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Spooky!
Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena
By Live
Science Staff
What Science Can't Explain
 |
| Aliens |
And when people see, hear or believe something
that is not explained, science finds itself trying to prove things don’t exist,
and that’s truly impossible.
In the following pages, you’ll learn more about
some of the most common inexplicable phenomena — from ghosts to supposed
man-like beasts, from incredible experiences at the line between life and death
to amazing but unexplained feats of the mind itself.
How much of this is real? We’ll let you decide.
The Taos Hum
Some residents and visitors in the small city of
Taos, New Mexico, have for years been annoyed and puzzled by a mysterious and
faint low-frequency hum in the desert air.
Oddly, only about 2 percent of Taos residents
report hearing the sound. Some believe it is caused by unusual acoustics;
others suspect mass hysteria or some secret, sinister purpose.
Whether described as a whir, hum, or buzz and
whether psychological, natural, or supernatural no one has yet been able to
locate the sound's origin.
Thing is, a survey revealed that those who claim
to hear the sounds actually hear many different sounds, suggesting the
experiences may be subjective, not actually objective sounds (and pretty
certainly not one particular sound).
The next item on our list could fill big shoes
if it had to. Guess what it is?
Bigfoot
 |
| Bigfoot |
Despite the thousands of Bigfoot that must exist
for a breeding population, not a single body has been found.
Not one has been killed by a hunter, struck dead
by a speeding car, or even died of natural causes.
In the absence of hard evidence like teeth or
bones, support comes down to eyewitness sightings and ambiguous photos and
films.
Since it is logically impossible to prove a
universal negative, science will never be able to prove that creatures like
Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster do not exist, and it is possible that these
mysterious beasts lurk far from prying eyes.
Call us skeptical, and check out our complete
story about Bigfoot.
Intuition
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| CEO and employees |
Of course, gut feelings are often wrong (how
many times during aircraft turbulence have you been sure your plane was going
down?), but they do seem to be right much of the time.
Psychologists note that people subconsciously
pick up information about the world around us, leading us to seemingly sense or
know information without knowing exactly how or why we know it.
But cases of intuition are difficult to prove or
study, and psychology may only be part of the answer.
If your intuition is telling you that the next
slide is about mysterious disappearances, you're right!
Mysterious Disappearances
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| Families of missing persons sometimes consult psychics when they feel the police aren't doing enough. |
Not so with the truly mysterious disappearances.
From the crew of the Marie Celeste to Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, and Natalee
Holloway, some people seem to have vanished without a trace.
When missing persons are found, it is always
through police work, confession, or accident never by 'psychic detectives').
But when the evidence is lacking and leads are
lost, even police and forensic science can't always solve the crime.
One word about our next slide: Boo!
Ghosts
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| Paranormal Haunting |
Many people have reported seeing apparitions of
both shadowy strangers and departed loved ones.
Though definitive proof for the existence of
ghosts remains elusive, sincere eyewitnesses continue to report seeing,
photographing, and even communicating with ghosts.
Ghost investigators hope to one day prove that
the dead can contact the living, providing a final answer to the mystery.
Our next mystery is not about ghosts. Our next
mystery is not about ghosts. Wait a minute? Haven't I read that before
somewhere?
Deja vu
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| A confused man. The growing complexity of science - and the different levels at which people understand science - may require society to rethink scientific expertise. |
A woman might walk into a building, for example,
in a foreign country she'd never visited, and sense that the setting is eerily
and intimately familiar.
Some attribute deja vu to psychic experiences or
unbidden glimpses of previous lives.
As with intuition (see #3), research into, human
psychology can offer more naturalistic explanations, but ultimately the cause
and nature of the phenomenon itself remains a mystery.
The next mystery is really out of this world.
Read on!
UFOs
 |
| Jerusalem's dubious UFO |
Still, while careful investigation has revealed
known causes for most sighting reports, some UFO incidents will always remain
unexplained. [UFO Sightings & News]
You must check out the next mystery. We're
deadly serious.
Near-Death Experiences and Life After Death
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| Many people report seeing a bright light at the end of a long dark tunnel after a near-death experience. |
While such experiences are profound, no one has
returned with proof or verifiable information from "beyond the
grave."
Skeptics suggest that the experiences are
explainable as natural and predictable hallucinations of a traumatized brain.
A study of people in cardiac arrest in 2015
found that when the heart is dying, it gets peppered by signals from the brain,
which tries to stay active.
The scramble of signals might be responsible for
near-death experiences, researchers figure.
Two mysteries to go. Can you divine what they
might be?
Psychic powers and ESP
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| This is not our columnist, Benjamin Radford. But Radford does see the future: He predicts that predictions for 2009 won't be any more accurate than they were in 2008. |
Many people believe that intuition (see #3) is a
form of psychic power, a way of accessing arcane or special knowledge about the
world or the future.
Researchers have tested people who claim to have
psychic powers, though the results under controlled scientific conditions have
so far been negative or ambiguous.
Some have argued that psychic powers cannot be
tested, or for some reason diminish in the presence of skeptics or scientists.
If this is true, science will never be able to
prove or disprove the existence of psychic powers.
The Body/Mind Connection
Medical science is only beginning to understand
the ways in which the mind influences the body.
The placebo effect, for example, demonstrates
that people can at times cause a relief in medical symptoms or suffering by
believing the cures to be effective — whether they actually are or not.
Using processes only poorly understood, the
body's ability to heal itself is far more amazing than anything modern medicine
could create.
So, while there are many unexplained phenomena,
and frankly some of them are dubious, the explainable science of the body and
mind, even if we're still trying to figure much of it out, may be among the
most amazing phenomena of all.
Live Science Staff
For the
science geek in everyone, Live Science offers a fascinating window into the
natural and technological world, delivering comprehensive and compelling news
and analysis on everything from dinosaur discoveries, archaeological finds and
amazing animals to health, innovation and wearable technology. We aim to
empower and inspire our readers with the tools needed to understand the world
and appreciate its everyday awe.
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