From unexplained phenomena to cosmic conundrums, prepare to explore the most chilling mysteries that science has yet to fully explain. While some have theories behind them, others remain completely unexplained, challenging our understanding of reality and leaving us with more questions than answers.
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00:00A mysterious radial signal from a distant constellation defies explanation for more than 30 years.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, where we'll be covering the most haunting issues rooted in science,
00:13with many of them remaining unsolved.
00:15You wake up from your sleep seemingly conscious and alert, but something feels uncanny.
00:21Number 10. Nazca Lines
00:24If you're flying over the Nazca Desert in Peru,
00:27you might catch a glimpse of these monumental lines carved across the landscape.
00:32The Nazca covered these plains with geoglyphs and turned this desert into a space which was inhabited,
00:38dynamic, social, and vibrant through time.
00:42We believe they were created between 500 BC and 500 AD.
00:46The lines joined together to create incredible images, but they can only be seen from the air.
00:51It doesn't take a historian to realize we had no way of flying until centuries after their creation.
00:57These images are impossible to see in their entirety from the ground.
01:01So, the pilots realize they're probably the first people to ever truly witness the scale of this unusual formation.
01:07The desert climate has preserved them wonderfully, allowing researchers to catalog and study them.
01:12Unfortunately, no one has any concrete idea why they exist.
01:17A recent theory from 2025 claims they were used for teaching lessons,
01:22with them being placed alongside pilgrimage routes.
01:25Instead of writing, they may have taught using the landscapes.
01:28And the relief-style geoglyphs were found close to many ancient walking trails,
01:32which, again, supports the idea that these images communicated something to people walking nearby.
01:36And those images usually depicted some kind of scene, like people with livestock or human sacrifice.
01:42So, they could have been conveying information about agriculture.
01:44Number nine, the L-8 Ghost Blimp.
01:47The blimp's popularity took a huge hit because of the Hindenburg disaster in 1937.
01:53Still, once the United States joined World War II, the Navy kept a few blimps on hand.
01:58The flight of the Ghost Blimp began like hundreds of others had.
02:01Just after 6 a.m., a blimp-designated Flight 101 prepared to take off.
02:06In August 1942, only a few months after Pearl Harbor,
02:11an abandoned blimp, the L-8, mysteriously appeared over San Francisco.
02:16It eventually crashed in Daly City, where they found no traces of its crew.
02:21It had departed from Treasure Island earlier that day with two crew on board.
02:25The flight plan called for the 101 to depart Treasure Island, pass over the Golden Gate Bridge,
02:31then head to the Farallon Islands, 25 miles off the coast.
02:34Searchers couldn't find any trace of them.
02:37The gondola was left in good condition, which indicated they didn't plan to vanish,
02:41spurring theories that they fell out by accident.
02:45To this day, no one has any confirmed theories, and we likely never will.
02:49It was as if Cody and Adams had opened the door and simply stepped out into thin air.
02:54Number 8, the afterlife.
02:57What happens after we die?
02:59Your guess is as good as anyone else's, since it's a concept likely impossible to test.
03:04Jerry went into what he describes as the most peaceful outer body experience.
03:10I don't know if it's afterlife.
03:12I don't know what the occurrence was, but I went into a room,
03:17and I got to meet up with a group of people that were part of my past.
03:22We've developed tons of widely different theories, from reincarnation to infinite paradise,
03:27but we can't agree on what happens.
03:29The common elements are the same around the world with different cultures.
03:32We can see the same features in ancient Greece and Rome accounts of near-death experiences.
03:39They include a sense of leaving the physical body,
03:42being in a space of peace and love and sense of well-being.
03:47What about science? Can that solve the problem?
03:50Currently, not really.
03:53Researchers have extensively analyzed near-death instances,
03:56searching for trends and similarities.
03:58Most of them involve out-of-body experiences and people traveling towards a light.
04:03Some even claim they saw dead relatives.
04:06Disappointingly, there's no concrete way to prove what happens.
04:10So for now, the rare first-hand account is the closest we can get.
04:13The best way I can describe it is that my eyes opened, and then they opened again.
04:20And when they opened again, I was in this endless, misty, white room.
04:27Number 7. Yonaguni Monument
04:29The idea of Atlantis, a city lost to the sea, is usually considered science fiction.
04:34Well, off the coast of Japan, a real-life Atlantis may exist.
04:38Deep in the Pacific Ocean lies the Yonaguni Monument.
04:49It was discovered in 1986 by a diver, who found a stunning rock formation that looks man-made.
04:55Some marine geologists think they're monoliths created by people.
04:58A lot of people deny this idea, with the local government refusing to recognize them as significant.
05:13Quite a few geologists claim natural processes would be capable of making the formation.
05:18Similar structures exist in other places, all naturally made.
05:22Despite this, there are a few dedicated individuals convinced it's the remains of an ancient civilization.
05:39Number 6. The Pioneer Anomaly
05:41In the early 1970s, NASA launched spacecraft Pioneer 10 and 11.
05:47Pioneer 10 and 11 were designed to prove that we could get beyond Mars and get beyond the asteroid belt,
05:52have a spacecraft survive, and stay in contact with that spacecraft.
05:56They were the first objects to observe Jupiter and Saturn close up.
06:00They both launched with highly sophisticated tracking technology,
06:03which revealed they weren't behaving as predicted.
06:06Both crafts slowed down unexpectedly, puzzling NASA, which initially had no clue what it was.
06:13And for a long time, it had scientists and engineers totally stumped.
06:17It took an intense day to hunt, a computer simulation, and more than three decades to figure out what was going on.
06:24One prominent theory was that an unknown force was responsible,
06:27potentially coming from a hidden planet or even aliens.
06:30In 2012, they figured out that the sun's light induced an asymmetric temperature gradient.
06:36This causes a backward pressure, thus slowing it down.
06:39Scientists agreed this was a solid explanation.
06:42Therefore, it has since been considered solved.
06:45The Pioneer probes were retired in the 1990s, and we've lost communication with both of them.
06:50But it turns out that they had more in common with the Pioneers in the Wild West than we thought they were packing heat.
06:55Number 5. Honduran fish rain
06:58The idea of it raining fish might seem like fiction, but in Euro-Honduras, it happens as often as four times annually.
07:06They've had festivals to celebrate it since 1998, but it's been happening way longer than that, since at least the 1800s.
07:13The most common scientific explanations are that it's caused by tornadoes and water spouts.
07:19These meteorological solutions all assert the fish are sucked up into the air, then thrown across the region.
07:25The theory breaks down when you learn that the Atlantic Ocean, a probable fish source, is 45 miles away.
07:32So, it's unlikely they'd be carried from there, then dropped on a tiny town inland.
07:36Hence, it remains largely unexplained.
07:39Number 4.
07:40The Dancing Plague
07:41People love to dance, but it's rare to see a whole village dancing.
07:45It's even rarer for them to dance constantly for weeks, with some dying of exhaustion.
07:51Rare, but not impossible, as proven by the infamous 1518 Dancing Plague of Stroudsburg in the Holy Roman Empire.
07:59Within a week, another 34 people were dancing.
08:02Within a month, 400, all dancing relentlessly without music or song.
08:07It started with one woman, then spread to most of the village.
08:10It eventually stopped after dancers were taken to a shrine, with prayer ending the craze.
08:16The most accepted theory is that it was mass psychosis caused by immense stress.
08:21The citizens had recently experienced war, famine, and numerous diseases, major contributions to the phenomenon.
08:27Most evidence shows that the Dancing Plague was a kind of cultural contagion.
08:32A mass hysteria triggered when life got too tough, and the people just wanted to dance and lose their minds a bit.
08:39Number 3.
08:40Sleep Paralysis
08:41Now and again, you may wake up in the middle of the night, unable to move.
08:46You might have hallucinations during your paralysis, where you see a threatening presence on top of you or beside your bed.
08:52There's a crushing sensation in your chest, like you can't breathe.
08:55You might feel like you're floating above your body and looking down on yourself.
08:58You can hear and see, but you're physically paralyzed.
09:02This may even be accompanied by haunting hallucinations, which many compare to a demonic presence.
09:08This is the terrifying phenomenon of sleep paralysis.
09:12Even though it's relatively short, it's frightening.
09:14The specific cause is unclear, but we have a mild understanding of it.
09:18It's not something that's long-lasting, but it feels very terrifying to the patient.
09:24It happens when you become conscious during REM sleep, but your body remains paralyzed.
09:29Things we don't understand include what makes people more susceptible, alongside why some people have terrifying hallucinations, but others don't.
09:37So it's not a total mystery, but the details are still under investigation.
09:41It's really, really difficult.
09:42If you've ever experienced it, it can be terrifying, and it's not in your mind.
09:46It's an actual event.
09:47Number 2.
09:48The WOW Signal
09:49In 1997, a mysterious radio signal was detected by the Big Ear Telescope at Ohio State University.
09:56One possibility is that it really was a signal from deep space coming from some other society.
10:01It was discovered by Jerry R. Eamon, who was so amazed he wrote WOW on the printout, giving the signal its name.
10:08It came from Sagittarius, lasting 72 seconds in total.
10:12We've been unable to detect it since.
10:14Scientists wanted to see if they could find it again.
10:16They were able to narrow down the possible sources to somewhere in the constellation Sagittarius, possibly near the M55 star cluster, but never detected it again.
10:24Many consider it to be an alien signal, including Eamon himself.
10:28One team claims a comet caused the signal, but astronomers didn't agree, since the telescope wasn't pointed at one.
10:35In 2024, another report said a rare space event was responsible.
10:40It could also just be a human signal, but we have no clue what.
10:44Everybody was looking for aliens. For the most part, everybody's looking for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source, and I wanted to approach this from a natural phenomenon.
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11:081. The Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter
11:14Since there are billions of stars similar to the Sun, even with a low probability of life, the galaxy should be teeming with aliens.
11:23So why, apparently, isn't it?
11:25As surprising as the so-called Great Silence may seem, there's a reason for it. We just don't know what it is.
11:32This is the Fermi Paradox. On its own, it's not scary, but a proposed solution, the Great Filter, is harrowing. It says there's a large obstacle stopping life from colonizing the stars.
11:45That Great Filter may be ahead of us. Maybe plenty of planets spawn 21st century-style civilizations, but almost all go extinct or fall quiet before revealing themselves to the galaxy.
11:56It's unclear if humans have overcome it. If it's behind us, then humans have a bright future to look forward to. If it's ahead of us, then we're doomed.
12:05Either way, both are terrifying, and if the filter exists, then we may genuinely be entirely alone.
12:12It would mean that our future is out of the hands of statistics. It's our own to screw up or to seize.
12:21What mystery keeps you awake at night the most? Let us know in the comments below.
12:26But paradoxically, in our seas and our oceans far from sight, we can only find a small amount of the plastic waste that we produce.