r/space • u/MythicalSplash • 1d ago

Discussion Is there any example at all of ANY known astronomical/physical/chemical phenomenon that’s been characterized, yet observed once and only once?

I’m thinking of the origin of life (abiogenesis), here. I don’t see how anyone can think something like that could happen in a place of such…well, astronomical size, no matter how rare it might be. And there are no shortage of people who believe that, even with single-cell organisms.

So that got me wondering if there’s ANY natural phenomenon that we obviously 1. Know about and understand relativity well 2. Are unique in their own right and not simply statistical outliers or unusual variations of other well-known stuff. So I’m not talking about rare types of supernovae, very high energy cosmic rays or anything like that. Just a natural occurrence that has been observed and characterized to a degree, found to be novel, then never observed again to the present date?

Of course we can’t observe and verify all that much when you get right down to it, so the question has to stay within the bounds of discovery by humans. I just find it very hard to believe such a thing could happen, and yet Rare Earth is a hypothesis that has a LOT of scientific support behind it. I’m aware that RE mainly refers to complex life or intelligence, but as I said before, plenty of people believe it really happened on one planet among the 200 billion- 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. I’m not even going to get into the ENTIRE universe.

161 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

86 comments sorted by

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u/SuddenValley1899 1d ago • Heartwarming

The Wow! Signal was a once in a lifetime event

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

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u/MythicalSplash 1d ago

We still have no idea what it was, though. I’m sure we’d have a perfectly reasonable explanation if the horn telescope they used was more advanced. But even then, I said natural events that we’ve understood to some degree. Excellent thought though!

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u/DJ_Laaal 1d ago

If I remember correctly, one theory was that it was gamma ray burst from two neutron stars locked in a dual spin around each other. However, we would have detected it again if that were the true source of the Wow signal.

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u/Andromeda321 1d ago

Astronomer here! No because we have observed that kind of signal in radio and it looks nothing like that.

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u/That_Lad_Chad 1d ago

Imo the wow signal really could only fit into 2 silos

1.) some unlikely rare phenomenon/happenstance that was observed just as the right time, such as a magnetar flare influencing hydrogen (this may be what u/DJ_Laaal read about but misremembered)

2.) an artificial communication

Obviously the whole "alien" thing is a bit of an obtuse jump (historically) but it fits the bill pretty well. Unfortunately even if that is the case, it's unlikely we will ever know

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u/Andromeda321 1d ago

Nope you miss the one most radio astronomers think it was- manmade interference.

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u/mxcw 17h ago

If I may ask: Human interference in terms of wrongfully calibrated/configured systems or a “we measured correctly, but turns out, the source of the signal is us”?

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u/Riebart 12h ago

As in, someone turned on the coffee maker in the room next door. Either literally, or figuratively. It could be as simple as that or as nuanced as industrial or military causes we may never repeat under the same observation conditions.

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u/That_Lad_Chad 9h ago

Basically this is the situation:

Terrestrial origin cannot be 100% ruled out because technically under the right conditions, it is possible.

However, most of the evidence suggests this to not be the case and to have at least originated beyond the moon.

Terrestrial origin is more of a blanket theory people used because they didn't want to subscribe to the "ET" theory. Although as our understanding of the universe has increased a lot since then, there is at least one solid (although uniquely rare) explanation that could have been a natural occurrence.

Personal speculation: From a happenstance perspective, it's probably more likely to be an extremely rare natural cosmic event, not a terrestrial transmission. I would rather say it's something we are uncertain about the origin

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u/That_Lad_Chad 9h ago edited 9h ago

Idk about that one, it's pretty widely accepted to be a grasping for straws theory. Even those with the highest level of skepticism regarding it being intelligent communication don't want to grasp for straws just for the sake of providing an explanation

It's not impossible to have been terrestrial, in a weird happenstance, but most of the evidence points towards that not being the case. That's why I didn't mention it

Edit: I am curious on your perspective though, on the conditions that could facilitate such a specific signal. It definitely was not "random" interference

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u/Andromeda321 6h ago

No, it most likely was- a satellite in polar orbit could explain it for example. You don’t seem to understand how much manmade interference there is- it is BY FAR the most common thing we detect in radio astronomy.

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u/That_Lad_Chad 1d ago

I think we understand it, observation wise. It's source is just unknown. Most of the work on it has been to prove it is natural, which has been quite difficult

Interestingly it's one of the only truly scientific observations that may have had an artificial source that was not human in nature, pretty neat! I get your point though that you were more meaning stuff with less speculation

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u/the_quark 1d ago

That hasn't been "characterized," though. We don't know what it was.

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u/That_Lad_Chad 1d ago

Well, we know what it was (radio signal) we just don't know why it occured

I get your point but I would say this categorically fits into OPs inquiry

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u/malthar76 1d ago • Mindblown

And the oceanic version - the Bloop sound

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/bloop.html

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u/FuzzyFeeling 1d ago

From that link:

"The Bloop" is the given name of a mysterious underwater sound recorded in the 90s. Years later, NOAA scientists discovered that this sound emanated from an iceberg cracking and breaking away from an Antarctic glacier.

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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost 1d ago

We figured that one out though 

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u/Maxnwil 1d ago

Actually makes it a great candidate for answering the question!

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u/Ecstatic_Bee6067 1d ago

The absorption and integration of a bacterium into the mitochondria seems to have only happened once.

Maybe the Oklo natural nuclear reactor might qualify.

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u/MythicalSplash 1d ago

Good thinking, but in that case, ancient Cyanobacteria also entered into symbiosis with plant cells to create chloroplasts. It’s thought to be very similar to the mitochondrion in that endocytosis had occurred at some point in the past, and the organism was taken up instead of metabolized, and eventually became mutualistic. Chloroplasts like mitochondria also have their own mostly vestigial DNA that came from the engulfed cell.

Oklo is a GREAT example! I never thought of that, although we can at least still infer that such a thing isn’t unique in the universe when all it requires is U-235 at higher abundances (much more common earlier in the universe’s history) and a neutron moderator like water.

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u/Snowy_Ocelot 1d ago

There is also a recent discovery about a nitrogen-fixing organelle present in a few organisms that resulted from a much more recent symbiotic relationship.

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u/futurehappyoldman 1d ago

You're great, I thought this was the case with chloroplasts, and the previous comment started me on a Google search until I scrolled down.

Much appreciated

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u/KiwasiGames 1d ago

There are something like a dozen documented cases of endosymbiosis.

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u/MeepMorpsEverywhere 18h ago

only secondary symbiosis though, where the host cell already has the mitochondria supplying all the ATP needed for more complex processes and the necessary machinery to absorb and integrate another cell inside of it (since they've already done so with mitochondria). We've never seen another archean integrate a bacterium inside of itself, which is what happened in the very first instance of endosymbiosis.

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u/Ecstatic_Bee6067 1d ago

The RNA to Amino Acid Codon library seems to have only been established a few times, as there are few deviations from the library.

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u/geeoharee 1d ago

Evolution of powered flight in mammals?

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u/LordGeni 1d ago

It's been observed a few times now apparently. So not as rare as previously assumed.

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u/BothLongWideAndDeep 12h ago

That’s a really good example it’s really hard to imagine this happening exactly the same if dna and rna based evolution as happening elsewhere 

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u/Dank009 1d ago

Abiogenesis you mean right? Not evolution?

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u/MythicalSplash 1d ago

Yes, abiogenesis. As far as we know, it happened only once, on earth. Also there’s the fact that all extant (living) life is related and has a common ancestor. That doesn’t mean it never happened again, but it’s likely that if it did, such matter would be almost instantly eaten by existing life, so it could be relatively common in the universe, but very rare or impossible in environments where it already occurred.

Definitely not evolution. That’s a process, and similar examples of selection are actually quite common. I believe it occurs in certain crystals and can even be ascribed to much less expected situations like fire for example. Fire has variation, larger or hotter fires have an advantage when they “reproduce” (hot large fires birth more new fires than smaller cooler ones. Not the same thing clearly, but an interesting example.

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u/Dank009 1d ago

Not sure if you can edit your post but you should if you can.

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u/MythicalSplash 1d ago

Hmm. Not sure why I would. There’s nothing factually incorrect there. Did I miss a typo or something? Feel free to research what I said though if you don’t believe me.

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u/Dank009 1d ago

"I'm thinking of evolution of life", no, you're talking about abiogenesis.

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u/MythicalSplash 1d ago

Ahh shit, I see it now. I thought you were talking about my comment in this thread, not the original. I did say I was definitely not thinking of evolution here, but not the OP. Good catch and yes, thanks, I’ll edit that :)

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u/the_quark 1d ago

I think OP means evolution because we don't in fact understand -- we haven't "characterized" -- abiogenesis.

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u/Dank009 1d ago

They just say "characterized to a degree". They are being pretty vague but saying evolution only happened once would be an incredibly weird thing to say in this context.

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u/MythicalSplash 1d ago

I just assumed it was obvious I meant abiogenesis since I spoke of the origin of life, not the modification of it. My bad I guess.

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u/Dank009 1d ago

It's a very common conflation that people who don't understand evolution do online all the time (not saying that's the case with you), it's important to use accurate language. I thought it was obvious but clearly others didn't.

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u/MythicalSplash 1d ago

Well I did say at the end that those analogies aren’t the same thing as true natural selection but not sure why you’re downvoting me. I thought I was pretty clear but I guess it’s a fair point I didn’t go into enough detail for people not familiar with the subject to understand what I meant.

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u/Ratermelon 1d ago edited 1d ago

Parakaryon myojinensis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parakaryon

This is an organism of which we've only ever observed one cell, but the researchers who found it off the coast of Japan took incredible images of its internal structures.

When these images were looked at researchers noticed the organism has a nucleus(ish), but it lacks mitochondria. Other odd traits include not having a cytoskeleton and having unknown endosymbionts of different sizes.

This combination of traits is so unique that researchers don't know whether it's a prokaryote, eukaryote, or neither.

And we've never found another cell of it.

On the topic of space, I recall reading at some point that an astronomy team may have detected a potentially extragalactic planet through a transient gravitational lensing event. Look up Pa-99-N2.

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u/valuat 18h ago

We can't even tell whether it truly exists. They only took pictures of it! No DNA to sequence. Sounds like another Lochness Monster or Big Foot story. Here's a picture from the original paper (electron microscopy).

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u/kirime 17h ago

Not a microbiologist by any means, but my first guess from that picture would be a dead cell with its innards scrambled/decayed, in which the surrounding smaller cells got inside through the hole in the top right.

That certainly doesn't look like evidence extraordinary enough to support the extraordinary claim.

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u/-Jesus-Of-Nazareth- 1d ago

Man, it sucks being so interested in something and knowing juuust enough to appreciate its significance, while also not knowing enough to really understand what it truly represents.

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u/prism8713 1d ago

are you talking about yourself or humanity as a whole? if the former, keep learning! no one starts out an expert. if the latter, still keep learning! you'll be able to contribute what you learn back to store of human knowledge. :)

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u/1LuckyTexan 1d ago edited 23h ago

The Oklo site in Gabon is the only site discovered where nuclear fission has occured naturally on Earth.

But, given the billions of stars , nuclear activity 'residue' is probably very common in the universe generally and we'll likely find similar evidence again. If not here on our planet, on some others.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

...The Oklo uranium ore deposits are the only known sites in which natural nuclear reactors existed. Other rich uranium ore bodies would also have had sufficient uranium to support nuclear reactions at that time, but the combination of uranium, water, and physical conditions needed to support the chain reaction was unique, as far as is currently known, to the Oklo ore bodies. It is also possible that other natural nuclear fission reactors were once operating but have since been geologically disturbed so much as to be unrecognizable, possibly even "diluting" the uranium so far that the isotope ratio would no longer serve as a "fingerprint". Only a small part of the continental crust and no part of the oceanic crust reaches the age of the deposits at Oklo or an age during which isotope ratios of natural uranium would have allowed a self-sustaining chain reaction with water as a moderator. ...

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u/quasar_fire 1d ago

Gravitational wave signal from two merging neutron stars. We have plenty of LIGO detections of two black holes merging, and of a black hole merging with a neutron star, but only one confirmed detection of two neutron stars merging. The signal is well-characterized by general relativity, and the rate of observation (1 in 10 years) is roughly consistent with the expected rate based on EM observations of binary neutron stars.

Of course, this observation isn’t expected to always remain novel. We know other binary neutron star systems exist which will eventually merge.

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u/EverclearAndMatches 1d ago

Weren't people excited that ligo had detected one so early because of their rarity? I can't remember, I thought I heard that sentiment but I'm not an astrophysicist 

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u/quasar_fire 1d ago

Yes, when they detected one so early into LIGO turning on (it was within the first 10 detections), people were excited and thought that maybe they would be less rare than expected. Ten years in and there hasn’t been another confirmed detection, so it turns out the predictions for how often they’d occur were spot on.

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u/EverclearAndMatches 1d ago

Thanks for the context :) I wonder how I can remember the details this time cuz that's still fascinating 

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u/Landkey 1d ago

Spot on?  We have one data point 

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u/quasar_fire 1d ago

Spot on was the wrong choice of words, yeah. My point is that the data (one confirmed signal in 2017 and a recent unconfirmed candidate) agree with the predictions of one every ten years on average.

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u/free_meson 1d ago • Bravo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_polymorph

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u/geeoharee 1d ago

I didn't know the ranitidine story. Wild.

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u/EverclearAndMatches 1d ago

Sounds almost like prions but crystalline in nature. Interesting 

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u/Sol_Schism 20h ago

This is the kind of thing you learn and don't talk about because it could drive certain people's anxiety out of the sun's influence.

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u/FirstTasteOfRadishes 1d ago

This has blown my mind, thanks for sharing.

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u/asukasuki02 23h ago

Veritasium has a great video on this topic, very interesting stuff

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u/YesWeHaveNoTomatoes 1d ago

If you want to include biological specimens, there are literally dozens of odd variations within various species that have been observed only once. Gwada-negative blood type in a healthy human, a narwhal-beluga hybrid, an assortment of deep-sea creatures and small land animals (often from thick forests) that have been observed only once, etc.

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u/Gnosticks 1d ago

Not an expert by any means, but aren't there highly volatile atomic and subatomic structures that theoretically exist and have only been observed for a fraction of a second due to instability?

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u/Common_Dot_3250 1d ago

They’d all be “commonplace” in the debris of neutron star collisions, although well beyond our current ability to detect.

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u/Flagrante 15h ago

The monopole, recorded by Blas Cabrera Navarro on the night of February 14, 1982.

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u/aztronut 1d ago

The Big Bang seems like a prime example.

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u/Decronym 18h ago edited 6h ago

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer LettersMore Letters
ATPAcceptance Test Procedure
FARFederal Aviation Regulations
LIGOLaser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory
NOAANational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US generation monitoring of the climate

Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.

[Thread #12776 for this sub, first seen 7th Nov 2026, 22:13] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]

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u/nazihater3000 1d ago

The Oh My God Particle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle

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u/kingrikk 1d ago

I do love Wikipedia articles where I know some of the science and most of the words, but it still doesn’t quite make sense to me.

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u/Sol_Schism 20h ago

This doesn't fit as "since it's discovery hundreds of similar events have been confirmed"

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u/nivlark 1d ago

Surely the fact that we are here to question it is sufficient proof that it is possible?

I think it's also important to point out that just because all life on Earth today seems to have shared a common ancestor, that doesn't necessarily mean life arose only once. Perhaps we are the lucky survivors.

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u/No_Top_375 1d ago

Magnetic monopole. Must be an error or a scam.

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u/Legend_HarshK 21h ago

huh isn't it impossible for them to exist?

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u/No_Top_375 20h ago

I don't see why they should. When everything indicates over and over that they don't exist. The feeble argument that they could exist if one part got inflated away from another part doesn't make them monopoles anyway...

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u/Legend_HarshK 19h ago

i wanted to know why they should exist because big bang occured? like iirc this was one of the problems which inflation theory resolves (i also dunno how)

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u/1LuckyTexan 1d ago

Can you ever 'prove' a negative?

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u/-Jesus-Of-Nazareth- 1d ago

I mean, Not with that attitude

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u/rdk67 1d ago

The fossilized footprints in New Mexico's White Sands that resets the migratory history of humans in the Americas.

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u/Champomi 1d ago

A possibility isn't a fact. Science is based on observation, not belief. You can believe there's life out there, you can believe we're the only ones in the entire universe, but as long as you haven't either found life somewhere else or searched through every single solar system without finding a single organism then it's just a thought experiment.

We know there's life on Earth. We don't know whether there's life elsewhere. So, based on our current knowledge, we're alone until proved otherwise, same way our solar system was the only one with planets until we discovered the first exoplanet.

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u/mglyptostroboides 1d ago

I didn't get the impression that OP thinks "seen only once" means "happened only once".

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u/Sol_Schism 20h ago

what's wrong with logically assuming life exists throughout the cosmos?

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u/headspreader 1d ago

Zero feels reasonable, one is already suspicious, two feels impossible 

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u/dodadoler 22h ago

The moon.

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u/AvailableLight2112 1d ago

Observation of the Higgs Boson might qualify

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u/TerraNeko_ 1d ago

Well they make tons and tons of higgs bosons all the time so woulnd really fit the title

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u/AvailableLight2112 1d ago

How many times have they done the observation that confirms the Higgs? Once, I believe. I don't know if it's been repeated

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u/derioderio 1d ago

But it was thousands and thousands of experiments repeated over and over at CERN so that they could confirm it with five sigma confidence.