You snuggled into bed after a hard day and began to drift off to sleep…
However, you suddenly wince because you feel like you’ve started to fall. What causes this phenomenon? This question is one of the most frequently asked on google.com, so all the curious can find out the answer here.
The unusual sudden movement is related to a phenomenon called the hypnagogic state, which is a transitional period between waking and sleep. Accordingly, the twitch is called a hypnagogic twitch.
It is about myoclonus, that is, fast, involuntary muscle movements, writes “Independent”. As you drift off to sleep, two different brain systems balance their roles to bring you into the unconscious state. One of them is the reticular activating system (RAS). This network of cells is located under the cerebral cortex (cortex) and helps maintain alertness.
The second is the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus, located in the lower part of the brain, which controls sleep. Scientists believe that these two systems fight for supremacy during falling asleep. At that moment, the level of the serotonin transmitter also drops so that all the major muscles in the body can rest. However, it does not affect the smallest muscles, such as those around the eyes or in the joints, as a result of which the whole body can twitch, writes “DNews”.
According to other theories, it is an evolutionary atavism – it is a system that made the monkeys safe when they fell asleep in the trees. According to the BBC, hypnagogic twitches are most common in children, but most people experience them. However, people are usually not aware of them because they are too deeply asleep at the time of their occurrence.
Unlike the rapid eye movements that occur during REM sleep, this type of twitching does not reflect dream visions.
In the previous part, we emphasized that the world is full of mysteries that science cannot explain, so we bring you some more of them.
Cocaine in Egyptian mummies
We all know that Columbus came to America with his crew thinking that he had discovered India. He may not have found the western route he was looking for, but he certainly found all sorts of interesting things. Let’s say a bunch of plants and animals that Europeans have never seen. And while the natives happily discovered European diseases such as smallpox brought to them by sailors, Columbus smoked tobacco and chewed coca leaves. Thinking people, this is not so bad! Everything else is history. And that is the history we learn in school. Cocaine, just like the coca plant, originates from South America. Which was discovered in the 15th century. But in 1992, German scientists did a little research on Egyptian mummies and discovered traces of hashish, tobacco and cocaine. And that in hair, skin and bones. Okay, hashish comes from Asia and the bourgeois from Egypt could get their hands on it. But tobacco and cocaine are from the New World. Of whom not only the ancient Egyptians had not heard, but no one had heard of in this part of the planet for, say, 3,000 years. The discovery is as incredible as if we found out today that chocolate is, say, from Jupiter. So how is that possible? No one understands. However, there are several theories. Although it is unlikely that archaeologists would have a party with hashish and cocaine in the pyramid and then put drugs in the bones of the mummies.
Hebrew text in New Mexico
Imagine that you are an archaeologist from America, when a local from New Mexico tells you that there is something you should look at. You take a gun, put on a hat and then in the middle of nowhere near Albuquerque you find a 90 ton rock with some text on it. This is exactly what happened to Professor Frank Hibben in 1933. Okay, Native Americans are known to have lived in the area for a long time, so the inscriptions on the stone shouldn’t be strange, right? But Frank immediately realized that the writing was not in Native American. He was on hiber. More specifically, the ancient version of the Hebrew language. And the text was the 10 commandments of God. It is even more interesting that some Greek letters were also used, which means that the author mixed Greek and Hebrew. Which is again typical of ancient times. The stone was basaltic and the same as the surrounding soil, which means it was not brought from somewhere else. Okay. But maybe some Jew in his moments of leisure went to the middle of the desert and carved the 10 commandments of God in stone? A perfectly logical explanation. But geologists have recently investigated the entire site and concluded that the text is at least 500 years old and perhaps even 2,000 years old. Which, you understand, is completely impossible.
Roman statues in Mexico
Somewhere around the second grade of elementary school, almost everyone will realize that Rome and South America are not very close. Even if by Rome we understand all the conquered territories of the Roman Empire. They may have sent their legionnaires to Africa and Asia, but Latin America was not really in their plans. Because they didn’t even know it existed since everything west of Europe and Africa was just the deep blue sea and Neptune’s realm. But then what is a sculpture from Rome doing in an old temple in Mexico? So up to this head with a characteristic appearance for Rome and the second century. It was not clear to anyone how this was possible until 1982. When a group of underwater researchers discovered a pile of ceramic jars in the sea off Rio de Janeiro.
A strange coin in North America
In 1957, archaeologists dug in Maine in the North-East of America. They were looking for artifacts from the Native Americans who lived there. And they found one coin that wasn’t quite Native American. Viking already. But the Vikings lived on the other side of the ocean. In Europe. The coin was discovered to have been made during the reign of King Olaf Kyrra in Norway sometime in the 11th century. And it was found in America among 30,000 artifacts of ancient Indians. It is very likely that the Vikings were the first to reach America. Although there is no definitive evidence for that theory.
A strange language in New Mexico
That New Mexico again. It’s not at all strange that aliens landed there at Roswell. Well, you see, in the wastelands of America there is a tribe of Indians who speak a strange language. The language commonly called – Japanese! The Zuni tribe may not exactly speak literary Japanese, but the similarities between the two languages are frightening, linguists say. Here are some examples. Clan is called kwe in Zuni and kwai in Japanese. Clown is newe a na zuni niwaka. The priest is Shawani and the Zuni is Shiwani. And similar words are just the beginning. Even crazier is that their syntax is almost identical. Both languages thus put verbs at the end of sentences, which is not a very common thing. It is interesting that the Zuni language has nothing in common with other Native American languages from its environment.
Why is there more matter than antimatter?
According to our current understanding of physics, particles, matter and antimatter are equal but opposite. When they meet, they are supposed to destroy each other and after that destruction, nothing remains. Most of that destruction happened at the beginning of the universe. However, enough matter remained to form billions and billions of galaxies, stars, planets and everything else. Most explanations revolve around the meson, a short-lived subatomic particle made of one quark and one antiquark. B-mesons decay more slowly than anti B-mesons, which may have led to enough B-mesons surviving to go on to form all the matter of the universe. B-, D- and K-mesons can oscillate and become antiparticles and then particles again. Research shows that B-mesons probably assume the “normal” state more often, and this may be the reason why there are more ordinary particles than antiparticles.
Where is all the lithium?
In the beginning, temperatures in space were incredibly high, and isotopes of hydrogen, helium, and lithium were widely synthesized. Hydrogen and helium are still present in large quantities and make up almost the entire mass of the universe, while we can only find and see about a third of lithium-7. There are indeed many explanations for why this is so, including hypotheses involving hypothetical bosons known as axions, or hypotheses that claim lithium is trapped in the star’s crust and undetectable by our present-day telescopes and instruments. However, so far there is no main theory to explain the absence of lithium from space.
Why do we sleep?
We know that the human body regulates the biological clock (a 24-hour cycle that also occurs in the absence of light) that maintains sleep and wake cycles, but we don’t really know why. While we sleep, our body regenerates tissues or undertakes other maintenance activities, and we spend a third of our lives sleeping. Some organisms have no need for sleep at all, but why do we? There are several different theories regarding sleep, although none of them satisfactorily answers this question. One of the theories is that animals that can sleep have developed effective methods of hiding from predators, while others that have not developed these methods must remain alert and awake and their organism regenerates in other ways, not through sleep. However, although we do not know why we sleep, more and more research is being conducted on the importance of sleep and how sleep affects important elements in our body, such as brain plasticity.
How does gravity work?
We all know that the Moon’s gravity causes ocean currents, that the Earth’s gravity keeps us on the surface of the planet, and that the Sun’s gravity keeps the planets in their orbits, but how much do we really understand about gravity? That powerful force comes from matter, and therefore, a more massive object has a greater ability to attract other objects. However, while scientists understand much of how gravity works, they don’t quite understand why it exists in the first place. Why are atoms mostly empty space? Why is the force that binds atoms different from gravity? Is gravity actually a particle? These are questions that simply cannot be answered with our current understanding of physics.
Where is everyone?
The visible universe has a diameter of 92 billion light years and is filled with billions of galaxies, stars and planets, but the only evidence of life in all that unimaginable vastness is right here on Earth.
Statistically, the probability that we are the only living beings in the universe is actually very impossibly small, so why haven’t we discovered any life forms yet? This question is known as the Fermi Paradox, and it gives us several suggestions and explanations as to why we have not yet encountered extraterrestrial life; some more likely than others. We can probably argue for days about the possibility that we are missing the signals, or that the signals exist and we don’t understand them, or that “aliens” can’t or won’t contact us, or—an extremely unlikely possibility—that Earth is the only planet ever to support life.
What is dark matter made of?
Approximately 80 percent of the mass of the universe is dark matter. Dark matter is a rather unusual phenomenon, because it does not emit any light. Although it has been theorized for sixty years, there is no hard evidence that it exists. Most scientists believe that dark matter consists of loosely bound massive particles, which can be up to 100 times more massive than protons, but which our instruments for detecting baryonic matter (visible, normal dark matter) cannot detect. Our candidates for the composition of dark matter are axions, neutralins and photins.
How did life originate?
How did life originate, where did it come from? Those who believe in the primordial soup model believe that the early Earth was abundant with different elements and that over time they developed increasingly complex molecules that fueled the emergence of life. It could have taken place in the depths of the ocean, in clay or under the ice. Different models give varying degrees of importance to lightning and volcanoes in the swamp of life. Although DNA is the primary basis for current life on Earth, some scientists have suggested that RNA may have been the primary basis for the first forms of life. Furthermore, scientists wonder if nucleic acids once existed independently. Did life flourish only once, or is it possible that it arose and disappeared, and arose again? Some believe in the panspermia model, according to which microbial life came to Earth via meteorites and comets. If that is true, it again does not answer the question of how that life came into being.
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