Buzz
How do bees manage flight? Why do some corals pulsate? What causes ball lightning? While many of these questions have been at least partially explained, you might assume that the mysteries of everyday life have all been solved, leaving only the rare and obscure to ponder. But there are still plenty of secrets hidden in the most common things around us.
10. Adhesive Tape
Peeling certain types of sticky tape, like Scotch tape, in a vacuum can generate brief X-ray bursts. This surprising discovery was made by a team of UCLA researchers in 2008, though Soviet scientists had noticed a similar phenomenon (creating high-energy electrons rather than X-rays) back in the 1950s. However, their findings were largely dismissed. The idea that tape could produce high-energy electrons seemed unbelievable. Since 2008, several other researchers have replicated the X-ray effect with sticky tape, confirming that it’s a real phenomenon—but the underlying cause remains unclear.
Peeling tape causes charge to accumulate, much like the static electricity that builds up when you rub a credit card against a cat. This phenomenon is called the triboelectric effect. When the charge (and the resulting electric field) becomes large enough, it discharges suddenly, causing a burst of electrons to accelerate rapidly. When these high-speed electrons collide with matter, they emit X-rays. The mystery lies in understanding how these electrons can gain such incredible speed. The 2008 paper concluded: 'The limits on energies and flash widths that can be achieved are beyond current theories of tribology.'
9. Protons
Everyday materials are made up of atoms, and each atom contains one or more protons. The simplest atom, hydrogen, consists of a single proton and a single electron. A proton can be thought of as a tiny ball with a fixed radius. Using experimental data from hydrogen, scientists have calculated the proton's radius. The most accurate estimate (from CODATA 2010) is 0.8775 femtometers, with an uncertainty of plus or minus 0.0051 femtometers. A femtometer (fm) is one quadrillionth of a meter.
To achieve a smaller uncertainty than 0.0051 femtometers, Randolf Pohl and his team conducted experiments with a special form of hydrogen known as muonic hydrogen. This version of hydrogen is similar to regular hydrogen, except the electron is replaced by a muon, which is like an electron but with significantly more mass. As predicted, Pohl and colleagues managed to reduce the uncertainty to 0.00067 femtometers, with a subsequent experiment shrinking it even further. However, the results also revealed an unexpected finding—they obtained a much smaller value for the radius of the proton itself!
Imagine this analogy: You have a basic measuring stick and use it to measure the radius of a massive beach ball, getting a value of 1 meter with an uncertainty of 0.1 meters. Then, you use a set of high-quality calipers and measure it at 0.5 meters with an uncertainty of 0.01 meters. What’s happening? The ball shouldn’t have a different radius based on how you measure it, but that’s precisely the dilemma with proton radius measurements.
Could it be that the uncertainty in the CODATA 2010 value is too small? Perhaps some of the values used in the calculations are incorrect? Or maybe we've stumbled upon a completely new physical phenomenon? The situation remains puzzling.
8. Women
Men inherit an X chromosome from their mother and a Y chromosome from their father. Women inherit an X chromosome from both their mother and their father (other combinations of X and Y chromosomes can occur, but XY and XX are the most common). Every cell in a woman’s body contains two X chromosomes, but since 1949, research has revealed that one of these X chromosomes is always inactive—most of the genetic information on this X chromosome is ignored.
Imagine a woman’s cell where the X chromosome from her mother is inactive and the X chromosome from her father is active. Let’s call this a 'dad-cell' and the opposite situation, where the mother’s X chromosome is active, a 'mom-cell.' But how does a cell choose to be a mom-cell or a dad-cell? Initially, scientists thought this choice was entirely random, like flipping a coin. However, recent studies in mice have shown that entire organs (such as an eye) can be predominantly made up of either mom-cells or dad-cells. It’s not random after all! How the cell decides remains a mystery.
7. Animal Magnetoception
Birds do it, bees do it, even sharks swimming in the ocean do it—they can sense magnetic fields. This ability is known as magnetoception (or magnetoreception). But how exactly do they do it? There are two primary theories.
The first and oldest theory suggests that certain animals contain tiny bar magnets in some of their cells. These tiny magnets align with the Earth’s magnetic field, much like the needles of a compass, and communicate their orientation to the brain. It’s not a far-fetched idea—tiny bar magnets were actually discovered in the beaks of pigeons. However, the cells containing these bar magnets turned out to be immune cells, which can’t send signals to the brain.
The second major hypothesis suggests that a protein in the eye, when exposed to blue light, splits into two components that are sensitive to magnetic fields. It’s also possible that some animals might use both mechanisms or entirely different ones. Since the field of animal magnetoception is still in its early stages, much remains unknown.
6. Blushing
Blushing refers to the involuntary reddening of the face, often triggered by intense emotions or stress. It's widely recognized that this reddening occurs due to the widening of blood vessels (vasodilation), but what actually causes this vasodilation?
The first clue came in 1982, when Mellander and colleagues discovered that facial veins contain beta-adrenoceptors in addition to the typical alpha-adrenoceptors. These receptors can be activated by adrenaline and other molecules linked to emotional responses. Could it be that the beta-adrenoceptors in facial veins are responsible for triggering blushing?
In the 1990s, Peter Drummond, a psychology professor at Murdoch University, conducted experiments to find out. Some participants received drugs to block alpha-adrenoceptors, while others were given drugs to block beta-adrenoceptors. The participants then performed tasks that typically induce blushing, like stressful mental arithmetic, singing, or moderate exercise, and their responses were measured. As expected, blocking alpha-adrenoceptors had no effect on blushing. Blocking beta-adrenoceptors reduced blushing, though it didn’t stop it entirely. This suggests there’s something else triggering blushing (vasodilation), but what that is remains a mystery.
5. Glass
Glass is an essential part of modern life: it's in smartphone screens, soda bottles, coffee mugs, kitchen windows, and more. Surely, scientists and engineers have figured out glass. Yet, in reality, glass remains profoundly mysterious.
The enigma lies in how glass forms. You can create glass by heating a glass-forming material like silicon dioxide until it becomes liquid and then letting it cool. Unlike substances like salt, which turns from liquid to a crystalline solid at a precise temperature, glass becomes more and more viscous as it cools. Eventually, when it reaches a low enough temperature, glass becomes solid, yet its molecules remain disordered. In 2007, American physicist James Langer wrote: 'We don’t know what kind of transformation occurs when a liquid becomes a glass or even whether that familiar change of state is actually a thermodynamic phase transition like condensation or solidification, or something completely different.' The mysterious 'glass transition' is still the subject of active research.
4. Peanut Allergies
In the United States, the number of children diagnosed with peanut allergies has significantly increased in recent years. One study found that the prevalence among children jumped from 0.4 percent in 1997 to 1.4 percent by 2008. Similar findings were reported in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. But why is this happening? There are numerous theories.
The most widely discussed theory is the hygiene hypothesis. Many modern children grow up in exceptionally clean environments, with limited exposure to bacteria, fungi, pollen, viruses, and other environmental factors that previous generations encountered. This theory suggests that their immune systems develop differently, causing them to react to peanuts in an unusual way.
Another possibility is that the way peanuts are processed today—roasting them—might make them more likely to trigger allergies. It could also be that today’s children aren’t receiving enough vitamin D in their diets. Or perhaps peanuts are being introduced too late into their diets. While there are many theories, there are still few definitive answers.
3. The Dominance Of Matter
Nearly everything we encounter is composed of matter, not antimatter. Whenever antimatter does appear (such as in the radioactive decay of certain atoms or during certain thunderstorms), it typically meets matter and disappears almost instantly in a flash of high-energy gamma rays.
The issue lies in the fact that the current best model of fundamental particle physics, the Standard Model, suggests that the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter. However, there appears to be an imbalance, with more matter than antimatter. Why is this the case?
One theory is that the Standard Model might require a revision, potentially predicting a slight preference for the creation of matter over antimatter. Another theory suggests that the Standard Model may be correct, but for some unknown reason, matter and antimatter became separated, leaving empty space in between them. The question remains: What force could have separated them? Gravity, for example, would naturally draw them together, not push them apart.
This issue is referred to as the baryon asymmetry of the universe, and it stands as one of the most significant unsolved mysteries in contemporary physics.
2. Ice
Hockey players and figure skaters can effortlessly glide across the ice because of its slickness—but what exactly makes it so slippery? These same skates, however, won't slide on materials like asphalt, glass, or steel plates.
The traditional explanation was that the pressure from the skate causes the ice to melt, forming a thin film of water that makes the surface slippery. However, the issue with this theory is that the pressure isn't significant enough to fully account for the slipperiness we observe.
Two other hypotheses have been suggested. One proposes that friction is responsible for melting the ice. The other suggests that a thin layer of liquid water always exists at the interface between the ice and air. Both of these ideas have experimental backing, meaning that a combination of the two may be at play, although the exact contribution of each is still unclear. Other mechanisms could also be involved. The slipperiness of ice is just one of water's many unusual traits—there are many more. For example, water has an exceptionally high melting point.
1. Black Widow Venom
Black widow spiders are found in temperate regions worldwide. When they bite humans, their venom often causes excruciating, widespread pain and fluctuations in blood pressure, symptoms that can persist for days. As Gordon Grice writes in The Red Hourglass, “Some [victims] have tried to kill themselves to stop the pain.” So, how does the venom cause such extreme effects? This is where it becomes perplexing:
“A single dose of venom contains only a few molecules of neurotoxin, which are notably large—so much so that they can be observed with a standard microscope. How can such a small number of molecules influence the entire body of an animal weighing hundreds or even thousands of pounds? The exact mechanism remains a mystery.”
Somehow, the neurotoxin manages to deceive the body into attacking its own cells. Understanding the mechanism behind this could offer valuable insights into autoimmune diseases and other conditions where the immune system turns against the body.
