The unrelenting quest for questions

Maintaining Equilibrium

Science has answered many of our burning questions, from apples falling from tress to deciphering the genetic code. Extraordinary discoveries are only possible while standing atop a firm pile of mundane studies—no offence to the incredible minds behind the mundane. But what drives those hard-working scientists to spend countless hours huddled away in windowless labs, the glow of a computer screen their best chances at a tan? The simple answer is more questions.

Dark matter, dark energy

It’s long been one of the nagging thorns in the sides of astrophysicists: What is the universe made of? There are all those elements on the periodic table including hydrogen that fuel the stars. But all this stuff only accounts for about 20 per cent of the mass of the universe. The other 80 per cent is the elusive and mysterious dark matter. The darkness implies its invisibility to our normal means of detection through interaction with all forms of light. We can only see the indirect effects of its gravitational pull on other, visible objects like galaxies.

As if dark matter wasn’t puzzling enough, scientists have used more darkness to explain observations that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Dark energy is proposed to evenly fill the universe, acting in opposition to gravity by pushing apart stars and galaxies. Just like dark matter, this energy is a major player in the universe, the nature of which remains elusive.

Aliens

Maybe not the most pressing of scientific questions, but definitely one of the most interesting to ponder on a hot summer night by the campfire. In 2009, as part of its Kepler mission, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a sensitive telescope to peer into a region of our Milky Way galaxy to find similar planets to our own. The French space agency, CNES, also launched a space telescope that is searching for Earth-like planets.

Planets the size of our own are hard to detect given their relatively small size, but finding these potentially habitable planets orbiting one of the hundred billion stars in our galaxy is just a matter of time.

On another front, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute is trying to equal the success of Jody Foster in Contact by looking and listening for aliens, as well as devising methods of communication if contact should be made. No one knows when E.T. will phone home, but I hope we don’t miss the call and are met by a friendly voice on the other end.

To the core

Like the far reaches of space, our own planet’s interior contains many mysteries which probably don’t include giant mushrooms, rivers, or mastodons, as Jules Verne would have us believe, or the giant diamonds Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) identifies in The Core.

Accessible only through the use of increasingly sophisticated technologies, we are only beginning to understand the true nature of a journey to the centre of Earth. Geoscientists continue to piece together models of the Earth’s inner structure, which gives rise to everything, from magnetic fields to volcanoes. The chemical and physical nature of specific zones thousands of kilometres below our feet is still the subject of debate.

All in the brain

Finally, besides looking out at the far reaches of space or to the depths of the Earth, neuroscientists continue to look within, all in an effort to unlock the secrets of that tangled mess of neurons known as the brain. Detailed understanding of neuronal signalling mechanisms still leaves a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to memory and perception, as well as how our neurons function together to form the basis of consciousness, a mystery that’s being investigated in labs across the world.

These are just a few of the big questions out there. Of course, scientists concern themselves on a daily basis with answering one small question after another in a hope that these combined efforts will someday bear the fruit they desire.

Share