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• Gaze shifting and mental effortplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigGaze shifting and mental effort
  
  When someone is asked a perplexing question, there's a good chance they will spontaneously shift their gaze - either upwards, or to the side.
  
  This seemingly ubiquitous cross-cultural behaviour is currently unexplained.
• Skipping (human gait)plugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigSkipping (human gait)
  
  Skipping also know as 'Human Galloping' is an innate type of human gait. It's very commonly seen in 4 - 5 year old children.
  
  Despite its ubiquity, it's very poorly researched, and the reasons for its prevalence and evolution are currently unknown.
• Shakespeare's authorship questionplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigShakespeare's authorship question
  
  Around a hundred years or so after his death, serious questions began emerging regarding doubts about the true authorship of the Shakespeare plays and sonnets etc.
  
  Since then a vast body of 'evidence' - both for and against the idea that William Shakespeare was the true author - has built up. There are hundreds of scholarly and academic articles, countless debates, dozens of books, TV documentaries etc. etc..
• Lower-back painplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigLower-back pain
  
  Around two thirds of humanity experience severe and persistent lower-back pain at some stage in their lives. It's the second most common reason (after respiratory illness) for visits to doctors, and one of the leading reasons for absence from work activities.
• Agnoiologyplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigAgnoiology
  
  Agnoiology is the study of ignorance. More specifically :
  
  "The doctrine of things of which we are necessarily ignorant" ref.[ paywalled ]"
  
  In other words. the opposite of epistemology which is the study of knowledge.
  
  Given that human intelligence has limits, and that we have not explored the entire universe, it's a given that the extent of human ignorance is currently unknown.
• Chewing gum and cognitionplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigChewing gum and cognition
  
  Chewing gum of various kinds has been used for thousands of years.(further historical info,) In the last 100 years or so, various academic research projects have suggested that chewing gum can enhance various aspects of human cognitive behaviour. In particular, increasing attention and concentration.
• Panspermia theoryplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigPanspermia theory
  
  The Panspermia theory - the roots of which go back at least as far as the 5th century BCE - was popularized in the 1980s by Fred ('Big Bang') Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingh.
  
  The idea is that the building-blocks of life (e.g. DNA/RNA fragments, or Amino Acid protein-components) may exist and travel through deep space. Thus, such compounds may have arrived on Earth as 'space dust', or by comet impact, and could have provided triggers for the
• Cleomenes IIplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigCleomenes II
  
  Cleomenes II (in Greek: Κλεομένης ) was the king of Sparta (current-day Southern Greece) possibly from around 370 to around 309 BC. Almost nothing is known about his reign, or activities in general. Since many other high-ranking people from the same area and time-period have been extensively documented, some historians have labelled him a 'prodigious non-entity'.

• Ultratrace elementsplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigUltratrace elements
  
  Ultratrace elements are chemical elements, derived from diet, which appear to play significant - and sometimes essential - biological roles in animals, including humans.
  
  They typically comprise less than one microgram per gram of a given organism (i.e. less than 0.0001% by weight).
• Cooperative breedingplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigCooperative breeding
  
  In Cooperative breeding, individuals contribute towards the care and upbringing of offspring which are not their own. It's found in many species of birds, mammals, fish, and insects.*
  
  The behaviour has puzzled evolutionary biologists for many decades, given that individuals apparently sacrifice some of their own breeding prospects in order to increase the potential of the species as a whole.
• Disgustplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigDisgust
  
  Over the last 100 years or so, there has been a large volume of research into the human 'disgust' response.
  
  See Wikipedia
  
  Although there are (slight) cultural differences across the world's populations, it's currently regarded as a truly 'innate' (rather than learned)
• Shakespeare's authorship questionplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigShakespeare's authorship question
  
  Around a hundred years or so after his death, serious questions began emerging regarding doubts about the true authorship of the Shakespeare plays and sonnets etc.
  
  Since then a vast body of 'evidence' - both for and against the idea that William Shakespeare was the true author - has built up. There are hundreds of scholarly and academic articles, countless debates, dozens of books, TV documentaries etc. etc..
• Gaze shifting and mental effortplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigGaze shifting and mental effort
  
  When someone is asked a perplexing question, there's a good chance they will spontaneously shift their gaze - either upwards, or to the side.
  
  This seemingly ubiquitous cross-cultural behaviour is currently unexplained.
• Invention of optical instrumentsplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigInvention of optical instruments
  
  The invention of the telescope and microscope are usually cited as being around the early 1600s.
  
  But sophisticated lenses, easily accurate enough for use in such instruments were being made far earlier. It seems highly unlikely that during a period of at least 500 years, no-one would have thought of putting two or more lenses together to form an optical instrument of some kind - leaving the 1600 dates as questionable.
• Speech perceptionplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigSpeech perception
  
  "Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted and understood. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonology and phonetics in linguistics and cognitive psychology and perception in psychology. Research in speech perception seeks to understand how human listeners recognize speech sounds and use this information to understand spoken language."
• Skipping (human gait)plugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigSkipping (human gait)
  
  Skipping also know as 'Human Galloping' is an innate type of human gait. It's very commonly seen in 4 - 5 year old children.
  
  Despite its ubiquity, it's very poorly researched, and the reasons for its prevalence and evolution are currently unknown.
• Agnoiologyplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigAgnoiology
  
  Agnoiology is the study of ignorance. More specifically :
  
  "The doctrine of things of which we are necessarily ignorant" ref.[ paywalled ]"
  
  In other words. the opposite of epistemology which is the study of knowledge.
  
  Given that human intelligence has limits, and that we have not explored the entire universe, it's a given that the extent of human ignorance is currently unknown.
• Panspermia theoryplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigPanspermia theory
  
  The Panspermia theory - the roots of which go back at least as far as the 5th century BCE - was popularized in the 1980s by Fred ('Big Bang') Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingh.
  
  The idea is that the building-blocks of life (e.g. DNA/RNA fragments, or Amino Acid protein-components) may exist and travel through deep space. Thus, such compounds may have arrived on Earth as 'space dust', or by comet impact, and could have provided triggers for the
• Lower-back painplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigLower-back pain
  
  Around two thirds of humanity experience severe and persistent lower-back pain at some stage in their lives. It's the second most common reason (after respiratory illness) for visits to doctors, and one of the leading reasons for absence from work activities.
• Time Awarenessplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigTime Awareness
  
  "Anticipating events that will happen in the future is among the most important functions the brain performs. Indeed, it has been increasingly stressed that learning and memory are prospective brain functions; that is, they are only adaptive to the extent that they help animals anticipate and prepare for the future (Dudai and Carruthers, 2005; Schacter and Addis, 2007). To anticipate when events will happen, the brain has evolved mechanisms to tell time across a wide range of te…
• Dark Matterplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigDark Matter
  
  "The nature of the dominant component of galaxies and clusters remains unknown."
  
  Source : Measuring the dark matter equation of state (Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 415, L74–L77)"
  
  In the 1930s, astronomical observations of galaxy rotations showed that the outer regions were rotating (about the galaxy's 'centre') at the same speed, or faster, than the central regions. Subsequent calculations referring to the galaxy's mass, and thus its internal gravitational attractions, showed that i…
• The Scholz conjectureplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigThe Scholz conjecture
  
  The Scholz Conjecture relates the shortest length of an addition chain of Mersene numbers (ref.) to the shortest length of addition chains producing their exponents.
  
  Stated formally as :
  
  l(2n − 1) ≤ n − 1 + l(n),
  
  where l(n
• Planet formationplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigPlanet formation
  
  "The origin of planets is a vast, complex, and still quite mysterious subject. Despite decades of space exploration, ground-based observations, and detailed analyses of meteorites and cometary grains (the only space samples available in our laboratories),