Five Big Mysteries Still Unsolved By Science

                  
#5. Dark Matter & Dark Energy

Originally known as the “missing mass problem”, dark matter’s existence was first inferred by Swiss American astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who in 1933 discovered that the mass of all the stars in the Coma cluster of galaxies provided only about 1 percent of the mass needed to keep the galaxies from escaping the cluster’s gravitational pull. But the name "Dark Matter" is very misleading. Because it implies we know it is matter of some kind. But we have no idea what this thing is. A more fitting name would be, dark gravity, because we can detect the gravitational effects of this thing, but we don't know what it is. While dark energy, is an unknown form of energy, which is hypothesized to permeate all of space. Dark energy, is a theoretical repulsive force that counteracts gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. Together, dark matter & dark energy make up 95% of the total mass-energy of the universe, while ordinary matter, like stars, planets and the stuff we are made of, compose only 5% of the universe.


#4 Abiogenesis

Abiogenesis, or informally the origin of life, is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. While we don't know how exactly life arose from non living matter, we do know the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event but a gradual process of increasing complexity. The study of abiogenesis can be geophysical, chemical, or biological, with more recent approaches attempting a synthesis of all three, as life arose under conditions that are different from those on Earth today. The classic 1952 Miller–Urey experiment and similar research demonstrated that most amino acids, the chemical constituents of the proteins used in all living organisms, can be synthesized from inorganic compounds under conditions intended to replicate those of the early Earth. Scientists have proposed various external sources of energy that may have triggered these reactions, including lightning and radiation. But the mystery of Abiogenesis, is still a nobel prize away, from being unsolved.


#3 Alien Life

While we've heard countless Area 51 stories, and how aliens helped build the pyramids, and how they make beautiful patterns of crop circles when they land on earth, we still have to obtain evidence, that Extraterrestrial life exists. But mathematically speaking, the odds that life has occurred  elsewhere in the universe, are overwhelming. There are more stars in the observable universe, than there are grains of sand in all the beaches on earth. But then, the natural question arises, where are all the aliens? This problem is known as the fermi paradox. named after physicist Enrico Fermi. It is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There have been many attempts to explain the Fermi paradox. Primarily suggesting that intelligent extraterrestrial life is extremely rare or proposing reasons that such civilizations have not contacted or visited Earth. But if we ever acquire evidence for Extraterrestrial life, it would undoubtedly be the most significant discovery in the history of our species.


#2 Consciousness

Arguably the most complex system in the universe, is the human brain. While we know a lot about how the human brain functions, we still can't explain how Consciousness emerges from an information processing machine like the human brain. How can a certain configuration of atoms, be aware of their own existence? As in any other area of uncertainty in science, this gap of knowledge is used as an opportunity by crackpots to spew out speculative nonsense. But that shouldn't suggest we don't know anything about Consciousness. Consciousness is the state or quality of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It is the subjective feeling of knowing what it is like to be something. as opposed to for example a rock, which presumably has no inner dimensions. One day, we could build computers that are self aware, a concept known as Artificial consciousness. Although we would create conscious machines, we still might not fully grasp how Consciousness emerges into those systems.


#1 The origin of the Universe

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe. The model describes how the universe expanded from a very high-density and high-temperature state. So when you run back the clock, with the rate of the expansion, known as Hubble's constant, you conclude The Universe is 13,8 billion years old. If we could detect gravitational waves from the big bang, we would have a window of the universe when it was a bilionth of a second old and tinier than a single atom. That would give us more insight of the origin of the Universe. But you might ask, what was the universe like when T=0. Or even better, what was there BEFORE the big bang? Well, such a question might not even make sense, because cause and effect as we know it, might have come into existence only when the big bang happened and the universe started to expand. So there was nothing before the big bang. Because time itself and space, forming a continuum known as space-time, came into existence with the big bang. There might also be an eternal multiverse. which is a hypothetical group of multiple separate universes including our own. And these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, the physical laws, and the constants that describe them. Be that as it may, our quest for the ultimate origin of the Universe may never have a definite answer, but will always continue to amaze us.