Solutions – Listorati

10 Bizarre Radical Solutions Tackling Global Crises

Johan Tobias — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 06:00:51 +0000

When it comes to confronting the planet’s toughest dilemmas, the most bizarre radical proposals often spark the biggest conversations. From dietary shifts to extraterrestrial engineering, innovators are thinking far outside the box.

10 Adopting A Vegetarian Or Vegan Lifestyle

Bizarre Radical Benefits of a Plant‑Based Lifestyle

Albert Einstein famously remarked, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” Modern research backs him up: a plant‑focused regime is a powerhouse for both personal health and climate mitigation.

The July 2014 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned that livestock production is among the most destructive forces driving climate change, degrading air quality, polluting waterways, and devouring the single largest swath of land. The United Nations puts livestock’s carbon footprint at roughly 18 percent of global emissions, while some watchdogs claim it could be as high as 51 percent. In fact, livestock releases more greenhouse gases than all the world’s trains, ships, cars and airplanes combined.

Convincing the entire planet to go fully vegan is a tall order, so scientists urge us to at least trim our meat intake. Simple steps like “Meatless Mondays” can make a noticeable dent in emissions while keeping the diet approachable.

9 Sweating Billboards

Zika first surfaced in 1947, but the 2016 outbreak in Brazil thrust the mosquito‑borne virus into the global spotlight. While the disease is rarely fatal, it can cause severe birth defects such as microcephaly when contracted by pregnant women.

Two Brazilian marketing firms, NBS and Posterscope, answered the mosquito menace with a bizarre twist: sweating billboards. These structures emit lactic acid—a scent that mimics human sweat—and carbon dioxide, the same breath component that attracts Aedes aegypti. The result? Mosquitoes are lured in from as far as three kilometres and then trapped or killed.

Best of all, the creators released the design blueprint for free, inviting any nation or organization to replicate the concept wherever Zika or other mosquito‑borne illnesses threaten public health.

8 A Giant Space Umbrella

Imagine a colossal parasol hovering above Earth, shading just enough sunlight to reverse global warming. That’s the essence of the “giant space umbrella,” a concept backed by heavyweight institutions such as the EU, the Royal Society, NASA, and the IPCC.

Scientists estimate that blocking merely 2‑4 percent of the Sun’s rays could restore pre‑industrial temperatures. Early designs, like James Early’s 1989 proposal, pictured a 2,000‑kilometre‑wide glass shield—so massive that construction would have to occur on the Moon.

Since then, more feasible variants have emerged, including a planet‑girdling ring of tiny umbrellas and a swarm of 55,000 wire‑mesh mirrors, each aiming to scatter enough solar energy to cool the planet without the logistical nightmare of a single monolithic shade.

7 Plastic‑Eating Mealworms

America churns out 33 million tons of plastic annually, yet only about 10 percent gets recycled. The stubborn persistence of plastic waste has turned it into a planetary pollutant of epic proportions.

Enter the humble mealworm. Researchers Jun Yang and Yu Yang of Beihang University, together with Wei‑Min Wu from Stanford, discovered that these brownish larvae can devour styrofoam and other plastics. A colony of 100 mealworms can consume roughly 34‑39 mg of styrofoam each day, and astonishingly, those on an all‑styrofoam diet stay as healthy as their peers fed a normal bran regimen.

Published in Environmental Science and Technology, the study also showed that the worms transform the ingested plastic into biodegradable waste suitable for use as fertilizer—a double win for waste reduction and soil enrichment.

6 Fake Plastic Trees

Carbon dioxide, though a minor component of the atmosphere, plays a heavyweight role in global warming by trapping solar heat. To pull CO₂ out of the air, Klaus Lackner of Columbia University proposes a startlingly unconventional solution: artificial “plastic trees.”

These synthetic structures are claimed to be a thousand times more efficient than natural trees at sequestering carbon, each capable of absorbing a ton of CO₂ per day. To offset humanity’s total emissions, Lackner estimates we’d need about 100 million of them. The catch? Each unit carries a price tag of roughly $20,000, making large‑scale deployment a financial challenge.

5 Eating Insects

Crunchy critters might sound like a novelty, but insects have fed humanity for millennia—from Roman delicacies to Greek snacks. Today, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations touts insects as a sustainable protein source that could help curb global hunger.

Raising insects demands far fewer resources than traditional livestock: they generate lower greenhouse‑gas emissions, consume less water, and can thrive on organic waste streams. Moreover, insect farming can create jobs in rural communities, offering an economic boost alongside environmental benefits.

Although the idea still makes many people squirm, experts argue that dietary habits can shift quickly in our hyper‑connected world, especially when the health and planet‑saving perks are clear.

4 Human Engineering

When it comes to climate change, conventional strategies split into two camps: changing human behaviour or tinkering with Earth’s systems. Both routes have drawbacks—policy inertia on the one hand, and high‑risk geo‑engineering on the other.

Three Oxford researchers argue that a truly radical fix lies in “human engineering.” Their paper in Ethics, Policy and the Environment outlines four bold tweaks: first, cultivate an intolerance to red meat; second, shrink human body size to slash energy needs; third, boost intelligence, since higher cognitive ability correlates with lower birthrates; and fourth, administer hormones like oxytocin to foster greater empathy toward animals and the planet.

While the ideas sound like science‑fiction, they spotlight the lengths to which scientists are willing to think when conventional measures fall short.

3 Mass Female Sterilization

India is projected to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation by 2030. After gaining independence in 1947 with a population of 345 million, the country surged past one billion by 2014—a rise of 900 million in just 67 years.

Early attempts to curb growth via male vasectomies faltered in a society where such procedures are socially taboo. The government then turned to women, launching a massive tubectomy campaign. Shockingly, roughly 37 percent of married Indian women have undergone sterilization, with 4.6 million procedures recorded between 2011 and 2012 alone.

Incentives range from cash payments to TVs, motorcycles, blenders, and even cars. Health workers who persuade women to undergo the surgery also receive rewards. Critics argue the practice skirts ethical boundaries, especially when women feel pressured by spouses seeking the monetary benefits.

2 Installing Blue Streetlights

Blue lighting might sound like a design whim, but studies in Glasgow and Nara, Japan, suggest it can curb both crime and suicide. After Glasgow bathed its streets in blue light in 2000, crime rates in illuminated zones dropped noticeably. Inspired by the results, Nara installed blue streetlights in 2005, seeing a 9 percent dip in criminal activity.

Railway operators in Japan have also deployed blue lights at stations to deter suicide attempts, reporting zero incidents since installation. Professor Tsuneo Suzuki of Keio University attributes the effect to the calming aura of blue wavelengths, though he cautions that attributing complex social outcomes to a single color remains speculative.

1 Moving The Earth Away From The Sun

Among the most audacious climate‑mitigation ideas is the notion of nudging Earth into a cooler orbit. NASA scientists Greg Laughlin, Don Korycansky, and Fred Adams propose using a comet or asteroid to transfer gravitational energy, accelerating Earth’s orbital speed and pulling it farther from the Sun.

If executed flawlessly, the plan could buy humanity precious time to address warming. Yet the practical hurdles are staggering: maneuvering a massive space rock with enough precision to avoid a catastrophic impact is a feat far beyond current capabilities. Moreover, altering Earth’s distance from the Moon could destabilize tides and other climate‑influencing processes.

While the concept remains firmly in the realm of science‑fiction, it underscores the desperation and creativity fueling today’s search for climate solutions.

Interesting Potential Solutions to “Urban Heat Islands”

Johan Tobias — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 20:58:07 +0000

Urban heat islands (UHI) are areas with significantly higher temperatures than the regions surrounding them. The retention and generation of heat in the urban core contributes to climate change and lower air quality for people living in and near the heat islands. They also have a negative effect on rainfall downwind of the UHI. UHIs are also a leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States. Cities which have insufficient cooling at night during periods of hot weather have shown increases in heat related deaths, much of which has been attributed to UHIs.

There causes are many, but fortunately solutions exist to counter their negative effects on the population and on the environment. Several of these solutions are doubly attractive as they simultaneously address other urban issues, such as quality of life and eliminating food deserts. They help make cities more attractive and livable for residents and visitors alike. Here are ten ways to mitigate the detrimental effects of UHI and create better cities for the present and for future generations.

This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!

10 Solutions to “Urban Heat Islands”

Marjorie Mackintosh — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 09:29:07 +0000

10. Creating more pocket parks

Converting disused or abandoned urban properties into small parks, called pocket parks by urban planners and architects, has proven effective in combating the heat island problem. Post World War II Athens, Greece, underwent a housing boom, during which row upon row of apartment blocks replaced detached homes with surrounding greenery. Beginning in the late 1990s, Athens undertook projects to create pocket parks from small abandoned lots and in alleyways and mews. Roads designed to accommodate automobiles have also been converted to green spaces lined with paths for pedestrians and automobiles. The expanded greenery helps cool the city, as well as improves the air quality.

Other cities have seen the value of pocket parks, including their contribution to an enhanced quality of life by offering convenient opportunities to ease out of urban stress. Chicago has dozens of such small parks, with more planned. Mexico City has built about 3.5 acres of small pocket parks scattered across the city, including in disused spaces under bridges and overpasses. Paris is known for its wide boulevards and open spaces, but it too has adopted pocket parks as part of long term urban planning.

Pocket parks alone do not present the solution to UHIs, but they can and do contribute to the reduction of the urban core’s heat retention. At the same time, they offer little oases of peace and relaxation without leaving the urban area. Their use is influencing urban planners, both for quality of life and attempts at creating less heat-retentive urban cores. Whether in a large, international city or a mid-sized town, they are an effective tool against UHIs.

9. Create heat reflecting, rather than absorbing roofs

Dark colors absorb heat, while light colors reflect it. Thus, it makes sense that dark colored roofs absorb heat in daylight and release it during the relatively cooler hours of night. The slowly released heat remains, for the most part, in a bubble over the area, the very image of the UHI. On a day when the ambient air temperature is at 90 degrees, the temperature of a dark, heat absorbing roof can exceed 190 degrees. A dense concentration of such roofs traps a lot of heat, which is a significant contribution to the increased temperature of the UHI in comparison to the rural areas which surround it.

Heat reflective roofs are an obvious solution to the heat retention problem. And, as with pocket parks, they offer other advantages as well. They can reduce internal temperatures of the building, reducing the need for air conditioning. Absorbed heat is damaging to roofs; reflected heat reduces wear on roofs and contributes to a longer service life. Cool roofs thus benefit the community as well as the owner and occupants of buildings on which they are installed.

Beginning in 2012 in New York, volunteers began painting dark roofs white, in an attempt to reduce the city’s heat retention. As of 2018 they had painted almost 7 million square feet of formerly dark tar roofs, a lot of paint and a lot of time. Even with that effort, 99% of the city’s roofs remained untreated, an indication of the severity of the problem.

8. Creating rooftop gardens and farms

Painting roofs white, or treating them with a reflective coating, isn’t the only way to achieve a cooler roof. That’s a lot of wasted space up there. Putting it to use as areas where greenery is grown reduces heat absorption, improves air quality, and offers another benefit as well. Greenery in the form of fruits and vegetables can offer locally grown fresh produce within the urban core. It is neither far-fetched nor a vision of the distant future. In a growing number of cities urban rooftop gardening and commercial farming is a reality.

In Montreal, a grocer converted his 25,000 square foot roof into a produce farm, growing tomatoes, herbs, beets, lettuce, and other vegetables. Grown in soil, and watered by the store’s dehumidification plant, the rooftop farm’s produce is packaged and sold in the store below. In Tel Aviv, Israel’s Dizengoff Center, a large shopping mall, the flat roof supports two huge greenhouses which grow vegetables hydroponically. During the growing season it produces about 10,000 heads of lettuce per month, for sale to customers outside the mall. It grows a slew of other vegetables as well, and as in Montreal, provides a cooler roof for the buildings below.

Eagle Street Rooftop Farm sits above a three-story warehouse, across the East River from Manhattan in Brooklyn. Its 6,000 square feet of growing space supplies produce for sale at its own farmer’s market, as well as to restaurants in the area. Like the facilities in Montreal and Tel Aviv, it also maintains beehives for the harvesting of fresh honey. Cooling UHIs by growing fresh food on the roofs is a simple and easily achievable means of reducing urban heat, improving the air, and giving access to locally produced fresh fruits and vegetables.

7. Lighter pavement in streets and parking lots

As anyone walking across an asphalt parking lot on a hot sunny day can attest, dark pavements absorb a lot of heat. And pavement is an essential part of any city, for vehicles and pedestrians to move about. An American Environmental Protection Agency report suggests that anywhere from 35-40% of an average city’s urban area is covered in pavement, making it a major contributor to UHIs. And cooler pavements are more difficult to achieve, since they cannot be covered with greenery. Other factors also need to be considered, such as driver and pedestrian safety, visibility, and pavement durability.

Current types of pavements can be treated with materials, such as coatings, to increase the amount of light which is reflected, rather than absorbed. Other types have been studied for suitability for future repaving of streets, roads, and parking lots. One is permeable pavement, which is coarser in density, allowing for greater convection during the daylight hours, and reduces the amount of heat which is stored in the pavement for later release. It also allows for more absorption of water, reducing storm runoff during heavy rains. Lighter colored pavements also reduce the need for candlepower in street lighting.

The use of cool pavements can reduce heat retention, leading to a reduction of the temperatures of UHIs, as well as offer better visibility to drivers at night. There are cost concerns. Replacing or modifying existing pavements in cities is a seriously complicated proposal, and implementation affects traffic patterns, commuting times, and other complications of urban life. But the potential advantages to be gained may well outweigh the costs, when overall adverse effects of UHIs are considered.

6. Create better blue spaces in urban areas

Blue spaces are water within an urban area, whether running streams, lakes and ponds, or fountains and pools. Properly designed and maintained they mitigate heat islands. Improperly designed or maintained they may make matters worse. Water cools primarily through evaporation at the surface. But it also absorbs heat, with standing water temperature rising during the course of the day as sunlight warms the surface.

Man-made blue spaces such as fountains run by pumps can actually add to the heat retention effect, since pumps create friction while operating. They also contribute to power demand, another source of heat retention. The cooling effect of blue spaces in cities is enhanced when it is combined with the use of green spaces, which in effect creates an island within an island, or a cool space surrounded by a larger UHI. More such islands reduce the overall heat retained by the UHI.

More blue spaces in urban areas have been shown to produce other benefits beyond temperature reductions. Living near blue spaces has been shown to reduce stress, improve physical exercise, and lower obesity rates, all considerable advantages. Of course, to gain the full benefit of natural blue spaces, such as rivers, centuries of effluents into the water needs to be cleaned up in all too many urban areas.

5. Plant more shade trees in the urban area

The larger the shade canopy, the less sunlight reaches the heat retaining surfaces of a city. This includes not just pavements and rooftops, but the exterior walls of brick, stone, and concrete buildings, as well as the interiors of those sided with glass. Shade trees can also protect large areas of blue spaces, and the combination of increased blue and green spaces is one of the most effective ways of reducing heat retention during daylight hours.

Urban parks and forests offer other advantages as well. Both quality of life and the quality of the air are improved by large, shaded, forested areas in cities. A 2014 study by Georgia Tech revealed Louisville, Kentucky, as one of the fastest growing UHIs in the United States. It also revealed that a major contributor to the increased heat was the lack of shade trees in many areas of the city, including the downtown area. The relationship between shade trees and heat retention is clear. More trees = cooler city.

Cities typically lose trees to a variety of causes, including pests, blight, new construction, and natural activities such as thunderstorms and winter blizzards. The Georgia Tech study found that planting more trees and increasing the shade canopy is the single most effective method of reducing heat buildup and the resulting UHIs. Simply put, trees and shade offer natural protection from the potentially damaging rays of the sun and the heat they produce.

4. Vertical gardens improve air quality and lessen heat retention

Vertical gardens are becoming more and more popular in cities around the world, both for their esthetic value and for their cost-effective impact on heat retention. In Singapore, 18 towers built for the purpose are covered with growing plants, and backed with solar powered lights. The result is a dramatic display of vegetation which helps cool the city at the same time it provides a major tourist attraction. In Mexico City, officials took a more practical approach. Columns supporting bridges and elevated roadways are lined with felt, through which plants grow, watered by their own rainwater collection system.

In Paris, the façade surrounding the entrance to the Musee du Quai Branly is covered with more than 15,000 plants covering its vertical walls, framing the entrance in greenery. The Athenaeum Hotel in London has seven stories of plants climbing an exterior vertical corner of the building. Vertical gardens, besides offering dramatic displays of plants, cool the air, improve air quality, and also protect the structure on which they are grown from absorbing heat during sunlit hours.

Beirut, as well as other communities in Lebanon, has also turned to vertical gardens to address the issues of UHIs, air quality, and beautification. Vertical gardens are a part of the solution for all three, but only when used in conjunction with other attempts at mitigation. They also help reduce city noise for residents, and plants act as a natural filter for rainwater. They can also be used to produce herbs and other consumable plants, though as of this writing they have yet to gain favor in the United States.

3. Reduce traffic congestion

Automobile and truck traffic are a major contributor to UHIs. Reduction of their use produces obvious benefits to cities, reducing both UHI severity and pollutants in the air. Lighter colored cars also absorb less heat. Dark colored cars in bumper-bumper traffic obviously negates the benefit of lighter colored pavements.

But any attempt to reduce the use of the automobile is immediately controversial, especially in the United States. There, in major cities, it is common to sit in traffic for well beyond the length of the workday, and a decision of any governmental body to eliminate dark colors for cars would be met with howls of protests over infringements on personal liberty. Reducing automobile use would immediately reduce the temperatures of UHIs, but is unlikely to happen any time soon.

It is a scientific fact that automobile emissions contribute to both air pollution and UHIs and in hot weather conditions the contribution is multiplied. Reducing traffic congestion is therefore desirable if one wishes to reduce the impact of UHIs. There are other methods of reducing congestion without restricting the number of vehicles on the road. In the UK, these methods are being explored and, in some cases, implemented.

2. Create cooler storm water runoff to improve water quality

Stormwater runoff from hot roofs and pavements has been shown to increase temperatures of streams and lakes. Increased temperatures induce negative effects on aquatic life, both plant and animal. The result is unhealthy waters which become lifeless and lose much of their ability to cool and filter. Deteriorating water quality is another result of UHIs which affects the lives of those in the urban area, as well as the lives of those who live downstream.

One solution is the creation of bioswales, constructed dips in the features of the landscape which can hold water temporarily, allowing it to cool, before routing it to streams. Permeable pavements, which cool the surface of the urban area, also absorb and diffuse more water, rather than directing it to storm drains. All of the mitigation efforts so far listed have a positive impact of cooling storm runoff, which would benefit streams and lakes.

Because water in rivers flows downstream, the effects of UHIs on water quality extends beyond the urban area, impacting aquatic biodiversity far from the heat center. The adverse impact of UHIs on water quality is a major incentive for cooling urban environments.

1. More efficient air conditioning could reduce UHIs

Air conditioning cools interiors by absorbing heat which is released to the outside air. Cooling interiors are heating the city where the interiors are located. In essence the heat (and humidity) internal to a building is ejected outside. In a densely populated area on a hot day, massive amounts of heat are added to the air outside, creating a dome which traps sunlight creating heat.

Yet air conditioning and refrigeration are facts of modern life. More efficient methods of cooling the air within buildings and vehicles would go a long way toward mitigating the effects of UHIs. Research to attain more efficient air conditioning is underway. If and when attained it will be just one of the several weapons deployed by future generations to combat the dangers of UHIs.

None of the strategies in this list will succeed in eliminating UHIs alone. But in varying combinations, depending on local politics, community involvement, and environmental factors, combinations of several could have a mitigating effect on UHIs, making cities more comfortable, and thus livable, across the globe.

10 Scientific Mysteries with Bafflingly Simple Solutions

Johan Tobias — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 09:13:06 +0000

When it comes to mysteries of science, even the experts can be stymied sometimes. And then, with a little contemplation and testing, a simple solution can present itself. And every so often, the solution is so simple it makes the whole problem look a little goofy.

10. Europe’s 300-Year Vanilla Problem

Vanilla comes from an orchid native to Mexico where the plants are pollinated by wild bees. Today the price of vanilla can get up to $600 per kilogram. The reason is that it’s hard as heck to harvest vanilla.

To start with, of all the hundreds of orchid species, just one grows vanilla. And if you don’t have the bees to pollinate it, then you have a very uphill battle ahead of you. Even today, pollinating vanilla by hand needs to be done by experts who have been in the industry for years. The flowers bloom for only a single day. Then the process of growing, drying and processing the vanilla takes about a year. And that’s today. So what happened hundreds of years ago?

Europeans brought vanilla back to the continent in the 1500s, where it promptly did nothing. It literally took over 300 years before a Belgian horticulturist tried to look at things scientifically to determine why the vanilla in Europe wasn’t paying off. He was the one that determined Mexico’s Melipona bee was the natural pollinator of the plant and that nothing in Europe was doing the job. So what they were missing was bees. Just bees.

It wouldn’t be until 1841 that a slave named Edmond Albius on an island in the Indian Ocean would figure out a method of hand pollination. Had it not been for a little horticultural science, who knows how long it would have been before anyone figured out a way to farm vanilla.

9. The Parkes Radio Telescope Mystery Signals

In New South Wales, Australia, you’ll find the Parkes Observatory, home to a very large radio telescope that famously relayed signals from the 1969 moon landing. Less well known was the mystery that astronomers on site had been dealing with for 17 long years. You see, every so often, the telescope would receive mysterious signals. But no one could figure out what was causing them.

The telescope was detecting something called perytons. These are incredible short burst radio signals of a terrestrial origin. They also share a name with a mythical beast in a nod to how mysterious they were. The physicists on site thought they might be caused by lightning strikes somewhere near the telescope. But that was not the case.

As it happens, some of the scientists on site would put in full work days and that meant they’d need to have a meal now and then. So they’d use the microwave to heat it up. The signals being received were coming in at 2.4GHz, the same frequency as a microwave.

Someone put two and two together and discovered that, if you pull the microwave door open before the cooking cycle completes, for a second it will release those perytons. So for 17 years, they were haunted by people reheating their lunch.

8. NASA’s Multi-Million Dollar Mars Probe

Did you ever get frustrated in a math class at school and wonder when you were ever going to need to know something like trigonometry or integers in real life? Maybe you never did need to know any of that, but some people do, in particular the kind of people who work at NASA calculating thrust on satellites.

In 1999, NASA was hoping the Mars Climate Orbiter would be able to provide useful scientific data about weather patterns on Mars. Instead, it was destroyed shortly after entering the atmosphere.

NASA launched an internal investigation to figure out what happened. A $125 million piece of hardware never even got to see service at all, so after all that money and months of preparation, something big had to have gone wrong. The truth, however, was something small. A simple mathematical conversion. Someone had forgotten to translate the math, controlling the thrusters of the orbiter. The software calculated the force of the thrusters in pounds of force. But some of the other software being used calculated it in newtons.

Along the way, scientists realized something was wonky because they had to keep making adjustments. But by the time it arrived, it was too late. It hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle and quickly burned up on entry. Had someone double checked that the metric conversions, it all could have been avoided.

7. The Folded Structure of an AIDS-Related Enzyme

For some of us, it can be hard on the ego when we’re very knowledgeable on a subject and are having difficulty figuring a related problem out, only to have a random person with no special insight stumble on the solution as if by magic. That’s sort of what happened when AIDS researchers got stuck trying to identify the structure of an AIDS-related enzyme.

For years, they’d been working at figuring out the structure with no luck. So they opted for a novel solution: let someone else figure it out. In this case, they used a puzzle game called Foldit. The game allows users to play with the structures of proteins and enzymes to find the most optimal ways they can be folded.

Researchers had been trying to crack this particular enzyme for 13 years. Once they placed it in the game to let the gamer community try it out, users found the solution in just three weeks. The end result was not a cure for AIDS, by any means, but it was an important step towards understanding and treating conditions like AIDS.

6. Why Flamingoes Stand on One Foot

Picture a flamingo in your head. Is it standing on one foot? That’s the common image we have of these exotic pink birds, perched on one long, thin leg. And for a long while, no one knew exactly why a flamingo chose to stand like that. It wasn’t until 2019 that science gave us an answer: it’s literally easier than standing on two legs.

Flamingoes cannot balance or rest as easily on two legs, it throws their balance right off. Their bodies are designed to handle that single leg much better. Experiments with dead flamingoes further proved that it’s much harder to balance one on two legs, but on one leg they stand up surprisingly easily.

5. The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle

According to Karl Kruszelnicki, the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle is that we ever thought it was a mystery at all. The region is known for bad weather and that, combined with human error plus heavy traffic increasing the chance for more accidents, explains everything. No curses, no aliens, no mystery phenomena at all.

Based on his research, he points out that, on a percentage basis, ships don’t go missing there any more than they do anywhere else in the ocean. It’s just that the high traffic numbers make it seem worse.

The name “Bermuda Triangle” was even in common usage until 1964 and if there is any mystery, it’s mostly just related to how many ships may have gone missing in that area, since true numbers are hard to come by.

4. Why Wombats Have Square Poop

We’re taking a deep dive into science for this one and looking into one of the greatest mysteries of modern biology and zoology. Namely, why does the humble wombat produce poop in cubes when no other animal on earth is able to do so?

In weirdly practical terms, wombats poop strategically to communicate messages to other wombats. What kind of messages? Probably about territory, so other wombats know where they are. And the reason it’s in a cube is, potentially, to prevent it from rolling away. And while that is a great answer for why the wombat has poop cubes, it does nothing to answer how. Because if you wanted to poop a cube to mark your own territory, it’s not like you could just will it to be so. So what’s going on in a wombat’s butt?

Things get a little grisly here and involve wombat dissection. A wombat that had died in an accident was examined and scientists discovered that the intestines of the animal features a pair of grooves that are more elastic than the rest of the intestine. A 2D rendering was made, showing that the intestines have varied layers of thickness and stiffness. As muscles contract over several days to pull out all possible moisture and nutrients from the food being digested, the intestines form those odd like cubes and shoot them out the backdoor when it’s done.

3. The Mysterious Antarctic Bio-Duck Sound

For 50 years, researchers in the Antarctic have made note of a strange sound that is, for all intents and purposes, like the quack of a duck. But it’s underwater. It was first recorded by submarine crews and because it was repeated so often, the original thinking was that it had to be a man-made sound. Later, someone suggested fish, but the sound was too loud for any known fish.

As luck would have it, someone studying minke whales had affixed a pair of them with trackers that also had microphones. When researchers listened to what they recorded, they had front row seats to the mysterious duck sound. Combined with years’ worth of previous recordings, they were able to conclusively determine that it had just been minke whales the whole time. Of course, none of that explained why the whales do it, but at least we know it’s them.

2. How to Break Dry Spaghetti into Just Two Pieces

Let’s say you’re in the mood for some spaghetti, but you only have one rather small pot in which to cook it. The whole noodles are much too long to fit, so you’re going to have to break the spaghetti in two. But can you break spaghetti in two? As in perfectly in two with no extra broken pieces flying around? If you have ever broken a handful of spaghetti in half before, you already know the answer. Of course not. When you break spaghetti, it shatters like your dreams of not having to pick up tiny, broken pasta pieces from the stovetop.

Busted spaghetti was the fate of every spaghetti chef in the world until MIT scientists got involved. It turns out there is a scientific way to break spaghetti into just two pieces; no broken bits.

Elongated, brittle objects almost always break into multiple pieces, pasta or otherwise. This happens when you apply pressure from either end, causing a bend in the center. This bend eventually breaks, which causes a snap-back reaction that vibrates the pasta and breaks off more pieces.

Researchers were able to determine that if the spaghetti is twisted to 270 degrees and then carefully bent at 3 millimeters per second, it will snap perfectly in two.

1. Why You Keep Losing Socks

How many socks would you say you’ve lost in your lifetime? This has been a recurring issue for many of us. Socks go to the laundry but never make it back to the drawer. The result is a handful of stray, unmatched socks that we have at the bottom of the drawer. And it’s a goofy problem that people laugh about because it’s not really a big deal. But why does it happen? Someone has tried to solve the mystery, and it’s far less mysterious than the internet might make it out to be.

Samsung commissioned a statistician and a psychologist to figure this sock mystery out and it seems like the average person loses 15 socks per year, which seems oddly high, but who are we to argue with Samsung science?

The two experts put their heads together and came up with a slew of reasons for the mystery sock migration that so many of us endure. Turns out, you lost them.

Sounds pretty simple, right? They may have fallen under the washer, or maybe behind a radiator. They got put in the wrong wash load; they fell off a clothesline.

Mathematician Rob Eastaway blamed Murphy’s Law and pointed out that, statistically, you just can’t have X number of socks and expect not to lose one at some point. In essence, the science boils down to the unavoidable nature of the universe itself. You lose socks because you can’t not lose socks.