Science has no explanations for everything. Great mysteries,
from near-death experiences to ghosts or the sighting of UFOs continue to attract
the curiosity of experts and researchers.
Our planet, life and the reality that surrounds us are full
of great mysteries, enigmas that have attracted the curiosity of entire
civilizations and to which religions, superstition, research and science have
tried to find an explanation, today still unanswered. Surely you, as a good
human on foot, have also asked them. Is there life after death? Are there
spirits? Are UFOs watching us? Is time travel possible? Is the universe
infinite?
Of course, these issues and the partial light that science
has thrown behind them would give to write an encyclopedia. Today we will
briefly focus on some of them and how scientific research has not yet been able
to unravel the mystery around them. These are the biggest unknowns that keep
humanity in suspense today.
The sense of intuition
Whether we call it visceral feelings, a "sixth
sense" or something else, we have all experienced intuition at one time or
another. Psychologists point out that we collect information subconsciously
about the world around us, which leads us to perceive or know information
apparently without knowing exactly how or why we know it. The problem for
science is that cases of intuition are difficult to prove or study.
Recent studies have taken some steps to delve into this
gift, until then considered a spiritual gift or a psychic power especially
linked to women. Psychiatrist Peter C Whybrow recognizes that intuition is a
main component to tune the brain, calling it a reflexive self-knowledge governed
by a preconscious neural network.
This network is informed by previously learned patterns that
help determine moral rules, acquired habits and beliefs. As happens when we
learn to ride a bike, ski or catch a ball, after the repetition, we archive
this information in our brain and we no longer think about the matter,
releasing cognitive space to pay attention to other things. It seems that when
a recognizable pattern emerges, intuition emerges in the light spontaneously.
The existence of telepathy
Around telepathy or "wireless communication"
between two human brains, science has revealed that it is not plausible from
the point of view of physics, since there is no brain section capable of acting
as a transmitter or receiver of distance communications or there is sufficient
electromagnetic power, but the debate and doubts persist around the phenomenon.
The experiments on telepathy have not yielded conclusive
results: the 88 "ganzfeld experiments" carried out between 1974 and
2004 showed a telepathic success rate of 37% -which was repeated at 34 %-,
while the biochemist Rupert Sheldrake of the University Cambridge, conducted a
telepathic experiment between 2003 and 2004 with 571 attempts at telepathic
communication with 63 volunteers and a success rate of 41%.
Another inconclusive experiment was conducted by Montaque
Ullman and Stanley Krippner of the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn (New
York), focused on telepathic transmission during sleep. The results suggested
that in some cases the image that was in the sender's mind appeared in the
recipient's dream.
Roger Penrose, an expert physicist and mathematician in the
Theory of Relativity, has underlined the possible existence of a quantum
biophysics of the mind in a thesis that opens doors for a new field of
research.
However, there is still much to be investigated regarding
telepathy, telekinesia and parallel phenomena such as premonitory dreams.
Ghosts and spirits
From Shakespeare's play "MacBeth" to the NBC
program "Medium", the spirits of the dead have a long presence in
various cultures, religions, artistic creations and folklore. Some people have
even claimed to communicate with deceased living beings or have paranormal
experiences with ghosts.
Science has not been able to solve all the enigmas linked to
the presence of spirits, although it has been able to contribute to the
discussion explanations such as that the infrasound, located between 7 and 19
Hz, can cause pain, fear, irritation and panic in certain individuals, that the
electromagnetic fields - also associated with the presence of ghosts - are due
to the geological conditions of the place or that the movement of the ouija is
due to two phenomena: the predictive tendency of the human brain and the loss
of the sense of agency, as revealed a study carried out by a group of
researchers from the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
The "ideomotor effect" also plays its role is a
psychological phenomenon in which a subject performs supposedly inexplicable
movements such as applied kinesiology, psychography, dowsing, the so-called
"facilitated communication" and the ouija. You can expand the
information about him here.
UFOs
There is no doubt that there are UFOs (unidentified flying
objects); Many people see things in the skies that they cannot identify, from
airplanes to meteors. However, many people have attributed these flashes or
visions with spaceships, UFOs and aliens from other civilizations, generating
numerous material, specialized programs, conspiracy theories and even left for
sightings.
Science has not yet been able to confirm or prove with the
scientific method if any of these mysterious appearances or lights are due to
the arrival of aliens to our inhabited planet, and many of them are linked to
aerial military experiments. In 1977, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space
science and astronomy at Stanford University, sent 2611 questionnaires about
UFO sightings to members of the American Astronomy Society. Of the 1,356
responses, 4.6%) reported having witnessed or recorded unexplained aerial
phenomena, a rate that corresponds to the number of sightings that were never
resolved.
Also within the scientific community itself there is dissent
of positions: a Harvard astronomy professor, Abraham Loeb, recently claimed
that an extraterrestrial spacecraft has surpassed the orbit of Jupiter in the
direction of the Earth and that 'Oumuamua', the space object seen in 2017, it
is a UFO sent by another civilization.
Experiences near death and life after death
People who were once close to death have sometimes reported
on several mystical experiences with different variables - from seeing the
light at the end of the famous tunnel, meeting with loved ones, having
extra-bodily experiences or experiencing a sense of peace.
Skeptics suggest that experiences can be explained as
natural and predictable hallucinations of a traumatized brain, while some
scientists have associated NDEs with the experience induced by the potent
serotonergic, N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a molecule present in the brain
and that we secrete in small doses when we dream and in large at birth and
death.
The DMT is a powerful psychedelic compound - which at the
pharmacological level belongs to the triptamine family - discovered in
ayahuasca - whose consumption is linked to various indigenous and Amazonian
cultures. An investigation conducted at Imperial College London and collected
by the Frontiers in Psychology magazine, has revealed a great similarity of
perceptions among those who have had an NDE and healthy volunteers who have
been given DMT.
On the other hand, a study of people in cardiac arrest in 2015
found that when the heart is dying, it receives signals from the brain that
tries to stay active. The number of signals could be responsible for near-death
experiences, according to the researchers. However, this area remains, despite
the timid advances, one of the great mysteries facing science today.
