"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."
"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
This is a common theme in cosmology today.
It stems from us using untested assumptions as the basis for buidling our cosmological models.
A correct theory can be measured by its predictive powers.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27055267/
"It has puzzled us; we're not sure where to draw the boundary between planets and brown dwarfs,"
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080229- spacecraft -anomaly.html
"I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this," said Anderson, who is now working as a retiree. "There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/nrao-ygm092908.php
"Looking at a faraway protogalaxy seen as it was 6.5 billion years ago, the scientists measured a magnetic field at least 10 times stronger than that of our own Milky Way. They had expected just the opposite"
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081119.html
"What's causing this unusual aurora over Saturn? No one is sure."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080108142443.htm
The mystery is that the “blue blobs” are found along a wispy bridge of gas strung among three colliding galaxies, M81, M82, and NGC 3077, residing approximately 12 million light-years from Earth. This is not the place astronomers expect to find star clusters: in the "abyssal plain" of intergalactic space. “We could not believe it, the stars were in the middle of nowhere”, says de Mello.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041222231239.htm
"We knew there were really massive young galaxies eons ago, but we thought they had all matured into older ones more like our Milky Way. If these galaxies are indeed newly formed, then this implies parts of the universe are still hotbeds of galaxy birth," said Dr. Chris Martin.
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMPADBE8YE_index_0.html
"It was quite a surprise to us," admits Kuulkers. However, after running a series of checks, the team satisfied themselves that the oscillations were indeed taking place 1122 times a second (1122 Hz). - In reference to a supposed "neutron" star spinning 1122 times a second.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2689
"We were very surprised to see the flare", says Waite. "The rapid increase in intensity over such a large area was quite unexpected and is hard to explain".
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm?list1066595
"At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."
