Odd Phenomena

Spontaneous Human Combustion

By roskopp on 1/29/09 5:46am
4 Comments

One of the most fascinating unexplained phenomena’s is spontaneous human combustion. The idea is that a human being can just burst into flames and burn away without an external source of ignition. The most common theory is that the heat is internally generated by a chemical reaction however many scientists deny the phenomena exists suggesting we simply haven’t found the right explanation.

Many cases of spontaneous human combustion have been reported over the years and in fact you can find references to it as far back as medieval times. Victims are generally entirely burned away, sometimes portions of their clothes or individual limbs are left behind and the surrounding furnishings are always left unscathed as though the person combusted from the inside with a fierce intensity.

The idea has been used extensively in fiction throughout the years and various people have attempted more serious studies but there is no concrete proof that it can occur and it seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

Read more >

The Piri Reis Map

By nerdyspice on 1/9/09 1:12pm
3 Comments

The oldest known human civilization is by general consensus thought to be the Sumerians. It is roughly 4,000 BC and they have no cultural heritage to speak of. However, in high regard they hold an ancient race that some call the Nefilim. To the Sumerians, these beings were as Gods. Is it not possible, that there was once a time far beyond our reckoning in which civilizations were well beyond advanced? Many have attempted to present such a case to the scientific community at large and are, unsurprisingly, not taken too seriously.
Regardless, when presenting such theories, one piece of evidence that tends to b e used is the Piri Reis Map, a map said to be produced in 1513 by famous Turkish Admiral and cartographer of whom the map is named after. It was discovered in 1929 when Topkopi Palace was being converted into a museum. It was printed on gazelle skin and had noted scribbled on it by Reis himself.

Read more >

The Voynich Manuscript

By nerdyspice on 1/9/09 9:47am
3 Comments

The Voynich Manuscript is without a doubt the 'holy grail' of cryptographers and linguists around the globe. Produced likely in the late 15th century, it is an illustrated collection of approximately 246 pages written in some unknown language or script, the papers have become an enigmatic bane to those who call historical cryptography their discipline. Since its introduction into the mainstream of the scientific community roughly around 1915, attempts to translate the manuscript have proved fruitless. Priests, historians, linguists and even code breakers from World War II, all of whom were eventually defeated by the mysterious manuscript, have studied it vigilantly.
But that is not to say that their have not been numerous theories and alleged 'solutions' to the document with the earliest modern of these dating back to 1919, with claims that it was actually the work of 13th century empiricist Roger Bacon, who was well versed in the fields of languages and astrology.

Read more >

The Bloop

By nerdyspice on 12/22/08 7:40pm
1 Comment

The phenomenon known as 'The Bloop' is quite possibly one of my favorite of the great, unsolved mysteries of the world. It is such a simple thing, a mere sound, but so large it was that several different sensors thousands of miles apart were able to record it. So essentially, in the summer of 1997, a sound was registered, a loud sound and it was traced to the location of 50 degrees S 100 Degrees W, roughly off of the west coast of South America. Each time it occurred, it rose in frequency for about roughly 60 seconds on an ultra low frequency. Heard at normal speed, it sounds like nothing. At least nothing that human ears can discern. However, when sped up by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration to 16 times its normal speed, it sounds like a bubble rising in the water.

Supposedly, the profile of said sound matches that of a living creature. The only problem being that according to scientists who have studied said noise have concluded that any creature able to make such a noise would have to be larger than any creature as of yet known to man or science.

Read more >