This list will be changed from time to time and some mysteries will be developed into posts. In some sense they all speak to our lack of understanding of the magnetic and gravitational forces that bear down on us.

1. Chiralty, the preference in the chemistry of life for left handed molecules. Spooky. Perhaps in a helical world a choice must be made…

2. The nearly constant presence since the Proterozoic of a continent at the South Pole and the complete absence of any continent ever at the North Pole. Something fundamental here. Generally the cratons seem anchored at gravity lows like toy sailboats over the bathtub drain. Continents love the South Pole.

3. The Bermuda Triangle? Nope. Sorry. This triangle!

The oldest ocean floor in the Pacific and some of the oldest on the planet (the very oldest is in the Mediterranean and shows the remains of a strange circular feature). The ocean floor gets younger in three directions from the dot in the center of the triangle. So either a tiny triangular ridge emerged at the dot and migrated away or we are looking at the remains of a sinkhole. Neither possibility can be accounted for in tectonic theory.

4. Carbon isotope excursions. We are going to claim some progress understanding these. Please see our post ” Carbon Isotope Excursions and Carbon Limitation of Primary Productivity in the Biosphere“.

5. Geomagnetic Reversals. People are thinking about these, but they haven’t made much progress. Please see our post “Gravity and Magnetism“. Dr. Nowaczyk cautions that not all sediment core locations give corresponding paths.

6. The long Cretaceous Normal.

Roger Larsen is thinking about this, or at least he was when he made this graph for his 1991 paper. It seems an important clue that letting a lot of magma out stabilizes the magnetic field, or… some magnetic or tidal force both stabilizes the field and increases volcanic activity.

No signal for the Chicxulub (Chixyclub=clubmed) impact.

7. Death. Give me a really good reason why organisms should ever die.