Secret Code Of Rhode Island’s Founder

Roger Williams was the founder of Rhode Island, and during the last years of his life, he filled the margins of a book, An Essay Towards the Reconciling of Differences Among Christians, with a series of notes on various subjects.

Unfortunately, he invented his own set of symbols that no one understood, so the 300-year-old text couldn’t be deciphered by anyone.

Struggling faculty members opened up the challenge of decoding the book to students. A group of undergraduates, led by a math major, undertook a systematic analysis of the symbols.

Initial statistical analysis was unsuccessful, but one of the students figured out that Williams had based his codes on the shorthand he’d learned as a court stenographer in England.

This new insight led to a full decoding of the writing, which apparently covers historical geography, medicine, and infant baptism.

The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight MH370

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is the kind of mystery that’s not supposed to be possible anymore.

The Information Age is also the age of surveillance, of interconnectedness, of cloud computing, of GPS satellites, of intelligence agencies that can monitor terrorists from space or call in a drone strike from a control console on the other side of the world.

But so far, all the technological eyes and ears of the world have failed to find the missing plane. The Boeing 777 jetliner, with 239 people aboard, silently vanished early Saturday morning on its way to China, disappearing from radar so suddenly and inexplicably that it might as well have flown into another dimension.

As the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner continues, The Post's Joel Achenbach explains several possible scenarios for what could have happened and why this case is puzzling experts.

As the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner continues, The Post's Joel Achenbach explains several possible scenarios for what could have happened and why this case is puzzling experts.

The civilian and military assets of multiple nations, including the United States, are being devoted to the search for wreckage on both sides of the Malay Peninsula, in the Gulf of Thailand and the Strait of Malacca. A Colorado commercial satellite firm, DigitalGlobe, is crowdsourcing the hunt by asking volunteers to scan images for signs of the plane.

But the satellite coverage of the planet isn’t as complete as some people might assume.

“Despite the impression that people get when they use Bing and Google Earth and Google Maps, those high-resolution images are still few and far between,” said John Amos, president of SkyTruth, a nonprofit organization that uses such images to engage the public on environmental issues.

The pilots of Flight MH370 never communicated distress. No one activated an SOS signal. No debris or fuel slick has been found. The plane’s flight recorders may be on the seafloor, buried in sand.

Scenarios abound. Did the plane disintegrate at 35,000 feet from a mechanical failure and sudden decompression? Did the pilot commit suicide by flying it straight down into the sea? Did terrorists blow it up? Did a passenger plant a bomb so that his family would collect life insurance? Was the plane shot down by a jumpy military? Could it have crash-landed in a jungle somewhere, where the passengers are now fighting to survive?

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From a long list of possibilities that range from the unlikely to the extremely far-fetched, the truth about what happened to Flight MH370 will probably emerge eventually. For now, it’s the mystery of the year — and a source of immense anguish for the families of the missing passengers and crew.

There were media reports Tuesday, quoting Malaysia’s air force chief, Gen. Rodzali Daud, saying that military radar picked up the plane Saturday flying far off-course, to the west, hundreds of miles from its scheduled flight path. That would suggest foul play — for example, a cockpit intrusion and forced diversion — if the reports hold up. But these reports still do not reveal where the plane is, whether it crashed on land or at sea, or is intact somewhere.

“As we enter into Day 4, the aircraft is yet to be found,” Malaysia Airlines said Tuesday in the company’s 11th media update.

The airline noted reports that the plane may have changed direction. “All angles are being looked at,” the airline said. “We are not ruling out any possibilities.”

“I can’t think of an airplane getting lost for a long period of time — not a modern, regular airliner with all the communications equipment,” said San Diego-based aviation consultant Hans Weber. “Sometimes a small plane disappears and it’s not found for a small time, but this is a completely different matter.”

One possibility, he said, is that an engine malfunction sent a turbine disk through the plane’s fuselage and caused an instant, catastrophic decompression. But that is very rare during the cruising portion of a flight and would not explain the lack of debris on the sea surface.

The plane had a transponder to signal where it was flying, but the signal vanished over the Gulf of Thailand. Someone could have turned it off intentionally and then diverted the plane to the west, Weber said. He said there was enough fuel aboard to fly at least 1,800 miles. “That airplane could have landed somewhere,” he said. But he acknowledged that this is extremely unlikely, because word of the secret landing would surely have gotten out by now.

“This whole thing is a series of puzzles and, frankly, red herrings,” said Washington-based aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia of Teal Group.

Aboulafia expects the wreckage to be found relatively soon.

“This is a big jet. This is a wide-body,” he said. “That means a lot of structure, a lot of components, a lot of luggage, a lot of fuel. You can’t make it all go away, even if you hit perpendicularly. It doesn’t all go straight, sucked into the seabed. It’s going to be found.”

The case has similarities to that of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic after leaving Rio de Janeiro, killing all 228 people aboard, in 2009. But in that case, when airspeed measurements failed and led pilots to put the plane into a stall, the computers on the plane sent error messages to computers on land before the plane disappeared. Wreckage on the sea surface was spotted five days after the crash, and most of the bodies were eventually recovered, though it took two years for the black-box flight recorder to be retrieved from the seafloor.

The lack of a solid explanation for the Malaysia Airlines disappearance has spawned rampant speculation. Two Iranian passengers traveling on the plane with stolen passports do not appear to have any connection to terrorist groups, intelligence officials have told reporters.

Weber, the aviation consultant, said a case such as this captures our attention in part because we like to think such things can’t happen. “We like to think that we’re in control. That’s our culture,” Weber said. “Not knowing means you’re not in control. That’s hard for us to take.”

The missing plane may be a mystery, but the search for answers is likely to produce some sooner rather than later. Space aliens don’t abduct Boeing jetliners. Anyone wondering whether there’s the equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle off the coast of Southeast Asia should remember that the Bermuda Triangle is a myth.

The plane is out there somewhere.

Sergei Tretyakov, Russian Double Agent

Sergei Tretyakov was a Russian spy who defected to the United States in October 2000. During his time in Russia, Tretyakov was a colonel in the Russian intelligence service (S.V.R.) and oversaw covert operations in New York City and at the United Nations.

Starting in 1997, Tretyakov became a double agent and passed secrets to the Americans. After moving to the United States, he was given a package worth $2 million and placed in the Witness Protection Program.

In 2008, Tretyakov provided information about the SVR. He said that the Russian intelligence program is just as active today as ever. Tretyakov warned that the world should “wake up” to the danger.

He told NPR that his “defection was a major failure of the Russian intelligence.” Some of his revelations include the suggestion that Eldar Kouliev was an SVR spy.

He said that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, was influenced by Russia, along with Canadian Alex Kindy.

According to Tretyakov, the KGB fabricated the nuclear winter story to stop the development of the Pershing missiles in Europe.

He said that the SVR developed a list of influential political figures that were assassinated in order to bring Vladimir Putin to power.

He also recounted a conversation in which a man (Vladimir K. Dmitriev) discussed privately owned nuclear weapons.

Sergei Tretyakov also exposed the Russian warfare program known as Active Measures. The program uses misinformation, propaganda, hoaxes, and political persecution to influence world events.

Active Measures has been called the “heart and soul of Soviet intelligence,” and is being used to discredit the United States.

Some have speculated that Russia orchestrated the Edward Snowden media leak in order to create anger in the United States and Europe, specifically Germany.

On June 13, 2010, Sergei Tretyakov died at his house in the United States. The medical examiner reported that he suffocated after choking on a piece of meat.

However, rumors persist that he was assassinated by the SVR.

Sidney Gottlieb, CIA "Black Sorcerer"

In 1918, Sidney Gottlieb was born in New York under the name of Joseph Scheider. He received a PhD in chemistry from Caltech and became an expert on lethal poisons.

In 1951, Gottlieb joined the CIA and was given a job on the top secret biological warfare program MKULTRA. Project MKULTRA was a now-infamous series of experiments used to study human mind control and modification.

During the project, Gottlieb organized experiments in which humans were used as guinea pigs. For this reason, he was given the nicknames “Black Sorcerer” and “Dirty Trickster.”

Gottlieb helped organize Operation Midnight Climax, which was a program where the CIA purchased houses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York in order to watch people.

For the project, the CIA hired a large group of prostitutes that lured subjects back to a house, drugged them, and then had sex while Gottlieb and others observed from behind two-way mirrors. The experiments gave results in sexual blackmail, surveillance, and mind-altering drugs.

Gottlieb was also involved with the Cuban Project, in which he developed ideas to poison Fidel Castro.

During his career, Gottlieb worked for Lockheed, DARPA, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence.

In one incident, he attempted to contaminate Iraq’s General Abdul Karim Qassim’s handkerchief with botulinum.

He was also involved with the Phoenix Program, in which the U.S. performed mind control experiments on the Vietcong during the Vietnam War.

In 1960, he played a role in America’s attempt to kill the Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba.

On November 28, 1953, biological warfare specialist Frank Olson died under mysterious circumstances while working under Sidney Gottlieb.

Alexander Solonik, Infamous Russian Assassins In History

In 1960, Alexander Solonik was born in Kurgan, Russia. In the late 1980s, he was arrested for rape and sent to prison.

In jail, he became targeted for death due to his association with the police. However, Solonik fought off multiple attacks and earned the respect of his fellow inmates.

After escaping from prison in April 1990, Solonik became one of the most infamous Russian assassins in history.

He murdered a large number of organized crime figures and gained the nicknames “Alexander the Great” and “Superkiller.”

The exact number of people Solonik murdered is a mystery, along with much of the details surrounding his life.

In the early 1990s, he gained a reputation for being a lethal contract killer who had the ability to shoot ambidextrously.

Solonik confessed to killing a large number of criminals, including Viktor Nikiforov, Valery Dlugach, Vladislav Vinner, and Andrey Rura.

In 1994, he was arrested at Moscow’s Petrovsky marketplace. He was taken to Detention Center 1 in Moscow, but eventually escaped.

Solonik fled to Greece and set up a criminal organization in the area. He purchased a large amount of real estate in Athens and was placed on Russia’s Top 10 Most Wanted list.

In 1997, a Greek newspaper reported that a Russian mafia boss had been found dead 15 miles from Athens.

The man had been strangled to death and it was concluded that the corpse was Alexander Solonik, despite the fact that his fingerprints in the Interpol database were not accurate.

The Greek authorities insisted that the body was not Solonik. However, he was officially declared dead.

He’s never been heard from since, and the true influence of Solonik’s criminal network during the mid-1990s remains unknown.

Arnold Paole, Famous Examples of Vampires

In the early 18th century, people in southeastern Europe started to believe in the existence of vampires. They were seen as a major problem to society, especially in Transylvania.

People took to digging up graves and staking dead bodies that were deemed to be vampires. Some individuals even reported seeing their dead relatives walking the streets and attacking living people.

The panic spread around Europe, and many publications speculated on the phenomenon.

Two of the most famous examples of vampires from this time are Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole.

In 1726, Arnold Paole died in the village of Meduegna, which was near the Morava River.

Immediately after his death, people started seeing his undead body. The situation caused panic in Serbia and officials called for the help of two Austrian military doctors, Glaser and Flückinger.

The investigation and report produced by Flückinger was named Visum et Repertum and confirmed the existence of vampires.

The report said that Arnold Paole’s dead body was responsible for the deaths of four separate people. His corpse was dug up and found to be “quite complete and undecayed, with fresh blood from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.”

Based on this, it was concluded that Paole was a vampire. His heart was staked and his body burned. Five years after the initial outbreak, the deaths of 17 people were attributed to Paole and vampirism.

His story was published in the London Journal on March 11, 1732, in which it was proclaimed that vampires were drinking the blood of the living in Hungary.

Karl Koecher, CIA Double Agent

In 1934, Karl Koecher was born in Czechoslovakia. When he was 28, Koecher joined the Czech intelligence agency.

In the mid-1960s, he moved to the United States and received a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University.

Koecher then obtained a position with the CIA and became a spy for the USSR. He is one of only a few people to have penetrated the CIA for the Soviet Union. A large percentage of information on his life has never been revealed.

It is unclear what tipped the CIA off that Koecher was a double agent, but in 1984 he was arrested and accused of being a spy.

The CIA attempted to make him turn against the USSR, but Koecher was eventually deemed to be unreliable.

After the FBI made mistakes in his case, Koecher was set free. On February 11, 1986, he was part of a spy exchange that involved Anatoly Shcharansky.

Upon his return to Czechoslovakia, Koecher was named a hero and given a job with the government.

In 1989, it was suggested that Koecher was involved with the Velvet Revolution, but he denied the claims.

After the fall of communism in the USSR, little information was published on his life. However, he has been accused of being connected to the CIA.

It was alleged that Koecher was involved in a defrauding scheme that provided Mohammed Al-Fayed with false documents that supported the conspiracy surrounding the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.

Who's Wolf Messing, Teacher For The KGB!

In 1899, Wolf Messing was born in the town of Góra Kalwaria, which is located 25 kilometers (15 mi) southeast of Warsaw, Poland.

As a teenager, Messing claimed to be a psychic. He could alter people’s perceptions and predict future outcomes based on mental telepathy and body language clues.

During his shows, Messing would enter a trance-like state and attempt to find hidden objects.

He performed in front of large crowds and became famous after World War II. Messing even caught the attention of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.

In 1937, Wolf Messing predicted that Adolf Hitler would die if he ever threatened Russia and “turned toward the East.”

The message angered Hitler and caused Messing to flee to Russia, where he continued to perform his act.

As the story goes, Messing was then forced to prove his psychic ability for Stalin by convincing a bank teller to give him cash with nothing more than a blank piece of paper.

After the successful demonstration, Messing became a teacher for the KGB.

Messing’s life was chronicled in an autobiography titled About Myself.

One quote from the book says, “My ability to see the future may seem to contradict the materialist understanding of the world.

But there is not a particle of the unknowable or supernatural about precognition.” Wolf Messing died in 1974.

Since that time, many facts attributed to his life have been questioned and deemed unsubstantiated by historical references—a fact which has only contributed to his mystery.

The Pimlico Poisoning Mystery

On the January 1, 1886, Thomas Edwin Bartlett was found dead at his home in Pimlico in the center of London.

He had been ill for some time, but when doctors performed a post-mortem, they discovered a large quantity of chloroform in his stomach and intestines.

They declared this the cause of his death, and blame fell on his wife Adelaide Bartlett.

There was a fair amount of circumstantial evidence against Adelaide. Her tutor (and probable lover) George Dyson confirmed that he had bought chloroform from a chemist on Adelaide’s behalf.

She had admitted her intention to us the chemical to knock out her husband should he try to claim his “marital rights.”

Adelaide apparently avoided sex due to her husband’s mental instability and the horrendous stink from his chronic gum disease.

The case went to trial and she was acquitted. The jury believed that no convincing case had been made about how she might have been able to murder her husband.

There were no burns to his throat, which would’ve been inevitable had he been forced to swallow.

After the trial, famed doctor Sir James Paget said, “Now that she has been acquitted for murder and cannot be tried again, she should tell us in the interest of science how she did it!”

History is silent on what became of Adelaide after the trial, and the passage of time has also failed to solve the mystery of how Thomas Bartlett met his fate.

The Origin Of The London Stone Mystery

The London Stone, also known as the Stone of Brutus, is an unassuming piece of history. It’s located at 111 Cannon Street in London, behind a grate in the wall of a disused office building.

You can see its resting place on Google Street View, directly underneath a “Shop To Let” sign. It’s an extremely understated home for an object that folklore deems to be necessary to London’s very survival.

The stone has been in London for thousands of years. Legend says it used to form part of an altar built by Brutus the Trojan, mythical founder of the city.

Poet William Blake portrayed it as a site of pagan sacrifice. Sir Christopher Wren suggested it may have been used by the Romans as the starting point for measuring distances from London, as it was located in the center of the city.

It’s been mentioned by Shakespeare and Dickens. A proverb about the stone says “So long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.”

It’s been moved many times, and survived disasters including the Great Fire and the Blitz.

Until recently, it was under the charge of Chris Cheek, who happened to run the sports shop in 111 Cannon Street’s lower floor.

The best view of the stone was from inside the shop, through a glass window just below the cricket equipment.

This was arguable quite fitting because understatement and cricket are about as English as anything can be.

As the To Let sign from Google Maps indicates, that shop is no longer open.

The future of the stone is uncertain, and it may well be moved to a museum, at least temporarily.

The building is due for demolition, so it can’t stay where it is.

Chris Cheek thinks the mystery of the stone’s origin is part of its appeal, saying “If it doesn’t have a beginning, then perhaps it doesn’t have an end either.”

The Natural History Museum Mystery Bug

London’s Natural History Museum has 28 million bugs on record, so when museum entomologist Max Barclay found one hanging around in the building’s grounds, he decided to check what it was.

It turned out to be a mystery—there was no record of where the insect had come from or what it was.

The creature’s closest relative was American, the box elder bug, though a similar specimen had also been found on the Mediterranean coast of France.

“I was surprised to be confronted by an unidentifiable species while having a sandwich in the museum’s garden,” Barclay said.

He suggested two explanations, that it may be a similar species called roeselii that’s started feasting on a different type of tree, or it might not be roeselii.

We suppose two options covers all bases, at least.

Mystery, Who Owns Witanhurst Mansion?

The most modern mystery on this list involves Witanhurst Mansion, which is the second largest home in London after Buckingham Palace.

While we know who owns the Queen’s residence (it’s our shape-shifting lizard overlords), no one has any idea which lucky person is in possession of number two.

The 65-bedroom mansion was purchased for 50 million pounds (a little over $80 million) back in 2008.

Yet the purchase was made by an offshore company, Safran Holdings, and the owners of that organization are a closely guarded secret.

Whoever the owners are, they have since almost doubled the size of the building.

Underground, they’re building a 20 meter (70ft) swimming pool, a spa, a cinema, and a parking lot with 24 spaces.

Their expenditure on building work has cost as much as they paid for the place.

One person that isn’t the owner is Russia’s richest woman, Elena Baturina. She successfully sued British newspaper the Sunday Times for libel when they suggested she was the one splashing out.

Butarina claimed the “blatant lie” caused a backlash in the press in her home country.

We’d like to make it absolutely clear we make no claims whatsoever as to what she may or may not have purchased with her payout from the suit.

The St. Pancras Walrus 44,000 Bodies Buried Mystery

“Who is the walrus?” is no longer just a question of interest to Beatles fans.

Archaeologists in London were excavating the graveyard of St. Pancras Old Church this past July, in preparation for the construction of a rail terminal.

The area had been used for mass graves during the first half of the 19th century. A number of epidemics meant 44,000 bodies were buried there from 1822 to 1854, yet the contents of one coffin were particularly unusual.

Scientists opened up the coffin to find the remains of eight people—and a walrus. No one knows how the sizable beast got to London.

Historians think it was likely dissected by medical students, yet there are no records of such a large and exotic animal in the city at the time.

Given that it would have needed to have been shipped from the Arctic, and the specimen was 4 meters (13 ft) long, it’s surprising that it didn’t make a stir.

To most people around at that time, walruses were essentially sea monsters.

The Mystery of Edmund Godfrey Death

Edmund Berry Godfrey, an English magistrate, was found dead in 1678. Though three men were convicted of his murder and hanged, many historians believe they may have been entirely innocent.

The late 17th century was a time of great religious tension in England. King Charles II was on the throne but had no children. First in line was Charles’s brother James, the Duke of York.

Yet Charles was Protestant, and James was Catholic. England’s Protestants weren’t keen on the idea of a Catholic taking power, so a man named Titus Oates forged a plan known as the Popish Plot.

Oates claimed—falsely—to have evidence that Catholics were planning to assassinate Charles in order to bring James into power.

Godfrey was dragged into the affair when Oates presented him with this “evidence.” Godfrey was a poor choice, as he had some Catholic sympathy and so failed to do much about the accusation.

Yet the strain of dealing with the case caused him to have a breakdown at the start of October 1678. He disappeared on October 12 that year, reportedly a very unhappy man.

Godfrey was found on October 17, strangled in a ditch. His own sword was sticking out of his back. A silversmith named Miles Prance claimed he’d witnessed Godfrey being strangled under the watch of Catholic priests—this was a claim many were happy to use to their political advantage. Prance later admitted to lying, and many had doubted him in the first place.

In 1682, three men were tried for libel for suggesting that Godfrey had committed suicide. That put anyone off talking about the issue until 1685, when King Charles died and James took power. James ordered another investigation, and suicide became the official story.

Subsequent historians have suggested Titus Oates and his co-conspirators may have killed Godfrey themselves. One person unrelated to the conspiracies, the Earl of Pembroke, has been suggested as a possible culprit.

Pembroke was a violent aristocrat that Godfrey had convicted of murder, a conviction the House of Lords later overturned. Truly, no one knows for certain, and this one’s going to remain forever unsolved.

The Possibly Cannibalistic Susquehannocks

The Susquehannocks were a Native American tribe who were given a very bad reputation by European settlers.

Depicted as brutal cannibals, the Susequehannocks were accused of the massacre of their neighbors, the Shenks Ferry people.

April Beisaw, an anthropologist at Vassar College, thought the tribe might have had an unfair reputation for the last few hundred years, so she decided to check if any massacre actually happened.

With the help of two undergraduates, she set out to examine as much evidence as was available.

After studying over 2,000 artifacts from the area and records at several museums, she discovered no evidence that violence of any kind occurred between the two tribes.

The legend probably served as useful ammunition for settlers who actually did slaughter members of the Susquehannock tribe.

She hopes her work will help “rewrite history” for the natives.

Darwin’s Dilemma, The Mystery of The Cambrian Explosion

Darwin’s Dilemma, the mystery of the Cambrian Explosion, refers to a period of time during which a diverse range of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record around 500 million years ago.

Darwin described it as “inexplicable,” but held onto hope that future scientists would figure it out.

Creationists have often leapt onto this particular detail as evidence against evolution.

A study published this September by Australian scientists claims to have discovered an explanation for the events, often called “Evolution’s Big Bang.”

The scientists used advanced mathematical modeling and a detailed analysis of the fossil record to reason that a slightly faster rate of evolution at the time would be enough to account for the apparently sudden appearance (sudden, in geological terms, meaning over tens of millions of years).

People had previously believed the rate of evolution required was much faster.

The necessary rate they calculated is “perfectly consistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution,” according to the study.

Toothed Shark’s Teeth Spiral Mystery Solved

Helicoprion is a bizarre species of sharklike fish with a distinctive spiral jaw. Fossils were first discovered in 1899, but the only part of it that fossilized was the strange spiral jaw.

Since then, scientists have made numerous guesses at where this swirl of razor-sharp teeth belonged on the body of the creature, ranging from its top jaw, bottom jaw, tail, to pretty much anywhere you can think of.

If you do an image search for “helicoprion,” almost all of the pictures you’ll find depict the spiral of teeth curling downwards from the bottom jaw, like a circular saw.

Scientists have now been able to use an X-Ray CT scanner to take high-resolution images of Helicoprion fossils and produce a 3-D model of its skull.

They’ve found that it would have been located entirely inside the mouth, acting as a “tooth factory” at the back of the lower jaw and wouldn’t stick out.

While the mystery is now solved, 100 years of speculation has left us with plenty of illustrations of what could have been one of nature’s most comical creations.

Why Do Corals Pulsate?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was one of the earliest scientists to study corals in the 19th century.

One of the mysteries that has endured since then is why some of them pulsate. This movement, in which their flowerlike heads open and close, requires a lot of energy, so there must be a good reason for it.

In jellyfish, the only other creature that pulsates in the same way, it’s used for movement and catching prey, but corals do neither of those things.

Scientists using infrared cameras found that the corals pulsate 95 percent of the time, resting only for about half an hour in the afternoon.

By using a special imaging device that allowed researchers to see the movement of water down to individual particles, scientists discovered that the movement stops waste water from building up around the corals.

They also found that the oxygen levels in the water around corals were kept low by the movement, increasing the efficiency of photosynthesis in algae that the corals use for food.

The Way The Earth’s Core Spins

In 1692, Edmond Halley, of Halley’s Comet fame, first discovered that the Earth’s geomagnetic field drifted westward.

He concluded that Earth must have two cores spinning at different speeds, but no one knew why.

Science later realized that the Earth’s inner core of solid iron (about the size of the moon) spins eastward, but the outer core of liquid iron rotates in the opposite direction—but at a slower pace.

The relationship between the two remained a mystery, however.

This year, scientists at Leeds University were able to use a supercomputer to simulate this relationship 100 times more accurately than ever before.

They found the difference can be explained in terms of equal and opposite action (Newton’s Third Law of Motion).

The magnetic field pushes one way on the outer core and the opposite way on the inner core, causing the differing rotations.

Do Women Blush In The Dark?

“The question whether young women blush in the dark is a very difficult one,” wrote 18th-century German scholar Georg Lictenberg.

While it seems a trivial question, it was also impossible to answer.

In the dark, no one can see the blushing. Turn on the light, and it’s no longer dark. Charles Darwin even offered up a comment on the problem (he reckoned women probably could blush in the dark).

Technology has come to humanity’s aid in providing an answer.

Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands collaborated on an experiment in which they pointed a heat-sensitive camera at a woman in a dark room and asked her to blush.

When she claimed to be blushing (they picked someone who could do it at will), there was more heat coming from her cheeks, showing that blood had rushed to the surface.

So it turns out that women can blush in the dark. Keep smashing those boundaries, science!