Your favourite unsolved mystery?

dlofnep · 29-11-2011 4:43am

cock robin wrote: »

The eye ball, even Darwin could'nt explain it. It must have been there from the start. Given that most Darwinians agree on the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest he could never fully explain how the eyeball developed. Its development would according to his own theories have taken millions of years, but an underdeveloped eye with poor vision would have used massive resourses and been useless and the creatures would obviously have been surviving perfectly well without sight. So it was either there from the beginning or ?

Somebody has been reading some creationist nonsense.

Firstly - Darwin doesn't have to be able to explain anything. If he was alive today with only the knowledge that he had of his time - a secondary school biology student would have a better grasp of the mechanics of evolution than Darwin. Most of his work was through observational analysis. Today we know so much more, with a stronger fossil record and DNA.

You wouldn't cite Galileo's understanding of the Universe as the standard for what we understand about it today, so why use Darwin as the standard for evolutionary biology?

As for the eye - It likely developed from photosensitive cells. It doesn't matter how poor someone's vision was. Poor vision is an evolutionary advantage over no vision. And once the predators gain a basic level of vision also - then the race for better vision and survival traits begins.

The evolution of the eye is well documented. Read a book, and you won't be so dumbfounded.

psychward · 29-11-2011 4:49am

Saila wrote: »

figs in fig rolls, need I say more

Cill Dara Abu wrote: »

How do they get the fig into the fig rolls?

After picking and eating fresh figs from a fig tree in the med I can safely say it's fig jam in the fig rolls , not actually figs. So mystery solved I think...

Da Shins Kelly · 29-11-2011 5:14am

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Shakespeare. Did he really write all those works?

He more than likely did. There is simply no evidence strong enough to suggest that they were written by someone else. There is a lack of biographical information about Shakespeare, which I think is what spurs on the doubts about him, but there is enough evidence in theatre records, prints of the plays and recorded comments from his contemporaries to prove that he existed and that he did write his own works. I think you'd be hard pushed to find any reputable English literature scholar who would argue against his authorship. As far as I can tell, it's a closed case and a complete conspiracy.

Doctor Jimbob · 29-11-2011 5:45am

cock robin wrote: »

The eye ball, even Darwin could'nt explain it. It must have been there from the start. Given that most Darwinians agree on the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest he could never fully explain how the eyeball developed. Its development would according to his own theories have taken millions of years, but an underdeveloped eye with poor vision would have used massive resourses and been useless and the creatures would obviously have been surviving perfectly well without sight. So it was either there from the beginning or ?

The creatures may have been surviving perfectly well without full sight(I say full because many basic organisms had photosensitive organs). But what happens when a predator evolves full sight? It gets a huge advantage over the organisms it's preying on. All of a sudden, sight becomes vital for the survival of a lot of organisms. In this case, an underdeveloped eye would have been the difference between life and death.

Why do you see it being there 'from the start' (of what?

) as a more reasonable explanation? You use the fact that creatures would have survived perfectly without sight as a reason that it didn't evolve. If they can survive perfectly well without it, well there's no reason for it to be there 'from the start' either.

faceman · 29-11-2011 12:03pm

Dont think this one has been mentioned yet. Its a bit of an outsider in terms of unsolved mysteries.

Chase Vault in Barbados where its claimed that everytime the vault has been reopened to bury someone from the family, the coffins have rearranged themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Vault

The Sparrow · 29-11-2011 12:39pm

This is an fun one. The face in the window of Pickens County Courthouse in Carrolton, Alabama.

Apparently the glass has been changed, but the image remains. I presume there is a logical explanation or it is an elaborate hoax.

The King of Moo · 29-11-2011 1:07pm

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Shakespeare. Did he really write all those works?

I don't see why not.
The main argument against him being the author is that he was "only the son of a glovemaker" and couldn't have had the education and experience to write so well.

But, in my opinion, reading just one Shakespeare play makes it clear that he was more than just a great writer and was probably a genius.
Genius knows no class distinctions.

I think most of the arguments against his authorship stem from snobs who can't stand that the greatest master of the English language wasn't posh.

biko · 29-11-2011 1:12pm

cock robin wrote: »

The eye ball, even Darwin could'nt explain it. It must have been there from the start. Given that most Darwinians agree on the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest he could never fully explain how the eyeball developed. Its development would according to his own theories have taken millions of years, but an underdeveloped eye with poor vision would have used massive resourses and been useless and the creatures would obviously have been surviving perfectly well without sight. So it was either there from the beginning or ?

David Attenborough On Eye Evolution

sensibleken · 29-11-2011 1:15pm

The Sparrow wrote: »

This is an fun one. The face in the window of Pickens County Courthouse in Carrolton, Alabama.

Apparently the glass has been changed, but the image remains. I presume there is a logical explanation or it is an elaborate hoax.

does anyone else not see a face?

danniemcq · 29-11-2011 1:34pm

sensibleken wrote: »

does anyone else not see a face?

me! and the wiki page doen't have a working link to it either.

is that arrow meant to be pointing towards it?

Cathaoirleach · 29-11-2011 2:44pm

The Sack of Baltimore, West Cork

Solved but still mysterious.

The Sack of Baltimore took place on June 20, 1631, when the village of Baltimore, West Cork, Ireland, was attacked by North African pirates from the North African Barbary Coast.

They captured 108 English settlers :P, who worked a pilchard industry in the village, and some local Irish people. The attack was focused on the area of the village known to this day as the Cove.

The villagers were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa. Some prisoners were destined to live out their days as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the seclusion of the Sultan's harem or within the walls of the Sultan's palace as laborers.

Mark Hamill · 29-11-2011 3:01pm

cock robin wrote: »

So your going to argue with Darwin then are you, you can explain something the great man could not.

Others have already debunked this on several levels, but I'm surprised that no-one else has bothered to point out yet that Darwin never said he couldn't explain the evolution of the eye. You are obviously reading, off some creationist quote mining site, a piece from Darwins "Origin...":

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

The thing is, he didn't stop talking there, he continued:

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.

He pretty much describes there what we know about the beginning of evolution for the eye: light sensitivity on a nerve. that followed by small, beneficial, incremental changes (directionality, wavelength differentiation, depth perception) gives us our eye by way of evolution.

Alpish · 29-11-2011 3:52pm

sensibleken wrote: »

does anyone else not see a face?

Further back you are from the screen the better I think. You can vaguely make out a face. Not very defined however.

Noopti · 29-11-2011 4:02pm

Alpish wrote: »

Further back you are from the screen the better I think. You can vaguely make out a face. Not very defined however.

That is called Pareidolia.

Alpish · 29-11-2011 4:06pm

Noopti wrote: »

That is called Pareidolia.

To be fair I don't think there is a ghost or anything like that there but something can be vaguely made out.

I had to google that term too:D

Da Shins Kelly · 29-11-2011 4:33pm

The King of Moo wrote: »

I don't see why not.
The main argument against him being the author is that he was "only the son of a glovemaker" and couldn't have had the education and experience to write so well.

But, in my opinion, reading just one Shakespeare play makes it clear that he was more than just a great writer and was probably a genius.
Genius knows no class distinctions.

I think most of the arguments against his authorship stem from snobs who can't stand that the greatest master of the English language wasn't posh.

Indeed. The main arguments are that he was from a lower class, was not university-educated and had no aristocratic sensibilities, so how could he possibly write such intricate plays about the royal court and such? However, Christopher Marlowe was from a similar background and dealt with similar topics to Shakespeare and his authorship is never questioned. There is no supporting evidence for any other writer, and the historical evidence is heavily in favour of him having written them himself. He was not university-educated, and this does occasionally show itself in his work - confusion regarding time periods and geography would be the main ones that spring to mind. They're little mistakes, but they're not mistakes that would have been made by a very well-educated writer. Furthermore, he was recognised by his contemporaries in his own lifetime, and his authorship was not questioned until up to 200 years after his death.

Somehow this rumour has grown legs, and like I said, I think it is down to the fact that there is so little information about Shakespeare's personal life. He is a mystery. Like you say, I think that some people just have difficulty believing that a lower-class, uneducated man from a Catholic background (which would explain why James I never chose him to work on the Bible or chose him as poet laureate and instead gave it to Ben Johnson a year after Shakespeare's death) could have written so many plays that have so perfectly captured not only the England of the time, but have continued to have a lasting effect on culture in general. It's not exactly unheard of for people from less than privileged backgrounds to create great works of art though, and Shakespeare was a genius. He was probably the single greatest writer to ever live, and that level of genius, like you say, is not confined to the aristocracy. I think it's a worthless debate, to be honest.

--Kaiser-- · 29-11-2011 4:35pm

The King of Moo wrote: »

I don't see why not.
The main argument against him being the author is that he was "only the son of a glovemaker" and couldn't have had the education and experience to write so well.

But, in my opinion, reading just one Shakespeare play makes it clear that he was more than just a great writer and was probably a genius.
Genius knows no class distinctions.

I think most of the arguments against his authorship stem from snobs who can't stand that the greatest master of the English language wasn't posh.

There is practically no debate among historians that Shakespeare wrote the plays, nearly all say that he definitely did write them. Any of the detractors have very little evidence to the countrary

muppetkiller · 29-11-2011 4:46pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo0ZkgqM1TE&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

"At present, Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. We do not know how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and rewarded or fed in the conditions of pre-Neolithic society. We cannot "read" the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there seems to be little or no evidence of habitation, and the animals depicted on the stones are mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation; it is also possible that they served as totems.[30] The assumption that the site was strictly cultic in purpose and not inhabited has also been challenged by the suggestion that the structures served as large communal houses, "similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles."[31] It is not known why every few decades the existing pillars were buried to be replaced by new stones as part of a smaller, concentric ring inside the older one.[32] Human burial may or may not have occurred at the site. The reason the complex was eventually backfilled remains unexplained. Until more evidence is gathered, it is difficult to deduce anything certain about the originating culture or the site's significance."

Dyr · 29-11-2011 5:02pm

BigCon wrote: »

D.B. Cooper

I just read about him last week..thats mysterious

The Sparrow · 29-11-2011 8:31pm

sensibleken wrote: »

does anyone else not see a face?

Sorry, better photograph of the face here:

http://www.poppymoon.com/counselorblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/CourthouseFace.jpg

enfant terrible · 29-11-2011 8:55pm

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Shakespeare. Did he really write all those works?

Nope it was his sister.

Tomk1 · 30-11-2011 1:05am

skylight1987 wrote: »

Having joined boards 4 months ago this is by far the best thread yet .I want to thank all the folks who gave links to all sorts of mysteries ,also i love a good mystery so sceptics be damned . Stop trying to rationalise everything and just enjoy.

I am also enjoying this thread, don't want to turn this into some silly skeptics vs mysticism thing, facts and rational thinking is extreamly important in trying to undercover mysteries, I grew up watching the 'Nancy Drew Mysteries' the pre-Xfiles show, I also collected nearly all 'The Unexplained' mag which I still have.

Now we could say aliens did everything, but that in my optinion is a killjoy, like shergar was actually taken by aliens, or aliens are behind the banking crisis and Bertie is actually an alien.

Hate saying my fav modern mystery is Madie-McCann which I wish will be solved. no it wasn't aliens though it would easily fit into an X-file story
That D.B.Cooper one is great, never heard of it before.

One that hasn't been brought up is Nikola Tesla the inventer of AC-electric and now credited as the actual inventor of radio-transmission. When he died all his papers were confiscated by the FBI (at the time it was said men in black) supposedly he had plans for a 'death-ray' also transfering energy through the air, even flying 'cigar-shaped craft' every since reading about Tesla in 'The Unexplained' I have been msytfied by his life and experiments and what secrets might of disapeared after his death. Also one theory is while experimenting with transmission of energy through air, it bounced of the ionisphere and caused the Tunguska explosion.

44leto · 30-11-2011 1:17am

muppetkiller wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo0ZkgqM1TE&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

"At present, Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. We do not know how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and rewarded or fed in the conditions of pre-Neolithic society. We cannot "read" the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there seems to be little or no evidence of habitation, and the animals depicted on the stones are mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation; it is also possible that they served as totems.[30] The assumption that the site was strictly cultic in purpose and not inhabited has also been challenged by the suggestion that the structures served as large communal houses, "similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles."[31] It is not known why every few decades the existing pillars were buried to be replaced by new stones as part of a smaller, concentric ring inside the older one.[32] Human burial may or may not have occurred at the site. The reason the complex was eventually backfilled remains unexplained. Until more evidence is gathered, it is difficult to deduce anything certain about the originating culture or the site's significance."

The site seems fascinating but Grahan Hancock and the alien crew with their explanations, less so. But the site is something for my reading list.

Tomk1 · 30-11-2011 1:53am

firefly08 wrote: »

The JFK assassination is my favorite mystery...if I could only know the answer to one of these mysteries, it would be this. However, forget the whole "magic bullet" nonsense. Oliver Stone basically invented that. There's nothing unusual about the wounds, their locations, and the state of the bullet that was found afterwards.

It's ironic that people put so much effort into looking for technical reasons why their must have been a conspiracy...a second shooter, the magic bullet etc. The fact is that there is no reason why Oswald couldn't have done the shooting alone. This has been demonstrated many times. Yet, he was murdered within 2 days, by a man who claimed (among other things) that he was ordered to do it by powerful people. There's your conspiracy...no need to go looking for puffs of smoke from the grassy knoll.

As the 'smoking-man' lights a Morley and says ''I heard it was a lone-gunman'' -Xfiles episode 'unusual suspects' also see episode 'the musings of a cigarette smoking man'

goldenwonder · 30-11-2011 1:54am

Spring Heeled Jack

Noopti · 30-11-2011 12:24pm

The Sparrow wrote: »

Sorry, better photograph of the face here:

http://www.poppymoon.com/counselorblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/CourthouseFace.jpg

lol...I always find these "looks like a face" things so funny. Mainly because the "face" never looks like a proper human face, and if you saw someone on the street with a face like that you would run away screaming for your mother.

sensibleken · 30-11-2011 12:50pm

Noopti wrote: »

lol...I always find these "looks like a face" things so funny. Mainly because the "face" never looks like a proper human face, and if you saw someone on the street with a face like that you would run away screaming for your mother.

kinda looks like the Nirvana smilie

http://acimg.auctivacommerce.com/imgdata/0/0/0/2/8/2/webimg/534495.jpg

psychward · 30-11-2011 3:02pm

When I was 10 years old I got a Meccano set. Basically some kind of space shuttle model and space machines which you build yourself. Towards the end of the construction a small yet essential piece slipped from my hand and flew across the room. Easy to find it one might assume. WRONG. This was the beginning of about 12 hours of hell trying to get that one small piece back to finish the job. In the end I took everything from that room which could be unscrewed and shook it down before it left the security perimeter which I had set up. It was as tight as a ''clean room'' in Intel. The bed, wardrobe, everything down to the carpets were dusted off, cleaned down and placed outside. In my empty handed frustration sitting on the floor of an empty bedroom I even decided to pry up the floorboards even though there was no way that piece could have found a gap to slip under them. That fücking piece was nowhere to be found. So that essential but elusive Mecanno piece if you are reading this and perhaps you can read since you are so adept at hide and go seek. fück you Meccano piece fück you.

dubstarr · 30-11-2011 3:23pm

ben needham.I often wondered what happened to all the missing people of the world.

Alpish · 08-12-2011 1:20am

Gef

In September, 1931, the Irving family — James, Margaret and daughter Voirrey (13) — claimed to hear persistent scratching and rustling noises behind their farmhouse’s wooden wall panels. At first they thought it was a rat, but then the unseen creature began making different sounds, sometimes spitting like a ferret, or growling like a dog, or gurgling like a baby. The creature soon revealed an ability to speak, and introduced itself as Gef, a mongoose. It claimed to have been born in New Delhi, India, in 1852. According to Voirrey, who was the only person to see him properly, Gef was the size of a small rat, with yellowish fur and a large bushy tail (the Indian mongoose is in reality much larger than a rat and does not have a bushy tail).

Gef variously claimed to be “an extra extra clever mongoose”, an “earthbound spirit” and “a ghost in the form of a weasel”. He once said, “I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you’d faint, you’d be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!” Voirrey Irving, who took Gef under her wing, died in 2005. In an interview published late in life, she maintained that Gef was not her creation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gef_the_talking_mongoose

Your favourite unsolved mystery?

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