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The Great Mysteries of the World

There are several mysteries of life that have interested scientists since the beginning of

time. Among those are where did life start. Is there a fountain of youth? Is there a cure for

cancer? Can we live forever? Is there intelligent life on another planet? Can time travel ever

really be in our future? This article features several interesting ideas and this paper will include

the fountain of youth, creating life, everlasting life, cancer cures, and time travel. As far at the

fountain of youth goes, it appears that is right in one’s own genes. If you have good genes, that

is the guarantee; otherwise no guarantee is even suggested. The cure for cancer might only be

possible if people reduced smoking and their other health hazards. Genes might not be a rescue

in the case of cancer. Achieving immorality is only a possibility with cancer cells, it appears.

They live as long as they are fed. Scientists in Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Genron, a

California biotech company has found that if a bit of telomere is clipped off after each cell

division, the cell can become immortal. Some studies are using that technology in tests with lab

mice. So cancer might be curable, in time.

Creating life from scratch is not possible at this time. The protein actin is able to do some

self-assembled creations. Is there going to be a time when these self-assembling structures will

have a life of their own? At the California Institute of Technology, The University of California

at Los Angeles, and Michigan State University all believe that in time anything can happen. At

Caltech, Chris Adam does not agree. “Life on Earth is all due to one event a long time ago.

Everything we see is related to once accident, so if we look back at this, can we learn something

about life in general?” I believe he thinks the answer is no.

Time travel might not ever be a reality. Einstein thought it would be so, but there are

paradoxes. But studies are being done at California Institute of Technology for one. Kip Throne,

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a scientist at the California Institute of Technology suggests that Einstein’s “wormhole’ theory

might be correct. Time will tell.

A big question always is “are we alone in the universe?” Two discoveries have been

made recently that might mean the answer to that question is “no.” Astronomers at the National

Science Foundation’s 12-Meter Telescope atop Kitt Peak in Arizona have announced that they

discovered sugar in a cloud from which new stars were forming. “It means it is increasingly

likely that the chemical precursors to life are formed in such clouds, long before planets develop

around the stars,” says Jan M. Hollis, stationed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in

Greenbelt, MD. The sugar is glyceraldehyde, a simple relative of our table sugar. It was

discovered 26,000 light-years away from earth. What that means is that the 8-atom molecule of

carbon, oxygen and hydrogen can combine with other molecules to form ribose. Ribose is a

building block of DNA. DNA is the chemical carrier of genetic codes found in all living

organisms.

Another thing found was the pulsars. They were identified in the 1960s. They are radio

waves, pulses, that sweep through space on a regular timed basis. Since their discovery the

scientists have not been sure of what they mean to the development of the universe or human

beings. But at the American Astronomical Society, Paul LaVioletter, a member of the Starburst

Foundation in Alexandria, VA, stated that there was some evidence that “pulsars are located and

send signals in patterns that appear to be some sort of intelligent message—exactly what remains

to be seen.” All these things are so exciting and now there is a need to find what is regular and

predictable in the universe and how it might lead to discovering life on other planets.

Wilson, J., “Science’s greatest unsolved mysteries.” Popular Mechanics, October 2000, pp. 53-57

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