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The Things that Nobody Knows: 501 Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything
A playful and diverting, yet always scientifically rigorous look at those simple mysteries that are yet to be solved
Why are so many giraffes gay? Has human evolution stopped? Where did our alphabet come from? Can robots become self-aware? Can lobsters recognize other lobsters by sight? What goes on inside a black hole? Are cell phones bad for us? Why can't we remember anything from our earliest years? Full of the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, this is a fascinating and unputdownable exploration of the limits of human knowledge of our planet, its history and culture, and the universe beyond.
Why are so many giraffes gay? Has human evolution stopped? Where did our alphabet come from? Can robots become self-aware? Can lobsters recognize other lobsters by sight? What goes on inside a black hole? Are cell phones bad for us? Why can't we remember anything from our earliest years? Full of the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, this is a fascinating and unputdownable exploration of the limits of human knowledge of our planet, its history and culture, and the universe beyond.
462 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
December 24, 2019
I gave this book 4 🌟 because I found that some topics that I read had completely gone in one ear and out of the other. I also found that some topics were just dragging on and there were no real answer to it, the topic was being talked about but not in a way that you’d think that topic was being talked about (if you know what I mean). However considering that my area of study is animals, and I have a huge interest in science based things i found those topics to be enjoyable. It filled me with joy that I already knew most of the things I read, I liked that most of the topics actually had an actual answer and I felt that the one’s that weren’t answered could have been if more research went into it. I know for a fact that some couldn’t possibly have had an answer to it... which is interesting but at the same time different topics could have been talked about instead.
May 20, 2015
This is a nice book which has a long list of unknowns. However, it does not delve into an of those in detail - each of the topics gets about 1/2 to 3/4 of a page. There are many mysteries I doubt any one will care about such as people's hair, colour etc. It seems that the list is pushed to get to 501. It would have been better had there been about 201 mysteries.....
June 3, 2016
This is just delightful. You know how “they” always say the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know? And you have actually felt that way yourself as you lived and studied and did whatever through life. Well, to explore how abysmally, unqualifiedly, irredeemably ignorant we really are take a jaunt through this book. It’s not something you’ll labor with. You just sample it a few mysteries at a time and be thoroughly entertained.
We do NOT know:
What animal is the closest living relative of the ancestor of all mammals. Current best guess: the aardvark.
Who the first people to arrive in North America were. Could be the Clovis people. Maybe the Denisovans. Possibly the Polynesians.
We’re not even sure who can rightfully claim to have “discovered” America in relatively modern times. Recently, Chinese maps suggest they came to America in 1421, or possibly visited here in 2200 BC.
While we’re on the subject of North American migration, guess who came in such waves that they still understand each other, even without contact for hundreds of years. Believe it or not, the Athabasca Indians of Alaska and the Navajo of the Southwest can converse in their own languages with each other.
Between about 1200 and 1150 BC the greatest civilizations in the West – Egypt, Greece, and the Hittites – all collapsed. We don’t know why.
We don’t know when we discovered the Earth is round. Pretty much from the time of Eratosthenes in 240 BC, no respectable Greek thinker ever suggested the Earth was anything by round. Better than that, we can’t say.
What the hell are the hundreds of huge jars for in the Plain of Jars?
We know there is a huge lake, Lake Vostok, two and a half miles below the surface of Antarctica. We have no idea what if any creatures live there.
We don’t know if there is any biological reality to the idea of different human races.
We don’t know why Native Americans have grooves on the backs of their teeth.
When did humans first reach Australia? No clue.
You may have heard this one. How do bumblebees manage to fly? We don’t know.
Here is my personal favorite: what is life? We can’t say.
Here is the second place favorite: what caused sex? Originally, there wasn’t any. Cells just divided. We can’t explain why the more complex process of sex won in evolution.
This is something you keep handy to pester your significant other with. Happy wondering!
We do NOT know:
What animal is the closest living relative of the ancestor of all mammals. Current best guess: the aardvark.
Who the first people to arrive in North America were. Could be the Clovis people. Maybe the Denisovans. Possibly the Polynesians.
We’re not even sure who can rightfully claim to have “discovered” America in relatively modern times. Recently, Chinese maps suggest they came to America in 1421, or possibly visited here in 2200 BC.
While we’re on the subject of North American migration, guess who came in such waves that they still understand each other, even without contact for hundreds of years. Believe it or not, the Athabasca Indians of Alaska and the Navajo of the Southwest can converse in their own languages with each other.
Between about 1200 and 1150 BC the greatest civilizations in the West – Egypt, Greece, and the Hittites – all collapsed. We don’t know why.
We don’t know when we discovered the Earth is round. Pretty much from the time of Eratosthenes in 240 BC, no respectable Greek thinker ever suggested the Earth was anything by round. Better than that, we can’t say.
What the hell are the hundreds of huge jars for in the Plain of Jars?
We know there is a huge lake, Lake Vostok, two and a half miles below the surface of Antarctica. We have no idea what if any creatures live there.
We don’t know if there is any biological reality to the idea of different human races.
We don’t know why Native Americans have grooves on the backs of their teeth.
When did humans first reach Australia? No clue.
You may have heard this one. How do bumblebees manage to fly? We don’t know.
Here is my personal favorite: what is life? We can’t say.
Here is the second place favorite: what caused sex? Originally, there wasn’t any. Cells just divided. We can’t explain why the more complex process of sex won in evolution.
This is something you keep handy to pester your significant other with. Happy wondering!
August 6, 2018
Full of sloppy factual and scientific errors, not to be taken seriously...
December 4, 2023
Well, we all read books to learn and know something. Imagine reading a book to know what we don't know! That's exactly what this book is for. An admirable collection of things that we know nothing about, this book at once outlines our ignorance and fills us with the curiosity to know more. It also debunks the myth of us humans being the most intelligent of species. But it also highlights the curiosity and enthusiasm with which we look around ourselves with wonder and continue our quest for wisdom. A slow, but interesting read. 3.5 stars!
March 23, 2026
This was a fun read. Its organized well so that if you are not interested in a specific topic just skip to the next one. Lots of weird stuff in here.
Recommended
Recommended
September 25, 2017
You can't really complain that this book doesn't give you answers when the title is "Things Nobody Knows." With that in mind, it's a fun read. I may not know why lesbian albatrosses are common but I'm glad to know that they are.
January 29, 2022
An absolutely fascinating read, full of things I didn't know, and things I didn't know we didn't know. Plus the odd thing that we've learned more about in recent years. So, perhaps we now don't know a little less than when this was published, or maybe through knowing those things, we've now discovered even more that we didn't know we didn't know.
Some of the topics I found more interesting than others, but that's inevitable in a book like this. In fact, it's a good thing, because it means there's plenty in here for everyone, no matter your range of personal interests.
Some of the topics I found more interesting than others, but that's inevitable in a book like this. In fact, it's a good thing, because it means there's plenty in here for everyone, no matter your range of personal interests.
November 5, 2019
This was an interesting book to read in short bursts. None of the questions had very in depth answers, but they did prompt me to want to learn more about a few different topics.
August 12, 2017
It's fun to read about life's mysteries, it is even better when those mysteries are ridiculously mundane.
The Things That Nobody Knows is packed with these kind of mysteries and a fun and compact read because of it.
The only downside is that it feels slightly outdated already!
3 Stars, fun as a side-read
The Things That Nobody Knows is packed with these kind of mysteries and a fun and compact read because of it.
The only downside is that it feels slightly outdated already!
3 Stars, fun as a side-read
August 12, 2018
Stil don’t know.
This book whilst giving interesting details of each and every subject ends up almost always with a blank. If your looking for answers rather than details, avoid.
This book whilst giving interesting details of each and every subject ends up almost always with a blank. If your looking for answers rather than details, avoid.
June 6, 2020
It was quite good but the beginning was a bit boring.
March 15, 2026
Taught me something I've often wondered about: how spiders can spin webs horizontally across spaces. They dangle a thread and wait for the wind to carry it to the other side, when they can traverse it and build up the web. At the end they eat the threads that were put down for construction purposes. What is unknown is whether the spider senses and accounts for wind direction.
Some other interesting facts: In the past it was thought nothing could emerge from a black hole. Now it is believed the can emit radiation, and radiation is energy, and energy is matter. This allows for a picture of an everlasting universe, pulsing between Big Bang creations and Big Crunch endings, into massive black holes which will eventually explode again into another Big Bang. If the universe does end, it may be via the Big Heat (entropy brings everything into a state of maximum confusion and uniform temperature with no free energy left to sustain life or motion), Big Freeze (everything reaches absolute zero), the Big Rip (dark energy tearing everything apart), or the Big Crunch (momentum of the Big Bang ends and gravity reverses the process).
The idea of a Big Bang and the limitations of the speed of light impose a limit on the size of the visible universe but if the universe is expanding, its size is always increasing. Is there a limitation on its size? Suppose a spacecraft takes off from Earth and travels in a straight line. Will it go on forever or, as some versions of the universe's geometry claim, eventually return to its starting point? Claims have been made that the finite universe may explain ripples in the cosmic microwave background.
When Newton was in charge of the universe, everything was so simple. You knew where everything was and how fast it was moving and you could work out, from his laws of motion, where everything would be in the future. Then Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and all the other quantum physicists told us first of all that we cannot know both where something is and how fast it is moving and secondly that it is only a probabilistic wave function anyway, and the world only makes sense if we accept that it can be in two places at the same time. In other words, the world of large objects seems to conform to the way we see things as behaving and think they ought to behave, but when we get down to the subatomic level, everything looks very different. It is almost as though we are living in two radically different universes at the same time.
Until recently, 'identical twins' were thought to have absolutely identical genes, so if one suffered from a genetically-transmitted disease, the other ought to have it too. If that was not the case, the only explanation was that environmental factors must influence that gene. Recently, however, a study of ninteen pairs of identical twins revealed variations in their DNA caused either by missing segments or segments that had been copied several times. The double-helix structure of DNA ensures a mechanism for repairing such errors but for some reason it does not always operate, resulting in small differences. There is also 'gene over-expression', where a gene produces more RNA and more protein than it ought to. This has also been identified in identical twins who do not share a genetic disease, leading to the suggestion that the over-expressed gene causes the disease gene to come into action.
Some other interesting facts: In the past it was thought nothing could emerge from a black hole. Now it is believed the can emit radiation, and radiation is energy, and energy is matter. This allows for a picture of an everlasting universe, pulsing between Big Bang creations and Big Crunch endings, into massive black holes which will eventually explode again into another Big Bang. If the universe does end, it may be via the Big Heat (entropy brings everything into a state of maximum confusion and uniform temperature with no free energy left to sustain life or motion), Big Freeze (everything reaches absolute zero), the Big Rip (dark energy tearing everything apart), or the Big Crunch (momentum of the Big Bang ends and gravity reverses the process).
The idea of a Big Bang and the limitations of the speed of light impose a limit on the size of the visible universe but if the universe is expanding, its size is always increasing. Is there a limitation on its size? Suppose a spacecraft takes off from Earth and travels in a straight line. Will it go on forever or, as some versions of the universe's geometry claim, eventually return to its starting point? Claims have been made that the finite universe may explain ripples in the cosmic microwave background.
When Newton was in charge of the universe, everything was so simple. You knew where everything was and how fast it was moving and you could work out, from his laws of motion, where everything would be in the future. Then Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and all the other quantum physicists told us first of all that we cannot know both where something is and how fast it is moving and secondly that it is only a probabilistic wave function anyway, and the world only makes sense if we accept that it can be in two places at the same time. In other words, the world of large objects seems to conform to the way we see things as behaving and think they ought to behave, but when we get down to the subatomic level, everything looks very different. It is almost as though we are living in two radically different universes at the same time.
Until recently, 'identical twins' were thought to have absolutely identical genes, so if one suffered from a genetically-transmitted disease, the other ought to have it too. If that was not the case, the only explanation was that environmental factors must influence that gene. Recently, however, a study of ninteen pairs of identical twins revealed variations in their DNA caused either by missing segments or segments that had been copied several times. The double-helix structure of DNA ensures a mechanism for repairing such errors but for some reason it does not always operate, resulting in small differences. There is also 'gene over-expression', where a gene produces more RNA and more protein than it ought to. This has also been identified in identical twins who do not share a genetic disease, leading to the suggestion that the over-expressed gene causes the disease gene to come into action.
November 4, 2020
“What you don’t know would make a great book.” - Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
The book started by defining known unknowns and unknown unknowns, where acknowledgement of the latter humbles us. And if that didn’t help, the rest of the book went on to show that there are many things we don’t even know we don’t know. It is essentially a book of questions without any concrete answers.
Only a small section is dedicated to each topic, which makes it a light and pleasant read. However, I found many topics to be unsatisfactory because 1) I already know about it, 2) the book failed to go more in depth into the topic, or 3) I have no interest in it. There are a few parts that I couldn’t understand because I am not familiar with the context. For example, “how did XXX die?”. It’s not a topic that would interest you unless you know who XXX is. Prior knowledge is probably still needed to better appreciate parts of the book.
However, to be fair, I was also intrigued by some of the questions that were raised. I went through those topics with Google by side so I could find out more because the write-ups were really brief.
I’ll give this a 3.5/5. Even though it managed to make me better appreciate the mysteries life, the universe, and everything have to offer, the overall experience was only borderline satisfying.
The book started by defining known unknowns and unknown unknowns, where acknowledgement of the latter humbles us. And if that didn’t help, the rest of the book went on to show that there are many things we don’t even know we don’t know. It is essentially a book of questions without any concrete answers.
Only a small section is dedicated to each topic, which makes it a light and pleasant read. However, I found many topics to be unsatisfactory because 1) I already know about it, 2) the book failed to go more in depth into the topic, or 3) I have no interest in it. There are a few parts that I couldn’t understand because I am not familiar with the context. For example, “how did XXX die?”. It’s not a topic that would interest you unless you know who XXX is. Prior knowledge is probably still needed to better appreciate parts of the book.
However, to be fair, I was also intrigued by some of the questions that were raised. I went through those topics with Google by side so I could find out more because the write-ups were really brief.
I’ll give this a 3.5/5. Even though it managed to make me better appreciate the mysteries life, the universe, and everything have to offer, the overall experience was only borderline satisfying.
January 13, 2020
As it is mentioned in the very last couple of questions, this book is definitely good as a starting point for further curiosity and discovery. It presents a diverse range of topics, and even though "like" and "dislike" are subjective conceptions, I think quite a few subjects are of little interest and didn't fit exactly well the general tone of the book.
For a book written in 2011, it needed a better research effort because several things in the human evolution chapter are outdated, even for that early in the 2010s. Also, and knowing that the goal of this book was to present as many questions as possible, lots of subjects were poorly explained, often with arguments left unexplained. By this I mean, that ideas were left hanging without further explanation to what they entitled. I don’t mean I was expecting him to explain everything because there are obviously questions to which we have no definite answers, but whatever hypotheses have been put out there, people have explained their meaning and reasoning, making it easier to understand why they were proposed, even if we don’t agree with them or if they are not valid.
For a book written in 2011, it needed a better research effort because several things in the human evolution chapter are outdated, even for that early in the 2010s. Also, and knowing that the goal of this book was to present as many questions as possible, lots of subjects were poorly explained, often with arguments left unexplained. By this I mean, that ideas were left hanging without further explanation to what they entitled. I don’t mean I was expecting him to explain everything because there are obviously questions to which we have no definite answers, but whatever hypotheses have been put out there, people have explained their meaning and reasoning, making it easier to understand why they were proposed, even if we don’t agree with them or if they are not valid.
June 13, 2024
This is a book with high and lofty goals and yet a complete inability to provide what is promised! It is like reading a scientific book written by a politician, where all it does is ask interesting questions but then skirt all the way around the answer with bits of obvious information that it hopes will satisfy but are really boring, and then not answer the original question at all! If this happened once or twice maybe I could get with it, but it happens on pretty much every single question! A real disappointment, I had to DNF due to the groundhog day of frustration and futility.
September 26, 2024
I don't normally read compendium type books like this but I needed something I could pick up and put down over the course of a few weeks without losing track of what I'd already read and this book was perfect for that. If you've got a curious mind then there's plenty of topics to pique your interest here from Ancient Rome to deep space and each of the 500 topics covered is pulled together in very snackable sections. This book was written a few years ago now so perhaps some of the questions posed have an answer to them now. But I enjoyed delving into each section.
December 19, 2017
This is a book I have reread before and will likely reread in the future. There are many, many things in it I still do not understand (like all the physics stuff) but I still love this book and will definitely keep picking it up until I understand everything in it.
March 11, 2018
Dull.
Just spectacularly dull. I'd rather the enigma variations remained an enigma than the boring explanation given here be true. Not that I'm vaguely interested anyway. Nothing of any interest her at all
Just spectacularly dull. I'd rather the enigma variations remained an enigma than the boring explanation given here be true. Not that I'm vaguely interested anyway. Nothing of any interest her at all
October 25, 2018
I couldn't get into this at all. The summaries of each question were dry and short, and the writing lacked much needed character. Normally a book with random trivia in like this I would devour enthusiastically, but I couldn't make myself read it all.
January 12, 2021
Oh my god i enjoyed this. And just as the author said somewhere, "It’s very irritating, whatever it is." He also made tiny jokes here and there which I really enjoyed i dont see why some people are downgrading this book by giving it a low rating. Someone said, why only give little details to these mysteries? Well dude this book is not focused on giving these details. I ended up reading all of it in one sitting.
November 29, 2023
•Một cuốn sách khá thú vị về những điều chưa ai biết. Vậy thôi! À cách dùng từ của sách hơi chán nên dễ làm hụt hẫng khi đọc cũng như là tốn kha khá thời gian để gặm nhấm xong nó.🥲
3/5⭐
[Những điều chưa ai biết_ William Hartston]
3/5⭐
[Những điều chưa ai biết_ William Hartston]
June 24, 2025
I enjoyed the book and it’s an interesting read for sure, you can be pretty selective over bits and some things crossover. Read it mostly whilst travelling between work and home!
It definitely gets you thinking and wanting to research more!
It definitely gets you thinking and wanting to research more!
November 30, 2017
Great fun to dip in and out of but with a lot of dross. It is interesting to note that, since the book's publication, one of the unknowns - The Higgs Boson - is now a known.
December 31, 2017
Looks a bigger read than it is. Half the book is taken up with the gubbins in the back. also the mysteries of life are a very white male selection IMHO most of it we already knew we didn't know.
December 26, 2018
Not my type ._.
May 3, 2019
I think some of these were probably included to fill out that "501"... But the ones that were intriguing were very intriguing.
January 16, 2020
Don't normally finish a book knowing less than when I started!
October 25, 2020
Some interesting topics, a nice book to chip away at here and there
December 8, 2020
Amateur hour
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews