Black Triangle

This Telegraph article about spoons is based on a BMJ article published a few months ago, but is still a great read. After outlining the BMJ study into the half-life of teaspoons, Maya Kessler writes about the possible explanations for their loss:

One explanation suggested by the research team is based on concepts created by Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Spoons may be migrating to a planet “where they enjoy a uniquely spoonoid lifestyle, responding to highly spoon-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the spoon equivalent of the good life”.

While searching on the web, I discovered a number of alternative explanations. Brace yourselves for this one: I had to. Light has been spreading out across the universe ever since the big bang. As the universe increases in size, the light has to fill a larger and larger area, supposedly making it weaker in appearance. This also applies to teaspoons.
[...]
Some believe that only four per cent of the universe can be observed, 22 per cent is something they’ve named dark matter and the rest is dark energy. It seems only logical that disappearing teaspoons, socks, ballpoint pens, mugs and gloves make up this 22 per cent of missing mass.

Links have also been made with the disappearance of odd socks. The birthplace of my interest in this study, the New Scientist’s Feedback section, found on a web forum the proposal that “odd socks are seducing the spoons with stories of The Life That’s Waiting Outside”.

A more probable and scientific explanation is that, as odd socks are the larva of wire coat hangers, teaspoons are the larval form of some other household object. C. K. Aitken, one of the researchers working on the project, wrote in an e-mail interview: “We do seem to have more plates and bowls in our tea-room cupboard than I ever remember having before.”