20 WEIRDEST SCIENCE MYSTERIES

From dark matter to deep-sea crabs, science still can't fully explain these strange quirks of nature

- SCOTT DUTFIELD

STRANGE RADIO BURSTS FROM DEEP SPACE

1 Since 2007, scientists have been plagued by cosmic signals called fast radio bursts (FRBs). In just onethousandth of a second, bursts of radio waves radiate from a source. These then travel through space and are picked up on Earth. FRB 20220610A, detected in 2022, travelled around 8 billion light years before it reached our planet. The first FRB was detected in 2001 by the Parkes Observatory in Australia, emanating from a nearby dwarf galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. However, researchers didn’t discover the burst until 2007 while looking through archival data. Since then, around 1,000 have been detected, though their origins remain unknown. Many theories have emerged to answer the mystery behind the bursts, including energetic neutron stars, black holes or highly magnetised stars. Most FRB signals are also non-repeating, curbing scientists’ efforts to pinpoint their sources.

WHERE DOES CONSCIOUSNESS COME FROM?

2 We all know that who we are comes from our brains, but scientists are still scratching their heads when it comes to

figuring out how this organ conjures up consciousness, which gives us the ability to be self-aware and feel things with the help of the sensory information that the brain receives from our bodies. All the information directed to the brain crosses a network of billions of neuron cells that store, recall and process it, allowing us to interact with the world around us and develop a sense of self. Within that network of neurons is a region of the brain called the cerebral cortex, which scientists believe is the ‘seat of consciousness’. However, how the neurons create consciousness in the cerebral cortex remains a mystery.

SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION