- 46 minutes ago
- #science
- #gravity
- #mystery
- #earth
- #explained
Think water flows uphill? Buckle up as we uncover the world's strangest gravity mysteries—roads where cars and water defy logic, places that fool your senses, and a mind-blowing ocean anomaly no one can fully explain! Stick around for the wild seventh mystery that will flip your perspective. Subscribe to our channel and tell us in the comments which mystery blew your mind the most! #science #gravity #mystery #earth #explained
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - Introduction to Mysterious Gravity Hills
1:43 - Canada's Magnetic Hill Phenomenon
3:41 - Other Gravity Hills Around the World
6:12 - Explanation of the Gravity Illusion
10:24 - True Gravity Variations: Schiehallion Experiment
15:31 - Real Weak Gravity: Hudson Bay and Satellite Mapping
19:03 - The Indian Ocean Gravity Anomaly and Scientific Search
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - Introduction to Mysterious Gravity Hills
1:43 - Canada's Magnetic Hill Phenomenon
3:41 - Other Gravity Hills Around the World
6:12 - Explanation of the Gravity Illusion
10:24 - True Gravity Variations: Schiehallion Experiment
15:31 - Real Weak Gravity: Hudson Bay and Satellite Mapping
19:03 - The Indian Ocean Gravity Anomaly and Scientific Search
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TechTranscript
00:00In our world, there is a road where it seems like water flows uphill.
00:06Instead of flowing down with the slope, it flows upward, not through a pipe and not as a thin stream,
00:12but directly on the open cement of the road.
00:18A vehicle parked in neutral gear stops for a second and then slowly rolls uphill.
00:26There are people who come here specifically, pour a bottle of water on the road and quietly watch it.
00:33There are at least seven such places on our planet and all of them are well known.
00:40Six of them can be explained and we will examine each one in detail and without hiding anything.
00:47But the seventh is not on the road and in fact it is not even on land.
00:52It is a hole in the very body of our planet with an area of three million square kilometers.
01:00The ocean level there dropped by more than a hundred meters and this is a measured fact.
01:06Gravity is really weaker there and up to now no explanation has been found for more than 70 years.
01:13The answer wasn't found beneath it, but at a depth of almost a thousand kilometers right under it
01:20and it's connected to an ocean that has long disappeared from this planet.
01:25Watch until number seven because after this, your perspective on the first six will completely change.
01:32But before we start, if you're new to our channel, please click the subscribe button
01:36and also hit the notification bell so you'll always be updated with our latest videos.
01:43Let's start with the most famous of all, from an ordinary provincial road in Canada.
01:48In the province of New Brunswick, outside the city of Moncton, there's a short stretch of asphalt road at the
01:54foot of a hill.
01:55There's nothing unusual about it.
01:59Just ordinary trees on the side of the road and old faded road markings.
02:04Local drivers have been talking about this place since the early 1930s.
02:10They come here, turn off the engine, and discover that their car seems to climb the hill on its own.
02:17Now hundreds of thousands of people come to this hill every year and they still do the same thing.
02:23The driver arrives at a white mark on the road, puts the transmission in neutral, and takes his foot off
02:29the brake.
02:30For a few seconds, nothing happens.
02:32The inside of the car is quiet.
02:34Then, suddenly it starts to move and slowly goes up the slope, gradually picking up speed.
02:42The passengers laugh, but usually their laughter is nervous because their bodies feel like they're going uphill,
02:49but their eyes see that the road seems to be going downhill.
02:52But the most amazing part isn't the vehicle, but a simple bottle of water.
02:58When water is poured on the asphalt, it forms a small stream and flows in a direction it shouldn't be
03:04going.
03:05Upwards along the side of the road, straight and quietly, as if the road is upside down compared to the
03:11rest of the world.
03:12Imagine this. It's nighttime.
03:15There are almost no vehicles.
03:16The sun is setting behind the trees in the west.
03:19A man gets out of his car holding a habis.
03:23He stopped by the side of the road and slowly poured water.
03:27He watched the small stream without blinking.
03:30For a moment, it moved in one direction, then chose a path and began to climb the slope.
03:37The man stood up, looked at the quiet road, and no longer smiled.
03:41There is a similar place in Scotland, and it is even older than the time of vehicles.
03:47It is a part of the road in the county of Ayrshire called Electric Bray.
03:52The name means something like electric slope.
03:55This name was formed during a time when electricity was used to explain almost everything that couldn't be explained,
04:02but farmers had already noticed this strange place long before the word electricity even existed.
04:09When a horse goes down here, they say it pulls harder and the cart seems to go up the hill
04:16more easily.
04:17The slope here is very low.
04:20It's about one meter high for every 186 meters of road.
04:25This difference is too small to be noticed by the eyes, but the body can immediately and clearly feel it.
04:32And this is where we'll use one of the simplest tools invented thousands of years ago.
04:39A simple weight hanging on a string.
04:42This is called a plumb bob, a tool used by builders since the time of Egypt, Babylon, and even in
04:49simple constructions in villages.
04:53The plumb line doesn't argue, and it doesn't have its own opinion.
04:57It simply shows the direction in which the planet pulls everything.
05:03Remember this because before we get to number 7, we will use it to understand something important.
05:10If you still can't get off this road, go ahead and subscribe because we have a long way to go.
05:16Even deeper!
05:18Each next place is deeper than the previous one.
05:21And number 7, the deepest of them all.
05:25Many roads like this have been discovered in different countries, and the first sign is always the same.
05:31First, the locals notice it.
05:34Then, the drivers.
05:36And eventually, tourists arrive carrying bottles of water.
05:40One of these roads is the highest of them all.
05:43The altitude is almost 4,000 meters.
05:47It is in Ladakh, in the northern part of India.
05:50Dry brown mountains.
05:52There are almost no trees to be seen, and there are very few visual cues around.
05:57Here, almost nothing matches what we usually see as the real horizon.
06:03Even the buses turn off their engines at the side of the road, and then they start rolling toward the
06:09mountain pass.
06:10Upward.
06:12All of these places are open roads, where the horizon is still clearly visible.
06:17But in California, there's a strange place, hidden inside a small wooden house.
06:24There, the owner started selling tickets.
06:28The mystery spot near Santa Cruz was open to visitors in the late 1930s.
06:35It's a small and old hut standing on a slope.
06:38It's surrounded by tall redwood trees.
06:42Inside, visitors are made to stand on a plank, and told to stay there for two minutes.
06:48The man is standing at an angle where he should have already fallen.
06:53But for some unknown reason, he doesn't fall.
06:57A ball placed on a slanted part of the floor rolls upward to its highest point.
07:03The staff member has been working here for a long time and knows every corner of the slanted floor.
07:09Walking along the walls while holding onto a wooden table with one hand seems almost normal to him.
07:16For him, it's just work.
07:19But for the visitors, it's as if every day it shatters their usual perspective of the world.
07:26When they come out, you'll notice that some of them are pale.
07:30Many feel dizzy and vomit.
07:32This isn't a show, and it's not just a simple trick of the mind.
07:35The body is truly reacting.
07:38Our vestibular system loses its proper balance.
07:42That's why it feels like the floor you're standing on belongs to another planet with different laws.
07:48And you?
07:49Can you stay there for two minutes?
07:51Even if you know you might get dizzy?
07:53Three, four places, four countries, four different sites, but the effect is the same.
08:01This kind of similarity usually means that we're not dealing with a miracle, but with a pattern.
08:09And if you start to get an idea of what's really happening, the next part will be even more interesting.
08:15Now, I'll tell you about it.
08:17Something that many might not like, but it will help you understand everything better.
08:25In Moncton, Ayrshire, Ladakh, and Santa Cruz, gravity does not change.
08:31Not even a million millionth of it, or even the smallest division on the most precise measuring device, there's no
08:39change.
08:39The same mechanism works in all four places.
08:43And surprisingly, this mechanism is very simple.
08:46None of these slopes violate the laws of physics.
08:49The only thing they violate is our trust in our own eyes.
08:54This doesn't mean that the place is intentionally trying to deceive us.
08:57It's the very design of the surroundings that causes people's vision to be deceived.
09:03Our brain can't determine the true horizon on its own.
09:07We don't have a special sensor for this.
09:11Instead, the brain forms its idea of the horizon using the objects around us.
09:16It looks at the line of trees, slopes, the edge of hills, and other things visible around.
09:24When all these cues are tilted equally, the brain naturally forms a false horizon.
09:31And because of this, a gentle downhill road is mistaken for an uphill one.
09:38And a real uphill can appear to be downhill.
09:41The water moves correctly.
09:43It always flows downward.
09:47The problem is where the real downhill is compared to what our eyes show us.
09:52We can easily test this illusion in just five seconds.
09:58And a simple weight hanging on a string is enough.
10:03Hang a plumb line, then look at the angle between the string and the surroundings,
10:07and gradually the illusion will disappear.
10:11Builders and surveyors have known this for a long time.
10:15That's why in their work, they don't just fall for this kind of illusion.
10:19Now, you also know the secret, so you won't be easily deceived by this kind of hill anymore.
10:24But there was an instance where even the plumb line seemed to lie,
10:28and that person already knew that this could happen.
10:31In 1774, the royal astronomer Neville Maskelin arrived in Scotland.
10:38He chose a remote mountain called Shehalion, which was almost regular in shape and separated from other mountains.
10:45He wanted to test a strange idea.
10:52All summer, his group was almost always soaked by rain while conducting measurements.
11:00They measured the position of the stars from both sides of the mountain.
11:04They noticed that the plumb line deviated by about 11 arc seconds.
11:08This is less than one hundredth of a degree.
11:13It's such a tiny amount that the human eye can't see it.
11:16But the instruments detected it.
11:18The mountain really does pull the plumb line toward itself.
11:23And this showed that gravity is not just a property of the whole planet.
11:28These measurements were given to the mathematician Charles Houghton to study,
11:33and his job was extremely difficult.
11:36He had to take into account the shape of the entire mountain,
11:40as well as every bump and every hollow in it.
11:43So he wouldn't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of numbers.
11:47He connected the points that had the same height.
11:50This is how the contour lines appeared on maps, which are still used all over the world today.
11:55But the result of an experiment using a weight hanging from a string
12:00became more important than the experiment itself.
12:05Here it was proven that gravity depends on what is around you,
12:09and this means that there must be a place in the world
12:11where gravity is not the same as in other places.
12:15The first four places only deceive our eyes,
12:20and the reason is optics and our usual perspectives.
12:23But the fifth place does not deceive anyone.
12:27The instruments themselves show that the measurement of gravity there is different.
12:32In Peru, on the western side of the Andes,
12:35you can find Mount Huascaran, which has a height of 6,768 meters.
12:41It is a granite mountain covered with eternal ice.
12:45This is the highest point in the country,
12:47and one of the highest in the tropical part of the planet.
12:51The mountain is somewhat separated from the main range of the Andes,
12:55so it can be seen from a distance of several dozen kilometers.
12:59And here, the weakest gravity on the entire surface of our planet was measured.
13:06The acceleration due to gravity there
13:09is just a little over 9.7 meters per second Econ squared.
13:15On the surface of the Arctic Ocean,
13:18the same measurement is higher,
13:20almost 9.8 meters per second Econ squared.
13:24The difference between these two places is about 1%,
13:28and that's already significant when it comes to gravity.
13:32A person who weighs 80 kilos at the top
13:35might lose almost a kilo from their weight.
13:39It's not fat, and it's not muscle that's lost either.
13:44Only the weight changes because the planet's gravity pulls him less strongly.
13:50If you drop something from a height of 100 meters,
13:53it will take about 16 milliseconds longer to fall there.
13:57For a person, it hardly has any effect.
14:01But for a satellite in orbit,
14:03it can already cause a change in trajectory.
14:07There are three reasons for this unusual gravity,
14:10and their effects overlap.
14:12First is the altitude,
14:14because the top of the mountain
14:15is almost 7 kilometers farther from the center of the planet.
14:20Second is its proximity to the equator.
14:23Because of the planet's rotation,
14:25this part of the Earth bulges slightly,
14:27and its diameter is wider.
14:30And third, which is the most interesting,
14:32is what's actually beneath the mountain deep within the Earth.
14:36The density of the materials there is lower
14:38compared to the surrounding areas,
14:40so the gravitational pull is also weaker.
14:43It takes several days to reach the summit,
14:46and it's considered a technically difficult route.
14:49In the last few hundred meters,
14:52climbers need to take three deep breaths for every step.
14:55The body is functioning almost at its limit,
14:58and of course, the climber doesn't feel any lighter.
15:02He does weigh less than he did at the bottom,
15:05but climbing is still harder here than almost anywhere else.
15:09Here, you can see the difference between weight and actual physical effort.
15:16This is one of the places on the planet
15:18where a person weighs less than usual without any tricks or deception.
15:24And even the plumb line in his backpack
15:26is hanging slightly differently compared to when he was still below.
15:31Do you want to stand in a place where your weight is actually lighter?
15:34The sixth place has no peak, no bottom, and no slope or observation deck.
15:40It is a very large bay in northern Canada.
15:44Flat and cold waters surrounded by low shores.
15:47From any angle you look at it, Hudson Bay seems boring.
15:51And that is exactly its main secret.
15:54No hills, no unusual roads,
15:57and almost no attractions for hundreds of kilometers.
16:00But here, gravity is weaker than it should be
16:03in the vast area around the entire bay.
16:06And the reason is that something has been missing here for a long time.
16:10This is the important idea of our story today.
16:13Tens of thousands of years ago,
16:15this entire region was covered by the Laurentide ice sheet.
16:19The ice was almost 3 kilometers thick.
16:22It was as tall as a small mountain range.
16:25Because of its weight, the continent was pressed down.
16:28It's like a finger pressing into something soft.
16:32Imagine a skyscraper that's 3 kilometers tall.
16:35But instead of putting it on a foundation,
16:37it was resting on the entire continent itself.
16:41The ice melted about 10,000 years ago.
16:44But the depression it left behind didn't disappear right away.
16:47Even now, the land is still rising.
16:51About 1 centimeter every year.
16:54It's very slow.
16:56The materials in this area have a lower density than normal.
16:59That's why the gravity remains weak.
17:02Even now, it's as if the planet still remembers the glacier
17:06that no one alive today has ever seen.
17:08The trace of that ancient ice in Earth's gravity field
17:12has lasted longer than almost the entire written history of humanity.
17:17And it was only measured from orbit using a pair of satellites launched in 2002.
17:24The two satellites flew together, one behind the other,
17:28with a distance of about 200 kilometers between them.
17:31They constantly monitored the distance between them.
17:35When there is more material beneath a certain area,
17:39the leading satellite speeds up slightly and moves ahead a little.
17:43When there is less material, it slows down,
17:46and the distance between the two satellites changes again.
17:50The change in distance can be measured with such precision
17:55that it's accurate to the thickness of a human hair.
17:59From these tiny changes,
18:01a map of the planet's gravity is created layer by layer,
18:05and this map is very different from the clean and even globe we see in school.
18:12On the map, the planet looks bumpy.
18:16There are dense and uneven parts,
18:18as if it were an old ball that was squeezed and wrinkled.
18:22On this kind of map,
18:24it looks more like crumpled paper than a perfect ball.
18:28In some areas, the surface seems to bulge upwards,
18:32while in other places, it sinks by tens of meters.
18:37And what's interesting is that it's not the land itself
18:40that's rising or sinking.
18:42The water level itself remains calm and almost unmoving.
18:48On this map, you can see an area that we really need to focus on.
18:54The fifth place explained the effect of elevation.
18:58The sixth one explained the effect of ice loss.
19:03Both of their answers were clear,
19:05but the seventh place is different.
19:08For more than 70 years,
19:10this could not be explained by the usual explanations.
19:13Southwest of Sri Lanka,
19:15about 1,200 kilometers from the southernmost part of India,
19:20there is an ordinary part of the ocean.
19:22The water is flat all the way to the horizon,
19:26blue,
19:27and seems to have nothing unusual.
19:29Even if a ship passes through here,
19:31an entire day might go by without the crew noticing anything.
19:35But at that very moment,
19:37the ship seems to be sailing over a massive funnel.
19:42The surface of the water here
19:44is about 106 meters lower than where it should be.
19:51106 meters is almost as tall as a 30-story building
19:54standing upright on the water,
19:56and it's not a hole at the bottom of the ocean.
19:59It's actually a drop in the surface of the ocean itself.
20:03It's like a large part of its surface has sunk.
20:06This anomaly covers an area of about 3 million square kilometers.
20:11It's almost as big as India.
20:13You wouldn't notice this from the deck of a ship
20:15because the area is so vast,
20:17and the change in slope is so gradual,
20:20stretching for almost 1,000 kilometers.
20:22As you sail,
20:24it's like you're slowly descending along with the water,
20:27but you won't feel any kind of tilting.
20:31To understand its size,
20:33imagine all the water seemingly disappearing
20:35over this vast area.
20:37It has a depth of over 100 meters
20:39and spreads across an area
20:41almost as large as a big country.
20:43The water didn't really disappear.
20:46It was just redistributed
20:48to other parts of the planet's surface.
20:51Some oceans became slightly higher in level,
20:54while this part remained lower.
20:56This anomaly was first discovered in 1948,
21:00and the way it was discovered was unusual.
21:03A Dutch geophysicist named Felix Wenning-Meiners
21:07directly measured gravity at sea
21:09while aboard a submarine.
21:12Ordinary instruments do not work properly
21:15at the ocean's surface.
21:16The continuous rocking of the ship
21:18disrupts the measurements.
21:21So he went underwater where it was calmer,
21:24and there he conducted his measurements
21:26using pendulums.
21:29His own instrument design
21:31weighed several dozen kilos
21:33and required almost complete stillness.
21:38Imagine a cramped compartment inside the submarine,
21:42surrounded by steel walls
21:43while smelling the engine oil.
21:45The submarine descended into the deep part of the sea,
21:49turned off the engines,
21:50and suddenly the noise around them
21:52was replaced by complete silence.
21:53In the midst of that silence,
21:56a man monitors the swinging of three pendulums
22:00attached to a complicated instrument.
22:02He waits for several hours
22:04because any movement from the crew
22:06could ruin the entire measurement.
22:08In this kind of darkness and complete silence,
22:11one of the biggest gravity anomalies
22:13on the planet was discovered.
22:15In one part of the Indian Ocean,
22:17the instruments showed something
22:19that scientists did not expect.
22:21Gravity is weak there.
22:23And the drop is too significant
22:26to be considered a simple error.
22:28The problem is,
22:30there is nothing on the surface there
22:32to explain it.
22:33There is no massive pit underneath,
22:35no vast empty space,
22:37and no unusual heavy rocks either.
22:40The seabed is ordinary,
22:42and nothing around it
22:44is enough to explain
22:45the magnitude of this anomaly.
22:48So it's clear that we need to look
22:50for the cause more deeply
22:52beyond ordinary.
22:54In 2023,
22:56two geophysicists from India
22:58proposed a possible answer.
23:00Nadanan Jaypal
23:01and Atreyi Atreyagosh
23:03created 19 computer models
23:05about the movement of tectonic plates
23:07and the mantle.
23:08They traced back the planet's history
23:11up to 140 million years ago
23:13and repeatedly ran the simulations.
23:17Each model can take several weeks
23:20to calculate,
23:21so they usually leave them running overnight.
23:24When morning comes,
23:26the researcher opens the results,
23:28and often he sees something different
23:30from what he expected.
23:31They repeated this over and over
23:34until a familiar circular depression
23:36appeared on the screen,
23:37and it was exactly in the place
23:39where pendulums inside the cramped submarine
23:42once recorded strange gravity.
23:45The match with the real map
23:46was so precise
23:48that the first thing the researchers did
23:50was to look for where a mistake
23:51might have occurred.
23:52Only six out of the 19 models
23:55showed an anomaly
23:56in exactly the same place.
23:58And all six of those models
24:00had the same detail,
24:01which they weren't specifically looking for.
24:05About 200 million years ago,
24:08between the ancient continents,
24:10there was an ocean
24:11called the Tethys Ocean.
24:14Then, India separated
24:16from the southern continent
24:17and began moving northward,
24:19crossing this ocean.
24:21India moves at about 15 centimeters per year.
24:25That's very fast for a continent.
24:28Eventually, India collided with Asia,
24:31the Himalayas formed and rose,
24:33and the Tethys Ocean
24:34completely disappeared
24:36from the surface of the planet,
24:37in the place where the so-called
24:39ancient ocean once existed.
24:41Now stand some of the highest mountains
24:43on our planet.
24:45This movement has left a massive mark
24:47on half of the planet.
24:49And the Himalayas
24:51are just a part of its visible surface.
24:53The deeper part of that mark
24:56is hidden in the mantle.
24:58It can only be seen
25:00by studying the movement
25:01of seismic waves.
25:04But there's a reason
25:05why it's hard to see.
25:07The so-called ancient seabed
25:09didn't just disappear.
25:11Parts of the old ocean floor
25:13sank beneath the continent
25:15and slowly descended
25:17into the hot mantle.
25:19For millions of years,
25:21they kept sinking
25:22until they reached a depth
25:23of about a thousand kilometers.
25:26And there,
25:27beneath Africa,
25:29there's a massive structure
25:30that scientists call
25:32the African anomaly.
25:33It's a huge, dense body
25:36that's as big as a continent
25:38and over a thousand kilometers thick.
25:41The remnants of the long-dead
25:44ancient ocean
25:44have reached its edges
25:46and may be disturbing a structure
25:48that has been quiet
25:49for millions of years.
25:52From the boundary,
25:53currents of hot and light material
25:55began to rise,
25:57pushing down the heavier material.
26:00The denser or heavier material
26:02sank deeper
26:03while the lighter material rose.
26:05Because of this,
26:06the amount of material
26:07near the surface
26:08of the planet decreased.
26:11The planet's gravity
26:12pulled the water to this area,
26:14but because the gravity
26:15here is weaker,
26:17the ocean level dropped
26:18by about 106 meters.
26:21According to calculations,
26:23the conditions we see today
26:25formed about 20 million years ago.
26:28This means that the water
26:30on the surface of this area
26:31is like resting on the traces
26:33of an ocean
26:34that disappeared
26:35200 million years ago.
26:37That former seabed
26:39is no longer a seabed.
26:41It is now just a cold rock
26:43almost a kilometer deep,
26:44but its traces are enough
26:47to affect the surface
26:48of the entire modern ocean.
26:50Directly testing this hypothesis,
26:52it's almost impossible.
26:54We can't even place
26:56a single instrument
26:57in such a deep part
26:58of the planet.
26:59The deepest well ever made
27:01by humans
27:01didn't even reach
27:0312.5 kilometers.
27:05While what we're talking about
27:07is a depth
27:08of almost 1,000 kilometers
27:10about 80 times deeper,
27:11all we have
27:12are satellites,
27:14satellites,
27:15earth tremors,
27:16and seismic waves.
27:18So the debate
27:19isn't over yet.
27:20There are some geophysicists
27:22who believe
27:22that the evidence
27:23is not yet enough
27:24to prove this model.
27:26Others are looking
27:27for reasons
27:28in the deeper parts
27:29of the planet,
27:30closer to the boundary
27:32between the mantle
27:33and the core.
27:34Research is still ongoing
27:36and the seventh place
27:37remains the only one
27:38among these seven
27:39that does not yet
27:40have a final answer.
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