In the latest issue of WIRED, the mystery of the bizarre 'Namibian dragon bubbles' has been solved. The San people of Namibia believed these rings were bubbles blown by a dragon under the Earth. For years, scientists struggled to identify the cause of phenomenon, with theories ranging from poisonous bushes, carbon dioxide leakage and ant or termite activity.
But, sadly, such fanciful origins have now been ruled out. The circles, ranging from two to 15 metres in diameter - shown in the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia - emerge from the behaviour of grasses in very dry regions. "It's a self-organising mechanism," says Stephan Getzin from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany, who has co-authored a "fairy circles" study.
These circles are not the only mystery being solved thanks to advances in science, however. From the bizarre ocean 'bloop' to the 'alien lights' on Ceres, researchers are now able to find rational reasons for natural phenomena that has baffled experts for years.
Here is WIRED's rundown of three fascinating mysteries solved by science - and one we still haven't cracked yet.
Bloop
Bloop was one of the internet's most widely debated mysteries. An ultra-low frequency sound, detected deep underwear in 1997, it went unexplained for years.
Many theories surfaced about the sound, and many of them (especially those posted online) believed it was an "organic" noise generated by a mysterious sea creature.
It was easy to understand why so many people believed it because the noise came from the deep ocean – which is still 95 per cent unexplored by humans.
Unfortunately for the more imaginative conspiracy theorists, however, the noise is unlikely to have come from a strange and elusive sea creature. The truth, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is much more banal.
It says Bloop is more likely to have been an 'icequake' or cryoseism – an ice shelf cracking and breaking off from a large body of ice.
According to seismologist Robert Dziak, who spoke to WIRED in 2012, the "frequency and time-duration characteristics are consistent, and essentially identical, to icequake signals we've recorded off Antarctica".
"We began an acoustic survey of the Bransfield Strait and Drake Passage in 2005 which lasted until 2010," he said. "It was in analysis of this recent acoustic data that it became clear that the sounds of ice breaking up and cracking is a dominant source of natural sound in the southern ocean."
"Each year there are tens of thousands of what we call 'icequakes' created by the cracking and melting of sea ice and ice calving off glaciers into the ocean, and these signals are very similar in character to the Bloop."
And to quell any further conspiracy, Dziak told WIRED "nearly all" of the sounds recorded by listening stations can be attributed to either geophysical, weather, anthropogenic, ice or animals, so any recordings are unlikely to be from a sea creature.
Sliding Rocks of Death Valley
The sliding rocks of Death Valley have also been subject to much speculation over the years but that speculation was finally put to an end in 2014.
Thousands of rocks were moving across Racetrack Playa, a desert in Death Valley, but they had never been caught in action. Wind and rain were quoted as potential reasons for the movement of the rocks.
But, unexpectedly, the rocks were actually being propelled by a combination of fragile ice panes and light breezes.
A team from industrial design company Interwoof in California placed GPS systems inside the rocks, finding that cracking ice panes were propelling the rocks - very slowly - across the desert.
Ceres 'Alien Lights'
In 2015, some inexplicable bright spots appeared on Ceres, a dwarf planet in our solar system, were pictured. The internet responded by suggesting the lights were of alien origin. Experts alternatively said the bright spots could be ice, salt deposits, volcanic flows or geysers.
But later that year the mystery was solved. A team from the Max Planck Institute found the bright spots were actually consistent with "hydrated magnesium sulfates mixed with dark background material".
In particular, spectral measurements showed these spots contain an inorganic salt full of magnesium, sulphur and oxygen, which is typically found in Epsom salt on Earth.
Examining the floor of the crater Occator, which is around 56 miles (90km) wide and 2.5 miles-deep (4km), astronomers found it contains a pit covered by bright material. This material shows signs of so-called water-ice sublimation that occurs when a material changes from a solid to a gas. This results in haze clouds, which are likely made up of ice or dust particles and originate from inside the crater.
The results implied Ceres was the first known large body in the asteroid belt to 'display comet-like sublimation activity - or creating jets of icy particles.'
The worldwide 'hum'
People from various parts of the world claim to be able to hear a unexplained 'hum'. It is described by many as similar to planes flying overhead or an engine running and is typically a low, distant rumbling or droning noise. For some, the hum starts and stops suddenly while for others it is loud, relentless and life-altering.
The Hum was first documented in the late 1960s, around Bristol, England. It first appeared in the United States in the late 1980s, in Taos, New Mexico. Many have pointed to the electric grid or mobile towers.
In 2004, geoscientist David Deming studied the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), an isolated military compound in Alaska that uses radio waves to study outer space and for testing advanced communication techniques. He studied the possibility of otoacoustic emissions, which are naturally occurring sounds caused by the vibration of hair cells in the ear.
Deming eventually concluded Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio waves (between 3 kHz and 30 kHz) were the most likely culprit. Military powers use land-based and airborne transmitters on these frequencies to communicate with submarines, for example, and radio waves at these frequencies can penetrate up to a solid inch of aluminium.
It's increasingly accepted now that the human body will sometimes experience electromagnetic (EM) energy and interpret it in a way that creates sounds.
In 2012, Glen MacPherson from the University of British Columbia launched The World Hum Map and Database Project. It gathers, documents and maps detailed and anonymous information from people who can hear the Hum.
The latest update of the Hum Map, from June 6, presents roughly 10,000 map and data points and reveals that the mean and median age of Hum hearers is 40.5 years, and 55 per cent of hearers are men.
...and one we still haven't solved
The so called Wow! signal shares more than just an unusual name with Bloop. Like Bloop, Wow is a long-mysterious signal that generated a number of far-fetched conspiracy theories. Unlike Bloop, however, Wow has never been fully xplained.
The signal was detected in 1977 by an astronomer working on a SETI project in Ohio. The signal got its name because its apparent origins – "non-terrestrial and non-Solar System" – were so impressive that the astronomer who recorded them wrote "Wow!" next to the signal on a printout.
The signal lasted 72 seconds – the limit of the telescope recording signals. The shape of the signal also suggests the signal is extraterrestrial because it increases for 36 seconds before reaching a peak and decreasing again.
Despite many attempts, Wow has never been recorded again, though in 2012 the National Geographic Channel sent a package of digital data, containing Twitter messages from the public, towards the source of the signal.
Earlier this year, scientists, led by Professor Antonio Paris, an astronomer at St Petersburg College, in Florida, said they believe the signal was made by a pair of comets passing our planet. These comets produced a cloud of hydrogen gas which released radiation.
The frequency of the signal spotted by in 1977 matches the emissions produced by hydrogen atoms, for example and Professor Paris said comets 266P/Christensen and P/2008 Y2 (Gibbs) would have been in the right part of the sky at the time.
He is now leading a crowdfunding campaign to allow his team to build a 10ft (3 metre) radio telescope to point towards the area in the sky where there these comets will pass by Earth again in 2017 and 2018.
If they detect the same signal again as the comets race past the Earth, then it will prove they are the source of the signal. However, if the comets do not produce a similar signal, then it could strengthen the case for it potentially being produced by alien life forms.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
