5 Mysteries Science Created and Solved

Sometimes science creates a mystery, and it can be very difficult to solve! Join Hank for a fun new episode of SciShow about five mysteries started and later solved by science. Let's go!

Hosted by: Hank Green

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[Cheesybiscuit]

I can't express how much I love that they named it Higgs Bison 😂

[Living_Life]

It’s pretty dope that some ancient artist painting the world around them on the wall of a cave would help humans living tens of thousands of years later see the world through their eyes and answer questions that they had no idea would be asked. That artist’s hobby had become an accidental time capsule.

[Master_Therion]

1:30 lol "Higgs Bison"
Wait, if the Higgs Boson is the "god particle" does that make the Higgs Bison the "holy cow?"

[rebeccaallsopp]

Fun fact - the process of concretion which lead to the formation of the Klerksdorp spheres is similar to how kidney stones and bladder stones form! That's why they also often look unnaturally round with perfect concentric layers

[fernbedek]

Palaeontologists still taste fossils plenty. The lick test is well respected for separating fossils from rocks.

[unsounddestroy]

I love how cavemen helped solve a mystery thousands of years in the future. Science.

[ravencloud]

I love that some victorian thought they were getting to the end of science
then they found dinosaurs and they were like wtf

[rickseiden]

6:12 "How are these communities surviving?"

Say it with me, "Life, uh, finds a way."

[apathetic_aesthetics]

Auroch: "Steppe Bison, what are you doing?"

And that, kids, is how the ancestor of European Bison came to be.

[adriennefloreen]

Whatever scientist first typed "Higgs Bison" probably spent the next few hours on the ground rolling in laughter thinking he made the best science pun ever, then a few days later when every YouTuber was repeating it it happened to him again. That's brilliant. Why can you say Arctic but say Antartica instead of Antarctica?

[GrahamJyc]

Imagine being so strong that you can survive being frozen and thawed multiple times without a care in the world and don't need to eat anything but AIR.

That's pretty badass!

[marcochimio]

When I was a postdoc in biological chemistry at Berkeley, one of the professors, the late great Allan Wilson (his team discovered the Mitochondria Eve), had stored samples of both quagga (an extinct zebra species) and mammoth in our research building's walk-in freezer (yes, freezer, not fridge). A fellow researcher (a grad student) and I used to joke about sneaking in one night, taking a sample of the mammoth, cooking it, and then claiming to be the only people on earth to know that taste of mammoth. Obviously, we never did it, but it was fun to fantasize about.

[nicklasbentsen]

I can never remember where I got this quote from. but it has remained with me. Science is not just about finding answers, but also finding new questions

[DavidBeddard]

Klerksdorp Spheres: Anyone else looking at those and seeing Cricket balls? I wonder if they inspired Douglas Adams to write that every intelligent species in the universe has created a variant of the game Cricket.

EDIT: I was getting muddled up with Gin & Tonic. Earth was the only planet to think that turning the events of an attempted galactic massacre by the inhabitants of the planet Krikkit into a game. Clearly I'm due a re-read!

[hugoalvord]

Yo we solved Tanystropheus!!! I love that guy, seeing him in dinosaur safari was crazy. Neck so long, hanging over the water like a stork. I wish they'd remake the game with updated portrayals of the Beasts

[Soy_boi]

I love that Higgs bison may just be ancient beefaloo.

[xINVISIGOTHx]

1:48 what are you doing, steppe bison?

[JarrodCoombes]

"We should avoid eating the discoveries" Words to live by.

[JustMeJH]

Fascinating! If there are more stories like this, I’d love to see a sequel!

[someguy]

The Martian blueberries are interesting, studied them briefly while at University doing a Planetary geology course. The main 2 hypothesis regarding their formation are, firstly concretions like the stones in this video, possibly formed from volcanic fluids or periodic seasonal melt of sub surface ice, the issue is that none of them have any evidence (at least as of 2020) of concentric rings, indicative of concretions, also they are only found (so far by various Mars missions, including ones that have drilled a few ft in to the regolith and studied cliff faces) on the very surface of the planet, they also appear to be concentrated in long elliptical shapes on the surface, some scientists think they may be melted blebs of meteorite that intercepted the planet at a very low angle and heated up in the atmosphere for a long period of time allowing high temperatures in such a thin atmosphere, they also only seem to be a very limited range in diameter which some papers say may be because the melted meteorite would break apart preferably to a size somewhere between 0.5 and 2 cm due to the atmosphere/air resistance, surface tension of the blebs and instability at greater diameters when spinning. Not to mention that a few similar sized objects appear to have hit a Mars Rover from above leaving dents and one apparent blueberry was seen on top of the Rover by its on board camer. A video on this would be cool. (Currently don't have access to the papers I read, I will add references if I can find them again, I know, bad science practices, hopefully have them saved somewhere on my old Laptop)