10 Questions science still can’t answer
10 Questions Science Still Can’t Answer – Simon’s edit - ordered 10. Is there a God? Science estimates that 13.7 billion years ago the Big Bang created the universe. However, science has never revealed why the Big Bang happened and what preceded it. Moreover, evolutionists are still perplexed about how the first living organisms grew from life-less matter. Mathematician Roger Penrose calculated that the probability of creating our universe filled with life would be a number closer to zero than anyone has ever imagined. The question therefore remains whether there is an omnipotent individual that, against all odds, had the power to create our cosmos. 9. How are memories stored and retrieved? When a new fact is learned, physical changes in the brain occur across a network of synapses and neurons. However, neurologists do not fully understand what these changes are and how they hold knowledge. Although some theories exist about how memories are stored, the concept that has left neurologists most baffled is memory retrieval. Scientists hope to understand how – in just a tiny fraction of a second – we can recollect events from decades in the past. Although the subject has been heavily researched, it still remains unresolved. 8. Why Do We Dream? Early civilizations believed that dreams were a gateway between Earth and the Gods. This was later scientifically rejected, along with Freud’s theory that dreams express our subconscious desires. It is widely agreed that dreams are crucial to help process emotions, and sleep research has revealed the existence of rapid eye movement dreams and the point at which we are most likely to remember a dream. However, a scientific explanation as to why we envisage strange images when we sleep remains in question. 7. Why Do We Yawn? On average, a person will yawn around 250,000 times in their lifetime. Despite this, scientists still can’t solve the reason behind this common reflex. A recent study suggested that yawning chills the brain to allow a boost in intellectual performance. However, yawning researchers argue that there isn’t sufficient evidence to support this theory. The fact that yawning is contagious is even more of a conundrum. There are some evolutionary theories that claim that yawning stems from our evolution from apes, when the action was used as a communication signal, however there is no evidence to support this theory either. 6. What is the Universe Made Of? Atoms, which form everything we see around us, account for 5% of the universe, but astronomers can’t explain what the other 95% of the universe is made of. In the past 80 years, astronomers have determined that the majority of the universe is made up of two entities: dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is believed to bind galaxies together, while dark energy is believed to be pushing the universe’s expansion. But as dark matter and dark energy are invisible to light and electromagnetic radiation, it is impossible to detect or understand what they actually are. 5. What Happens After We Die? Scientists have proven two stages of death. Clinical death: when the heart stops beating, and biological death: when all other organs shut down. However, what happens after death remains elusive to researchers. Some people who have had near death experiences claim to have felt out of body sensations and seen deceased loved ones. Despite extensive research into the subject, no concrete neurological or biological explanations behind these phenomena have ever been found. 4. Could we wake up 200 years in the future? The idea of cryonic preservation has been a running theme in science fiction for decades. It involves persevering a person’s body at very low temperatures, with the hope that future medical technology will restore it one day. Cryobiologists Dr Dayong Goa says that “we know we can successfully preserve very small things like insects and simple tissues like blood vessels” but freezing the human body is far more challenging. Even if you only wanted to preserve the brain, it would require dozens of different cryopreserving procedures. Science can’t quite answer how long it will take for human cryopreservation to be successful, if even possible at all. 3. What’s at the bottom of a black hole? Black holes have a gravitational pull that is so strong that everything caught in them becomes permanently trapped. While astronomers hold extensive knowledge of black holes, they have been unable to understand what lies at the bottom of them. Einstein theorized that black holes continue to cave in, until they become infinitely small, and some physicists believe that they act as a porthole to other universes. Unfortunately, we currently don’t have the tools or technology advanced enough to prove any of these theories, so the truth remains a mystery. 2. Do Ghosts Exist? The presence of ghosts haunting the planet has been debated for centuries. Thousands of photos, videos, and first-hand sightings of ghosts have been accumulated, but no scientific proof has ever been found. Both ghost hunters and scientists have used electromagnetic field detectors and thermal imaging to try and find scientific evidence of their existence, but to no avail. Most scientists believe these sightings are caused purely by mental phenomena, electrical fields, and ocular vibrations. However, these theories can neither be proven nor disproven, leaving the existence of ghosts in question. 1. How does the placebo effect work? The phenomenon where a fake treatment can improve a patient’s health, simply because they believe it will, has stumped doctors for decades. A review of clinical trials that tested pain medications over the past 25 years has shown that in American drug trials, the healing power of the placebos has become even stronger. Experiments have since been carried out to understand the power the mind has to improve health and how some patients are more susceptible to the placebo effect than others. However, no viable explanation has ever been found.