Mysteries are often intended to remain insoluble. But here are 13 riddles that are about to be solved…and it could happen in the next few years.
Some peculiar mysteries
As a general rule, the longer a mystery remains unsolved, the less likely it will ever be. However, all of the following mysteries, which promise to be solved in the near future, go back many years, sometimes centuries – some even go back to the dawn of time.
What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
One of the strangest mysteries in American history is linked to the fate of the 117 English settlers on Roanoke Island (off the coast of North Carolina). They all disappeared in 1590 when the colony’s co-founder, John White, was out in search of supplies. They left behind only a handful of incomprehensible clues.
Theories explaining their disappearance range from massacre by Native Americans to an attempt to return to England. But new clues have been uncovered by archaeologists in two separate digs over the past five years. These excavations suggest that the settlers split into at least two groups, and that at least one of these groups ended up 90 km to the northwest. It is hoped that further excavations will definitively resolve this mystery.
How and why was Stonehenge built?
Located on a plain north of Salisbury, England, Stonehenge is a circular formation of stones dating back at least 5,000 years. These stones are so massive that no one has ever been able to explain how they got there, let alone understand what they were used for.
But scientists are now close to an answer to both questions. In 2018, archaeologists established that at least two of the stones were in place long before humans appeared, and that it was their natural orientation – relative to sunrise and sunset – that would have inspired the construction of a monument.
Who built Stonehenge?
Once the question of where the rocks of Stonehenge came from has been resolved, the next mystery that will have to be addressed is this: who actually built it? Here again, different theories compete, according to National Geographic.
For some, we owe this monument to Merlin the enchanter, from the Arthurian legend. For others, to the invasion of the Danes or the Romans. But recent DNA research indicates that Stonehenge was built by the descendants of a people from present-day Turkey who migrated to the area around 6,000 years ago.
What does the Voynich manuscript really say?
Some books seem indecipherable. But the Voynich Manuscript, which dates to the 1400s, is LITERALLY undecipherable, or at least it was so far. This 250-page book is written in an unknown language and features illustrations of plants that do not belong to any known species. Is it because there was only one copy until 2016 that no one has ever been able to decipher it? This effectively limited the number of people who could actually work on that code simultaneously.
Since 2016, however, there have been around 900 copies of it, and artificial intelligence may finally be able to crack this mysterious code.
The Somerton Beach Body: Who Was Somerton’s Man?
On a beautiful summer evening in 1948, a couple strolls on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. The couple notice a middle-aged man in a suit and dress shoes lying in the sand trying to smoke a cigarette, apparently inebriated.
The next morning, the man was still there, but dead. The causes of his death have never been established, although poisoning is suspected. No one ever came forward to recognize the body, which bore no identification, not even tags on its clothing. Investigators only found one clue at the time: a small rolled up piece of paper tucked in one of the man’s pockets, and on it read “Tamám Shud”, a Persian phrase meaning “c ‘is the end’, but that too turned out to be a dead end.
Now, however, analyzes of his DNA indicate that the ‘Somerton Man’ may have come from the east coast of the United States. There is hope that science can finally pierce the identity of this man, to know what he was doing on Somerton beach and how he died.
Who was the stranger from Isdal?
On November 29, 1970, a man and his two daughters hiking in the valley of Isdalen – in Norway – discovered the body of a woman, burned beyond recognition.
Like the Somerton man, the “unknown from Isdal” carried no identification, and the tags on her clothes had been cut out. The autopsy established that the woman had 50 sleeping pills in her stomach and investigators found at a nearby train station what they believed to be her suitcases, containing more unlabeled clothes, eight fake passports, a wad of Deutschmarks and an encrypted note. No one has ever claimed her body and the woman’s identity has remained a mystery.
However, last year, scientists were able to link the unknown from Isdal to Nuremberg, Germany, and some listeners of Death in Ice Valley, the podcast dealing with this case, took the initiative to circulate this information. . The solution to the riddle might not be very far away.
How are planets formed?
A new study published in the journal Nature Physics may finally explain how planets form. The study found that particles exposed to microgravity “spontaneously develop strong electrical charges and stick together, forming massive aggregates,” according to SciTech Daily.
Because microgravity is believed to be similar to conditions in outer space, the study authors believe they have likely “overcome a fundamental hurdle in understanding how planets form.”
What exactly is dark matter?
“Dark matter makes up about 80% of the mass of the universe, but scientists still don’t know what this strange matter is made of,” recalls Space.com. It is indeed one of the most confusing mysteries of our universe.
Scientists, however, seem to be well on their way to solving this riddle thanks to so-called ‘WIMPs’ (for Weakly Interactive massive Particles), which are said to offer one of the most promising theories. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are currently being studied by the Coherent Germanium Neutrino Technology (CoGeNT) collaboration, which seeks to isolate the activity of these WIMPs using a highly sophisticated device buried underground in Minnesota.
What is the mass of the neutrino?
Like dark matter, neutrinos are an ingredient of the universe that scientists have struggled to understand. These tiny particles, which travel at near the speed of light, are nearly massless and contain no electrical charge, making them particularly difficult to spot and examine. Yet it is essential to understand the neutrino to know how the universe was formed and what it is really composed of.
Recently, scientists at Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino, Germany, made a startling discovery: neutrinos, which were already known to possess almost unimaginable masslessness, actually contain half as much mass as previously thought. previously. “Knowing the mass of the neutrino will allow scientists to answer fundamental questions in cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics,” notes one of the scientists working on this project.
How were the great pyramids built?
The Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, built four or five thousand years ago, remained the tallest man-made structures until the completion of Lincoln Cathedral, England in the 1300s.
But how were they built? In 2014, the “wet sand” theory provided insight into how the Egyptians moved stones across the ground. Now a new theory is emerging on how the stones were then put in place thanks to the work of scientists studying Hatnub, an ancient Egyptian quarry which appears to contain a ramp system which served as a ‘force multiplier’ and which would have been used during the construction period of the pyramids.
What do the Egyptian pyramids hide?
The discovery of large voids in the Great Pyramid in 2017 raised passions, but it also led to a new mystery: why this void? Shortly after the news of this discovery, scientists were already trying to find the answer using both “muon particle” detectors and “mini robots” Live Science reports.
What happened to Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady?
It has been nearly 23 years since Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady disappeared from the Ricci Oddi art gallery in northern Italy during renovations. The case has offered many false leads in the years since – including the confession of a famous art thief blaming himself for the theft and saying he wants to return the painting . He never did.
However, in December 2019, a gallery gardener discovered a secret panel in the gallery walls containing… guess what? A painting that seems to be the one that has been missing all these years. Investigators are currently trying to find out if the painting is that of Klimt or if it is simply a very well executed copy.
What happened to Madeleine McCann?
On May 3, 2007, Gerry and Kate McCann were vacationing with their three children in Portugal, when three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from her bed while the McCanns were eating at a restaurant near the hotel. She was never found, despite an investigation whose funding was assured until 2020.
However, a recent collaboration between British and Portuguese police has led to the tracing of a known pedophile who is believed to have been in Portugal at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance. Authorities say they are ‘closer to knowing what happened to Madeleine’, according to the Daily Mail.
