.

Today, the incursions of the Sea Peoples are considered one of the main factors behind the Late Bronze Age collapse, but their identities, their purpose, and their final fate remain unknown.

Research can get a little… boring. But every now and again, a challenge comes along that cannot be solved with run-of-the-mill experiments. That’s when scientists get creative and, daresay, a little weird. From teaching fish to drive (on land) to peeing on crops, here are some of the strangest quests researchers have embarked on!

10 How to Spot a Creep

What makes someone creepy? In 2016, a team of psychologists pondered this important question. Their goal was to draft a list of traits that could identify someone as an unsettling weirdo. To understand what people find creepy, the study interviewed 1,342 volunteers and asked them what made their skin crawl when meeting a stranger. Some of their answers were unexpected.

Sure, the participants found others creepy when there was an element of physical danger or when the people worked as clowns or looked unkempt. But other traits were more random. People who collect dolls, insects, or reptiles also made the list. Bird-watchers too. Laughing unexpectedly, smiling strangely, or licking your lips frequently can also make others want to keep their distance.^[1]

9 Enduring Brazil Nut Mystery Solved

When thinking about physics mysteries, a person might expect quantum stuff, invisible influences, and perhaps a particle or two. But some physicists wonder about nutty snacks. More specifically, why do large nuts, like Brazil nuts, always find their way to the top of the packet? Shouldn’t the heaviest nuts work their way down instead?

In 2021, scientists gave a bag of nuts a couple of good shakes. After each shake, the packet was scanned to get a 3D view of the contents. Incredibly, this revealed that size or weight had nothing to do with Brazil nuts rising to the top.

It’s their orientation. When a packet moves, say, while it’s being transported to a shop, the horizontal Brazil nuts eventually point upward (it took the scientists 50 shakes to achieve this). This provides more space for smaller nuts to consistently move downward and force the larger nuts up.^[2]

8 How to Echolocate

Researchers have known for a while that a small group of people can echolocate. In other words, they use tongue clicks or finger snaps—and not sight—to find their way around. But could this skill be taught to others, and how long would it take? The answer was surprising.

This study, which was published in 2021, discovered that both legally blind individuals and sighted people could be taught within 10 weeks to navigate with echolocation. Not only could they move around in a maze, but by interpreting the echoes that came back from their clicks, the volunteers could also recognize the orientation and size of objects inside the maze.^[3]

7 The Lost Letter Experiment

In 2012, anthropologists sprinkled 300 letters on the pavement of 20 neighborhoods in London. The idea was to test the altruism of people. If someone found a letter, would they go through all the effort that was required to deliver the mail to a total stranger’s house? These addresses were, in reality, the homes of the researchers who sat back and collected the letters as they rolled in.

Interestingly, about 87% of letters scattered in wealthier neighborhoods found their way back. In contrast, only 37% in poorer areas returned. The study found that ethnicity and population density had nothing to do with altruism. Instead, it was socioeconomic factors that needed more investigation to fully understand.

But for now, the scientists believe that fewer letters returned from disadvantaged areas—not because people care less—but because the hardships of life make them wearier and, therefore, less likely to pick up random letters on the pavement.^[4]

6 Pigs in Suitcases

Killers dump a lot of bodies in suitcases. Just like other crime scenes, the police need to know when the victim passed away. This triggered the world’s biggest experiment to learn more about the forensics of this harrowing habit. In particular, the researchers were interested in carrion insects.

When a corpse is left in the open, these insects colonize the body and provide a host of information. These flies and beetles can give forensic entomologists the time of death, reveal the presence of drugs, and whether the victim died elsewhere and in what type of location. A suitcase disrupts this process by hampering normal insect colonization.

To better understand this interference, a 2022 study placed stillborn piglets in nearly 70 bins and suitcases and left them outside. Remarkably, the carrion insects still provided critical information, just differently. By assessing how bugs and eggs clustered on the outside of the containers, which larvae made it inside, and the dead insects within, researchers could glean the basics of toxicology, body relocation, the circumstances and time of death, and how the weather influenced the pigs’ decomposition.^[5]

5 Peeing on Crops

Few people might eat a loaf of bread when they know the farmer peed on the wheat. But that’s a rather modern revulsion. For thousands of years, people used human urine as a fantastic fertilizer for crops. The practice vanished and now only exists in a few areas in Asia.

In recent years, scientists wondered if this ancient solution might help rural farmers. Especially those who live on nutrient-poor land where commercial fertilizer isn’t an option. Pee is free and packed with phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen—everything a hungry plant needs. They launched a large-scale experiment in the Republic of Niger where they trained female farmers on how to use urine safely as a fertilizer.

After three years and 681 trials, these ladies produced millet crops that were 30% more bountiful than normal. The results were so well-received that years after the experiment ended, over a thousand women farmers in Niger continued to fertilize their crops with sanitized urine.^[6]

4 This Test Will Last 500 Years

A couple of years ago, a researcher found a petri dish he’d forgotten about for 10 years. Once he realized the dried bacteria it contained could be revived with a little hydration, it sparked an ambitious study. In 2014, it brought together scientists from Scotland, Germany, and the U.S. to figure out how long bacteria can survive. Thus, the 500-year experiment was born. (link 7)

It works like this. Two bacteria species were chosen and hermetically sealed in 800 glass vials. About 400 were encased in lead to reduce DNA damage from natural radiation. For the first 24 years, scientists will open a couple of vials every other year and examine the bacteria’s DNA health and viability. For the rest of the time, the remaining 475 years, vials will be opened and tested every quarter-century.

The chances that the bacteria samples will stay alive for 500 years are good. But the experiment might not survive. It requires the continuous collaboration of the UK, the U.S., and Germany. Who knows if future scientists will even stay loyal to the study? The box containing the vials might also get lost before the experiment is over.^[7]

3 Brains with Eyes (Sort Of)

Stem cells can be manipulated to turn into any type of cell. This trait allows scientists to create smaller versions of human organs, or organoids, to test and learn more about diseases. In 2021, researchers wanted to find a way to treat early retinal disorders. For this, they needed a tiny brain with eyes.

Past experiments have separately created brain organoids and eye organoids (not eyeballs but an earlier developmental stage called optic cups). But nobody has ever created a combination of the two.

In the new study, experiments eventually produced several brains with eyes. This organoid resembled a yellow blob with a pair of black dots. The latter were the optic cups that the researchers needed. Incredibly, the cups were light-sensitive and developed at the same rate as eyes in a human embryo. They even had corneal tissue and lenses. In the future, this somewhat creepy-looking organoid can help scientists to study eye disorders, treatments, and brain-eye interactions during embryonic development.^[8]

2 Turning Water into Metal

In theory, most materials can become metallic—if you squeeze them hard enough. When mightily mushed, their atoms or molecules crush together so tightly that they swap electrons. This, in turn, can give a substance metallic properties like conducting electricity. But turning water into metal faces special challenges.

First, it needs a big squeeze. About 15 million atmospheres’ worth. This kind of pressure is not something that most scientists have lying around the laboratory. Secondly, such an experiment requires alkali metals like sodium and potassium because they share electrons quickly—and they remove the need for ridiculous atmospheric pressure. The problem? Alkali metals tend to explode when they touch water.

In 2021, an experiment managed to do the impossible. They turned water into metal by slowing the explosive reaction to give the metals the time to share their electrons with the water. This was achieved by working inside a vacuum chamber and exposing the two alkali metals to water vapor. The resulting metal droplet only lasted a few seconds, but it resembled gold and conducted electricity.^[9]

1 The Fishmobile

Can fish avoid obstacles on land? Okay, fish and land don’t gel. But this didn’t stop researchers in Israel from building a car for goldfish. Kind of like an aquarium on wheels. The goal was to understand how fish learn to navigate and if their brains could handle a trip on land.

Six goldfish were trained to pilot the fish-operated vehicle or FOV. At first, the fish swam erratically but then seemed to grasp the situation and their movements became more deliberate and relaxed. Indeed, the goldfish quickly learned how to make the FOV drive forward, but it was harder to teach them to think outside the tank, so to speak.

But with simple obstacle training and a lot of treats, the fish stopped driving aimlessly around the room and headed straight for targets. Once they reached a target, they were rewarded with a snack. When obstacles were placed in their path, the fish learned to drive around them to get to the target—and something yummy. This proved that fish can be remarkably resourceful in challenging environments in order to find food.^[10]