Curling Mystery

 

I'm very "into" the Winter Olympic Games this year. One of the most entertaining and interesting events that I've been following closely is curling. Curling is a sport that originates in Scotland and is similar in rules to bowls or pétanque. Traditionally it's played on a frozen pond although usually, for safety reasons, it is takes place on an ice rink. It is a team sport and each team consists of at least two people. The first is a "thrower" who slides the stone across the ice towards the target, called a "house". The thrower can select an arc trajectory or straight line by spinning the stone. The stone can then also be steered by the "sweeper", a second player who rubs the ice ahead of the stone very hard with a special tool called a "broom" although it is different from the one used to clean floors. This changes the lubrication of the ice and can alter the stone's course and speed. Opponent sweepers are always on standby to sweep your stones if they are knocked towards a lower scoring area of the house. This makes curling more complicated and dynamic than bowls, along with the fact that it also tends to be played by younger people. Despite the fierce competition in a vital tournament like the 2026 Winter Olympics there tends to be a lot of goodwill sportsmanship in curling that is similar to cricket. You might wonder why I'm writing about this subject; what is HPANWO-esque about curling? Well, strangely enough there is a major mystery in the sport. Nobody knows exactly what makes the stones move the way they do. Their rotation defies what scientists think they understand about the forces of momentum and friction. The stone arcs in the opposite direction to what it should based on its spin orientation. Despite many studies and experiments, the secret endures. There are a few theories; and these have a lot to do with some of the very tightly controlled rules of the game. The ice is not completely smooth. A groundsman... or whatever the equivalent is for an ice rink, sprays it with water droplets in a very skilled way to create a slightly rough or corrugated surface. The stones themselves weigh exactly 44 lb and are made of a very unique type of rock. For most major competitions, the rock comes from just one location, an island off the coast of Scotland called Ailsa Craig. The rock is called "common green microgranite". It is a rare, exceptionally dense material with a unique, tightly interlocked molecular structure. Alternatively it could be something to do with the ice consistency or the action of the sweepers. Source: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2022/02/the-slippery-science-of-olympic-curling--we-still-dont-know-how-. What curling teaches us is that the unexplained is actually not rare and it appears almost constantly in our universe. Another example is EVP, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2025/11/gb-news-evp.html. We live in a world which we share with phenomena we can't understand. Personally I like that. I wouldn't want to live in any other.