A viral carousel lists “mysteries of the world that were never solved”: the Wow! signal, the lost Roanoke colony, D.B. Cooper, Dyatlov Pass and the Voynich manuscript. All five are real. But “never solved” is not quite accurate anymore, because several now have serious, evidence-based explanations.
On August 15, 1977, Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope recorded a strong, narrow burst near 1420 MHz, the natural frequency of hydrogen. Astronomer Jerry Ehman circled it on a printout and wrote “Wow!” It lasted about 72 seconds, the time the source took to drift through the telescope’s beam, and it never repeated. In 2024, researchers with the Arecibo Wow! project in Puerto Rico proposed a natural cause: a cold hydrogen cloud suddenly brightened by a flare from a magnetar. It is a hypothesis and is not yet confirmed, but it needs no aliens.
In February 1959, nine experienced hikers died in Russia’s northern Urals after leaving their tent, which had been cut open from inside, in brutal cold. Theories ranged from secret weapons to the Yeti. In 2020 Russian prosecutors concluded that an avalanche and hypothermia were to blame, and a 2021 study in Communications Earth & Environment showed how a small, delayed slab avalanche could have released above the tent and caused the injuries found. Not everyone is convinced, but the avalanche explanation has solid physics behind it.
D.B. Cooper is still open in every sense. On November 24, 1971, a man hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland, collected $200,000 and parachutes in Seattle, then jumped into the night. In 1980 a boy found $5,800 of the ransom money on the Columbia River’s Tena Bar. In 2016 the FBI redirected the case’s resources without ever identifying him.
Roanoke’s English colonists vanished after 1587, leaving the word “CROATOAN” carved on a post. Many historians think they joined nearby Indigenous communities. Carbon dating has placed the Voynich manuscript’s parchment between 1404 and 1438, but its text remains unread. Some mysteries are shrinking. Others are simply waiting for better evidence.
Sources and further reading
- Arecibo Wow! I: An astrophysical explanation for the Wow! signal (arXiv, 2024)
- Science News: The Wow! signal may finally have a source
- Gaume & Puzrin, Communications Earth & Environment (2021)
- FBI: D.B. Cooper hijacking
- University of Arizona: Age of the Voynich manuscript
- Topic lead (not copied): https://www.instagram.com/p/DfeQHlPDsAZ/
