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Science's 125 Big Questions
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jul 01, 2005 06:40 PM
from the where-do-dorks-come-from? dept.
from the where-do-dorks-come-from? dept.
Shadow Wrought writes "To celebrate their 125th anniversary Science is running a series of articles on the 125 Questions of Science. The top 25 each link to an article exploring the subject of the question in depth. Included are such questions as: Are we alone in the Universe? What are the limits of conventional computing? How did cooperative behavior evolve?"
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questions (Score:5, Funny)
Re:questions (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:questions (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe.
What are the limits of conventional computing?
Undetermined.
Why I can't I get a date?
Because you got the first post on
Parent
Re:questions (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, if there are no alien chicks, date the rig.
Parent
Re:questions (Score:3, Informative)
Well right now the limits of chess computing seems to be this Hydra cluster [com.com]
Is it time to retire the "Beowulf" cliché?
Re:questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the answer to the "why can't I get a date" thing.
All you need to do to get a date is to come across as a cocky, arrogant, rude asshole whenever you talk to women. I don't pretend to understand why, but women eat that shit up. (it doesn't hurt to lay off the computer talk, either....)
Now, if you're looking for a quality, intelligent woman to fall in love with and marry, then things get a little more complicated. The above advice will, however, at least get you laid.
(Yes, I know it's
125 Questions? What? (Score:5, Funny)
Dark Matter (#1) vs Unified Physics (#5) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matter (#1) vs Unified Physics (#5) (Score:3)
How did cooperative behavior evolve?" (Score:5, Interesting)
A preditor/parasite found that it's easier to keep eating if it doesn't kill off it's host completely. Small steps from there could make it benign to it's host; and further small steps can make it cooperative.
Re:How did cooperative behavior evolve?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Cooperative behavior arises out of an evolutionary phenonemon known as kin selection [wikipedia.org]. The basic idea is that if you are related to another organism, you know that you are likely to share some portion of your genes. Thus, it's in your interest to assist your relative in surving to reproduce so that your shared genes are passed down.
-- Brian Berns
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You know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know... (Score:3, Interesting)
How did cooperative behavior evolve? (Score:3, Informative)
Generally answers seem to cluster around the idea of kinship and the furthering of an individuals gene pool.Perhaps the answer will come in tandem with the solution to another evolutionary riddle pertaining to our kind, why is it we have such relatively small canines? The males of most primate species have large canines especially for fighting, usually other males in order to win controll of groups of females. Some speculation has it that monogamy in our kind did away with the need for large canines, or maybe, in our kind females did away with the male perrogative of controlling breeding?
!Happy Birthday Canada!
Re: How did cooperative behavior evolve? (Score:3, Insightful)
From a webpage on Molecular Insights into Human Brain Evolution [plosjournals.org] by Jane Bradbury, the following quote applies:
"For natural selection to work, the costs of brain evolution must be outweighed by the advantages gained in terms of fitness. For many years, explains ecological psychologist Robin Dunbar (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom), "people thought th
Good questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Or to put it another way: Why does the entropy of any closed system always increase? Why do we take the 'causal' solution to Maxwell's equations when determining the field generated by an accelerating charge? Why does the evolution of a quantum system appear to involve an irreversible step - wavefunction collapse? These may in fact be the same question in different guises. I think it's the number one question in physics. Every fundamental law of physics has time reversal symmetry (or at least CPT symmetry) and 'future' and 'past' look as similar as 'left' and 'right' at a fundamental level. So the arrow of time we see so blatantly around us is in serious need of explanation. It's almost as if physicists live in denial about the fact that their fundamental theories clearly just don't seem to match up with reality. But there are some good books on the subject such as Zeh [amazon.com]'s.
Re:Good questions (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, this is only in relation to someone INSIDE the Universe. Someone from an external frame of reference (if such a concept exists) would see the entire of space/time as a single four-dimensional entity. There would be no "time", because time is a product of being on the inside of the system.
This seems to answer the question. Your position along the time axis of space/time is your position relative to event zero, along the time axis. The Universe only expands, so the time arrow can only face outwards.
Problem. Steven Hawking demonstrated that if the Universe were to contract, entropy would STILL increase on any kind of scale. In other words, there would still be some measure (which we can call time if we like) which can ONLY increase, never decrease.
This complicates the picture, because if time can only increase (even when the Universe is contracting), then time is NOT a simple linear measure. Ok, then what is it? Well, simple logic suggests an answer, but simple logic can be wrong. The suggested answer involves taking the absolute value, which must always be positive.
However, you can't just throw away the sign of a number and leave it at that, there has to be some reason why you would do this. Let us say that real time is, in fact, TWO dimemsional, and that the time we experience is along a vector in that space. Well, the length of a 2D vector can be calculated quite easily. Treat the end-point as a complex number and take the absolute value.
Now, treating time as a two dimensional entity raises its own problems. Why two? Why not three? Or four? In fact, this leads me back to another post I did a while back, relating space and time as vectors, when discussing relativity.
Let us treat space/time as a single four dimensional entity. A plain, ordinary four dimensional entity. Nothing special about any of the dimensions, nothing unique, nothing out of the ordinary - other than being four dimensional.
Now, if subjective time is plotted as the vector we are travelling along in this 4D space/time system, then subjective time is (again) the absolute value of that vector and must always be positive as a result, regardless of the behaviour of "physical" time.
Ok, does it make sense to regard subjective time as the vector we are travelling in? That one, I can't answer, but a very superficial glance would indicate that it would seem logical enough. The vector indicates a speed of some sort, so why not the speed of subjective time?
Parent
Re:Good questions (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good questions (Score:3, Insightful)
A possible answer is the anthropic one, we wouldn't be here otherwise.
But in that case, why does our distant past appear to have been in a state of even lower entropy, even before there was life?
And why do we have all of these other arrows of physics?
Why so much bio? (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's because (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why so much bio? (Score:3, Insightful)
And, as another of the respondents pointed out, the physics questions are much broader.
Re: Why so much bio? (Score:5, Informative)
> More than half of the top 25 were biology questions. You'd think physics would be a little more strongly represented.
If you're interested in the physics questions you can cut out the journalistic middle-men and read John Baez's Open Questions in Physics [ucr.edu]. I found it informative, entertaining, and for the most part comprehensible to a moderately well informed non-physicist.
Wikipedia has a List of unsolved problems [wikipedia.org] broken down by field, but the field lists I read didn't strike me as particularly well done. YMMV.
> But I'm all for answering the evolution questions if it'll stop my in-laws from giving me creationist literature.
Facts, answers, and explanations aren't going to make creationists blink an eye.
Parent
Re:Why so much bio? (Score:3, Interesting)
all of the interesting physics problems can be concatanated into a small number of questions.
Given the mathematical basis of physics since Newton, physicists are able to show that disparate phenomenon have a common mathematical formulation. This reductionism results in fewer and fewer unrelated questions.
If biology had achieved the same level of quantification, there might be a smaller number of questions.
For instance, if there were an answer to "What is the origin of homochirality in nature?", then
Why humans have so few genes (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect the answer is related to human (mammalian) mobility and thermoregulation. If a rice plant gets stuck in a hot place, all it can do is use a different part of its genome to make proteins suited for hotter weather. In contrast, people can move out of the sun while their body basically maintains a constant temperature. Similarly if the plant faces too much cold, too much water, too little water, to much sun, too little sun, too much salt, etc. it can do nothing but sit there and hopefully pull something out of its genome that can cope.
The point is that plants must adapt to whatever their environment gives them much more so than humans. Human mobility and the ability to modify its environment means it is less reliant on gene-based adaptability.
Re:Why humans have so few genes (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Why humans have so few genes (Score:3, Interesting)
Plants have equally interesting RNA-based regulatory mechanisms. Some of the early RNAi-based gene silencing work was done in plants. And recently, there was a suggestion that
Re:Why humans have so few genes (Score:3, Funny)
There is only one real question (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that is the real question. And I'm not talking Big Bang or Grand Unified Theory or whatever. I'm talking "Big Picture" here.
What existed before our universe? What is the original nature of existence...of what we call "reality"?
Re:There is only one real question (Score:5, Interesting)
It is and has been. (seriously, that's all the answer there is).
What existed before our universe?
Unknowable. "Before" the universe began is "before" the concept of time has any meaning. Alternatively, if we could observe things that were "outside of the universe", we would have to expand the scope of the universe to include those observations, meaning that they were no longer "outside of the universe".
What is the original nature of existence...of what we call "reality"?
This is a vague question. One possible interpretation is that you're asking about the "super-universe" in a different way from the "before the universe" question. It has the same problems as the "before the universe" question (if we could know, we'd have to redefine the universe).
The other interpretation is that you're asking if the nature of reality has changed through the lifecycle of the observable universe, presumably though alterations of fundamental laws from some initial "ideal" state. This question, while clearly less "grand", is more relevant, because it offers a source of falsifiable assertions and possible experiments.
Being able to classify questions as "irrelevant" and "not answerable" for various reasons is a part of "knowing what you don't know" and the rather tricky subset, "knowing what you can't know". Wisdom (and a lot of saved time) lies in a deeper understanding of how to determine the value of questions.
I must admit that about 12 years ago, I got comfortable with saying "I don't know" along with the realization that people are capable of asking bad questions as if they were the most important questions around. My favorite is "Why are we here?" It's worthless because it begs about four other questions that have no objective answer.
The interesting form of the question is, "Why am I here?" and it can only be conclusively answered by exactly one person: the same person who asked the question. What's really tragic is how many people are afraid of answering it themselves and accept someone else's answer out of fear of "getting it wrong". *sigh*
Regards,
Ross
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Re:You ask for much (Score:4, Interesting)
Does there need to be a why? As history has shown us, hows are all there is, why are often superflous questiosn we ask because we're bored.
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Add Saturn to the queue (Score:3, Interesting)
Superultimate question (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, put another way: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Perhaps this is more of a philosophical or metaphysical question, but I think it fits in well with the great scientific questions.
If you think about it, you'll realize that things would be alot simpler if nothing existed at all. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? It's a pretty overwhelming thought -- a good reminder that we still don't know much about the fundamental rules of nature. As Gardner said, "the night is large".
Re:Superultimate question (Score:5, Insightful)
400 years ago he would have been burned at the stake for posing the question since it was patently obvious that everything exists to demonstrate the glory of God. Anyone who would question that was a heretic. Today, he just has to watch out for F&Fs. (Fatwas and Falwells)
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right... (Score:3)
What is the Biological Basis of Consciousness? If you could solve this you would in essence be "God". The sum of the parts is greater than the whole, and because we tend to determine the workings of all the parts, it's difficult for any one person or persons to see the big picture.
How Much Can Human Life Span Be Extended? For as long as the brain can hold out.
How Can a Skin Cell Become a Nerve Cell? This won't be answered in the US
How Does Earth's Interior Work? Ever watch The Core?
Are We Alone in the Universe? "If we were, it would be an awful waste of space"
Is an Effective HIV Vaccine Feasible? Not if the pharmaceutical companies have anything to say about it!!
How Hot Will the Greenhouse World Be? What you mean you can't tell right now?
What Can Replace Cheap Oil -- and When? The US is the world's largest grower of corn. It can provide enough *biodiesel* for the entire US and then some. The oil cartels and the politicans (e.g. Bush) who have alot to lose if we switch to biodiesel fear this. So government pays corn farmers money (called subsidies) to underproduce or burn excess crop. Granted biodiesel does burn at a higher temperature and would require modification of engine components (probably would be more expensive initially), but in the long run this would be much cheaper for everyone. Currently companies such as Cummins [cummins.com] and its subsidiaries [fleetguard.com] are looking into biodiesel.
Oh, come on. (Score:4, Insightful)
(The answer to the last question is: We didn't. But we haven't found any good answer yet, unless we believe in Plato et al. But science is, metaphorically speaking, a house of cards built in the air. And I'm saying that with no disrespect to science. (And yes, I'm a bit drunk, but I'm still serious.))
126, 127, 128, and ... (Score:5, Funny)
Some question I've never been answered (Score:3, Interesting)
My question is...
WHY? Yes, I know they're opposite charges, and the Coulomb's law and everything... but why? Any quantum physicist to enlighten me?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given this average height, toast doesn't have time rotate more than half a turn before hitting the ground. If tables and people were something like 10 feet tall, then people would be wondering why toast allways falls with the butter side up.
Well, the 10 feet figure is made up but that's the basic idea from the article.
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's something else interesting:
Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the Fundamental Constants
European Journal of Physics 16 172-176 1995
There's a widespread suspicion among the public that toast sliding off a plate or table has a natural tendency to land butter side down, thus providing prima facie evidence for Murphy's Law: "If something can go wrong, it will". Most scientists, in contrast, dismiss such belief as ludicrous. Indeed, an investigation by the BBC-TV science programme Q.E.D. in 1993 claimed to have proved definitively that the whole notion was nothing but an urban myth. However, as I show in the paper, the experiments carried out by the programme were dynamically inappropriate (in that they consisted of people simply tossing buttered bread into the air - hardly common practice around the breakfast table). When the problem of toast sliding off a plate or table is examined more carefully - with the toast modelled as a thin, rigid, rough lamina - it turns out that the public perception is quite correct. Toast does indeed have a natural tendency to land butter side down, essentially because the gravitation torque induced as the toast topples over the edge of the plate/table is insufficient to bring the toast butter-side up again by the time it hits the floor. Note that this has nothing to do with some aerodynamic effect caused by one side being buttered - it is just gravity, plus a bit of friction.However, I go on to show that the tumbling toast phenomenon has far deeper roots than one might expect. If tables were a lot higher - around 3 metres high - the problem of toast landing butter-side down would go away, as the toast would have enough time to complete a full rotation. So why are tables the height they are ? Simple: to be convenient for humans. So why are humans the height they are ? Using a simple chemical bonding model of the human frame, I show that there is a limit to the safe height for bipedal, essentially cylindrical creatures like humans. The limit is around 3 metres - above that height, a simple fall results in gravity accelerating the skull to such a high kinetic energy that the chemical bonds in the skull are ruptured, causing severe fracturing. This limit, in turn, sets a maximum height on tables suitable for creatures with human articulation of about 1.5 metres - which is still not high enough to prevent toast landing butter-side down. It thus seems that human-like organisms are doomed to experience this manifestation of Murphy's Law.
But then comes the real cosmic twist in the tale. The formula giving the maximum height of humans turns out to contain three so-called "fundamental constants of the universe". The first - the electromagnetic fine-structure constant - determines the strength of the chemical bonds in the skull, while the second - the gravitational fine-structure constant - determines the strength of gravity. Finally, the so-called Bohr radius dictates the size of atoms making up the body. The precise values of these three fundamental constants were built into the very design of the universe just moments after the Big Bang. In other words, toast falling off the breakfast table lands butter-side down because the universe is made that way.
Having made this depressing discovery about the nature of our universe, I felt duty-bound to come up with some ways around it. After all, we should not be fatalistic about such things. There are any number of daft ways (eating from 3 metre high tables, eating tiny squares of toast, putting the butter on the underside, tying the toast to a cat, which of course knows how to get right-side up during a fall, etc. etc). The physicist's approach is to minimise the amount of time the toast is exposed to the turning effect of gravity. This means doing the opposite of what you might expect. If your toast is sliding off the table, you should give it a swipe with your hand, to increase its ho
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Clearly, it should have been "the rotational velocity of toast".
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
As an aside, this theory predicts that, dry, unadorned toast will tend to land on it's edge.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
From the Internet Oracle Best of Digests [indiana.edu] :
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
-WS
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Re:Why is glass see-through? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why is glass see-through? (Score:3, Informative)
"A transparent material is one in which the charged particles can't permanently absorb any photons of visible light. While these charged particles all try to absorb the visible light photons, they find that there are no permanent quantum states available to them when they do. Instead, they play with the photons briefly and then let them continue on their way."
Glass does NOT flow at normal temperatures (Score:4, Informative)
I've often heard this, and the windows of several-hundred-year-old buildings are often cited as an example of this (a high school physics teacher told this story to the class), with the bottom part of the glass pane being thicker than the top, but I recall hearing an alternative explanation of this. Also, many precisely made pieces of glass, such as binocular lenses and telescope lenses and mirrors, do NOT flow measurably over decades or centuries at normal temperatures.
Googling glass flow bring several relevant links such as this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#The_myth_of_gl
Okay, perhaps glass does flow, but if so the rate of flow is many orders of magnitude slower than would be indicated by the thicknesses of the old glass windows.
Parent
Re:This list is incomplete... (Score:3, Funny)
Subsection 1: "Are there any limits to the desire of the organism homogeekus to port Linux to any device imaginable and then communicate the accomplishment in symbolic form?"
Re:Remember Occam's Razor (Score:3, Informative)
The simplest solution is usually the best.
That's NOT Occam's razor. The way it's usually stated is a fantastically bad translation. Occam's razor is really:
Don't make unneccesary assumptions.
They seem similar at first glance, but the more common translation makes no distinction between assumptions and known/observable facts. That distinction is at the core of the razor's meaning. The loss of that distinction can in some cases lead the real razor and its bad translation to opposite conclusions.