What is Mystery: Definition and 913 Discussions

Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective (such as Sherlock Holmes), who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Mystery fiction can involve a supernatural mystery in which the solution does not have to be logical and even in which there is no crime involved. This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, whose titles such as Dime Mystery, Thrilling Mystery and Spicy Mystery offered what were then described as complicated to solve and weird stories: supernatural horror in the vein of Grand Guignol. That contrasted with parallel titles of the same names which contained conventional hardboiled crime fiction. The first use of "mystery" in that sense was by Dime Mystery, which started out as an ordinary crime fiction magazine but switched to "weird menace" during the later part of 1933.

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  1. Ivan Seeking

    Mystery of the [Australian] Min Min lights explained

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s818193.htm
  2. E

    Unraveling the Mystery of Carbon 12 in Dead Tissue

    Why does Carbon 12 in dead tissue ''remain'' undisturbed?
  3. L

    The Mystery of Sigma: What It Is and How It Works

    I would like to know what sigma is and what it does. What is sigma? What does it stand for? How does it work? Do you have any examples of how it works? any help would be appreciated (im not sure if this should be in the calc section or not)
  4. A

    The Mystery of Placebo Effects

    So what causes this? I was at a clinic the other day, waiting on my girlfriends mom to get out, and was reading a big-muscle-guy magazine. I was looking at the performance enhancers/weight loss formulas/muscle building/etc in there (do any of these really work?), and I noticed ads like this...
  5. wolram

    Exploring Gravity: The Science Behind the Mystery

    gravity must be the most confounding thing to science ,we all know its effects, but no one knows its mechanics, what is the most up to date theory, theories?
  6. K

    Unraveling the Mystery of Department Store Scanners

    Does anyone know the workings behind those little scanners that department stores use...you know, the ones that they can take off and aim at the barcodes on heavy things? I know the barcodes themselves with the thickness of the lines and stuff represent the number that usually appears right...
  7. wolram

    The Mystery of Star Formation: Why Do Gas Clouds Collapse?

    stars are formed from gas clouds, these gas clouds posses potential energy and kinematic energy, they may also exhibit a density contrast, theory tells us that collapse of the gas cloud starts when PE overcomes KE, but i can find no explanation for the trigger to this collapse ,put another...
  8. lavalamp

    Unveiling the Mystery of Splitting Peaks in Carbon Compounds

    Recently in Chemistry we have been doing about how it is possible to identify carbon compounds by how many proton environments there are around a molecule. For this we look at graphs with various peaks dotted around them, this is not what bothers me, what bothers me is that some of these peaks...
  9. K

    Uncovering the Mystery of an Infinite Nail

    This came about on a test today (we have handed it in) and it just got to me. I didn't think it was hard until my teacher made an outrageous claim. Here goes nothin: A hammer strikes a nail, and the nail goes in .8 cm. On the second strike, it will go in .7 cm. It is a geometric sequence...
  10. A

    Mystery Before The Big Bang Unfolded

    You know guys, the planets is composed mainly of two types of rock material, Fe-material( siderolites) and the stony element (aerolites), these are heavy elements and available in the apace, which formed planets and stars within 1-2 billion years just because there were two Big Bangs, one...
  11. K

    Coral Castle Mystery: Unravel a Unique Mystery

    coral castle mystery... pretty interesting http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/bp/16/coralcastle.htm
  12. G

    Unravelling the Mystery of Dark Matter

    Dark matter?? What's that?
  13. M

    Town Battles 'Demonic' Mystery Blazes

    http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=2&u=/nm/20040211/od_nm/fires_dc Hmm, any guesses on what's going on here?
  14. Ivan Seeking

    Astronomers unravel a mystery of the Dark Ages

    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-02/cu-aua020304.php
  15. T

    The Mystery of Light: FTL Travel

    Firstly, just a high to everyone, (first post, aye). Now, everyone has been saying that FTL Travel (Faster than Light) and even the speed of light is impossible. (dammit... ) than how is it that light can go at the speed of light. Now, for some touching back on the SOL theory. As you...
  16. Link

    Winter Thunderstorms: Exploring the Mystery

    Why is there never thunders during winters? Shoudnt the cold air be even more conductive?
  17. C

    Solving the Jump Height Mystery: How to Calculate with Unknown Mass

    The question is: If a sprinter running at 10 meters per second could convert his kinetic energy into upward motion, how high could he jump? How do I solve this if I use the KE = 1/2 mv^2 I don't know what the mass is?
  18. R

    Mystery of the Rising Solid: Energy Flows Explained

    Ok I am not especially knowledgeable in thermodynamics or physics so I am sure the answer to this is quite simple. However to me it is quite a mystery. This is my thought. You have a cylinder filled with water; above it on supports is a solid object the exact size of the cylinder. Through...
  19. jimmy p

    What Is Va Va Voom? Unravel the Mystery!

    Va Va Voom! I know a lot of the British people have seen the new Renault Clio adverts however I am not sure whether it is shown in the U.S. Anyway Thierry Henry (a famous French footballer...AMAZING) goes on and talks about what is Va Va Voom and what isn't Va Va Voom. I was just...
  20. himanshu121

    Unveiling the Mystery of Blood & Insect Colors

    What determines the Colour of BLOOD And why the colour of insects different? I don't know Biology But i want the answer for above just to add to my knowledge
  21. A

    Mystery of Blue Eyes in My Family

    A question for Monique and anyone else who knows this material... Everyone born into my family has blue or grey eyes. Even when my mother's sister married a brown-eyed man, their children had blue eyes. Every single person born into our family has eyes of some shade of blue. Now, I don't...
  22. T

    Exploring the Mystery of Energy

    I am very eager to understand what energy really is, thought no one really does. Are there more than one definition of energy? Is energy a property within all objects and thereby unifies all objects? Is it true that every object has a potential energy?
  23. benzun_1999

    The Speed of Light: A Constant Mystery

    Why is the speed of light a constant?
  24. G

    Ksh mystery: how are newlines represented in files?

    Please take a look at these lines which demonstrate my problem in a korn shell terminal: First I defined var with a newline embedded in it. I printed it and, as expected, got abc def. I printed the same thing to file1. Next, I edited it using the pattern operator ${var//\\n\} to...
  25. A

    Uncovering the Mystery of Mathematics: Gregory Chaitin's Omega

    I first read this story in New Scientist when I was collecting it. Here are some highlights: The article has been reposted here: http://www.you.com.au/news/362.htm and in many other places. Any comments?
  26. T

    Solving a Seismic Mystery: Calculating Epicenter Distance

    It seems to me that this is just a simple algebra problem, that doesn't have much to do with waves, but it's the only problem on the homework that I can't figure out. :-/ I know there's an easy solution to it, but I keep getting the wrong answer. Anyway, here it goes: A seismographic station...
  27. K

    Exploring the Mystery of Perfect Numbers

    I have an assignment free night and thought I would make a post that hopefully hasn't been made before. A discussion of perfect numbers: A positive integer n is said to be perfect if n is equal to the sum of all its positive divisors, not including n itself Alternatively, if σ(n)...
  28. K

    Mystery Behind Scratching the Beaker: Investigating PPT Formation

    In the experiment that I did today, there's a very strange step. After mixing two solutions in a beaker, according to the lab manual, we needed to scratch the bottom of the beaker using a spectula so as to help forming ppt. My question is why does scratching the beaker help forming ppt?
  29. D

    Unravelling the Mystery of Car Windscreen Steaming

    Sometimes when I am driving I make myself the following questions. Why do the front windscreen of cars steam up? What is the physical reason? and what is the best way to eliminate the steam? I have heard many theories about the cause and how to act. who knows the right theory?
  30. Ivan Seeking

    Mystery Spot on Jupiter Baffles Astronomers

    http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/jupiter_dark_spot_031023.html
  31. Ivan Seeking

    Mystery force flattens trees close to Ruby [Alaska]

    http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/4206897p-4219148c.html
  32. Ivan Seeking

    The Marfa lights mystery of Texas

    I am posting here since no specific claims are made. This seems to be a good example of... http://www.news24houston.com/content/headlines/?ArID=16799&SecID=2
  33. Ivan Seeking

    Community gripped by mystery [fire] beneath the earth

    http://www.sabcnews.com/south_africa/general/0,2172,67329,00.html
  34. Ivan Seeking

    News Mystery blood clots felling U.S. troops: UPI

    http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031006-113325-5591r
  35. Jeebus

    A Jovian moon may hold mystery of life

    Observations from the Galileo spacecraft suggest that Jupiter's moon Europa hides a liquid ocean under its icy top. To protect the planet-sized world, considered a promising site to search for life beyond Earth, NASA engineers crashed the robot ship into Jupiter on September 21. This...
  36. Ivan Seeking

    What Are The Chances? Mathematician Solves Evolutionary Mystery: Science Daily

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030929055601.htm
  37. Jeebus

    John & Julia's Ages: Solving the Mystery

    Question posed: Julia is as old as John will be when Julia is twice as old as John was when Julia's age was half the sum of their present ages. John is as old as Julia was when John was half the age he will be 10 years from now. How old are John and Julia...
  38. wolram

    Uncovering the Mystery of Gravitational Waves

    http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/GravWaves.html Eddington was not the only skeptic. Many physicists thought the waves predicted by the theory were simply a mathematical artifact. Yet others continued to further develop and test the concept. By the 1960s, theorists had showed...
  39. P

    Exploring the Mystery of Black Holes and Singularities

    Why is it said that a black hole is a literally bottemless pit in space-time? If it weren't bottemless, then the singularity inside would not have to be of infinite density. I'm not sure if I have missed anything important, so PLEASE help!
  40. H

    Unravelling the Mystery of a Party Trick

    I was reading In Code by Saray Flannery,one of the problem in the book bothered me, it is not the problem itself, it is the solution. A Party Trick If someone tells me 2, 2 and 3 are the remainders when she divides her age by 3, 5 and 7 respectively then I can work out her age. Solution...
  41. Ivan Seeking

    A SPACE ODDITY? Strange Kansas City marker part of world-wide mystery

    http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/living/special_packages/starmagazine/6693767.htm
  42. Ivan Seeking

    Chupacabras in Lota: Mystery of Animal Deaths

    http://www.paranormalnews.com/article.asp?ArticleID=725
  43. benzun_1999

    The Mystery of Light Particle Mass

    dear reader, what is the mass of light particels?
  44. benzun_1999

    Explore Compton's Effect: Uncovering the Mystery

    dear reader, what is comptons effect.how did compton do this experiment?[?] :smile:
  45. agro

    Rolling Coins: Unravelling the Mystery of Two Revolutions

    Imagine rolling a coin with a radius of 1 unit on a flat surface. To get translated 2[pi] units, the coin must obviously roll 1 revolution. (the angle swept is 2[pi] and the arc length covered equals to 2[pi]*r = 2[pi]*1 = 2[pi]. Now imagine rolling a coin on another stationary coin with the...
  46. Ivan Seeking

    Atlantic's Sudden Temperature Dive A Midsummer Mystery for Scientists

    ""During [most of] July, our water temperatures were, I would say, right around normal," said Capt. Butch Arbin, head of the Ocean City Beach Patrol. That's in the low 70s. About two weeks ago, he said, "there was a tremendous change in temperature, [dropping] as much as 10 degrees overnight."...
  47. C

    Unlock the Mystery of Kinetic Energy Transfer with Magnets!

    Check this site address out: http://scitoys/scitoys/scitoys/magnets/gauss.html It is a neat little science project site, and I found this project the most interesting (except for the non-elecricity requiring radio) on their site. How it tells you it works(shortened): You take a ruler and...
  48. Ivan Seeking

    MICHIGAN CROP CIRCLES: Farmer raises a mystery

    "HOWELL TOWNSHIP -- They've come late at night, holding flashlights, their beams cutting the dark in the middle of 1,000 acres of wheat fields. They've come in the afternoon under blue sky to lift their arms and pray." http://www.freep.com/news/mich/signs5_20030805.htm
  49. Ivan Seeking

    Elephant man mystery unravelled: BBC

    "The notorious "elephant man" may have suffered from two rare disorders, according to scientists." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3084483.stm
  50. enigma

    Mystery of Roadside Traffic Sensors: What Do They Do?

    I'm sure you all have seen them, I just wonder if anyone knows what they do: I have noticed traffic sensors of some sort in various places over the last few months. They consist of two long wires which look like co-ax cable duct-taped across the road/street/lane/highway. They are connected to...
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