excerpt:
13 things that do not make sense
NewScientist.com news service
1. The placebo effect
"We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry."
2. The horizon problem
"A variation in the speed of light could solve the problem, but this too is impotent in the face of the question 'why?'"
3. Ultra-energetic cosmic rays
"One possibility is that there is something wrong with the Akeno results. Another is that Einstein was wrong"
4. Belfast homeopathy results
"If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry."
5. Dark matter
"Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must make up about 90 per cent of the mass in the universe, yet we are astonishingly ignorant what that 90 per cent is."
6. Viking's methane
"Something on Mars is ingesting nutrients, metabolising them and then belching out radioactive methane"
7. Tetraneutrons
"These bodies, which contain an enormous number of bound neutrons, suggest that as yet unexplained forces come into play when neutrons gather en masse."
8. The Pioneer anomaly
"Some possible explanations have already been ruled out, including software errors, the solar wind or a fuel leak. If the cause is some gravitational effect, it is not one we know anything about. In fact, physicists are so completely at a loss that some have resorted to linking this mystery with other inexplicable phenomena."
9. Dark energy
"One suggestion is that some property of empty space is responsible - cosmologists call it dark energy. But all attempts to pin it down have fallen woefully short."
10. The Kuiper cliff
"If you travel out to the far edge of the solar system, into the frigid wastes beyond Pluto, you'll see something strange."
11. The Wow signal
"It was either a powerful astronomical event - or an advanced alien civilisation beaming out a signal"
12. Not-so-constant constants
"If the observations are correct, the only vaguely reasonable explanation is that a constant of physics called the fine structure constant, or alpha, had a different value at the time the light passed through the clouds."
13. Cold fusion
"After 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers."
http://www.newscientistspace.com/articl ... 524911.600
