The 11 Greatest Unanswered Questions of Physics

Adn writes: "Discover magzine has a cover story on the "..11 Greatest Unanswered Questions of Physics" and why answering these might lead to a new age of science.... the full article can be found at The National Academy Site. Almost brings to mind Hilbert's 11 questions on Mathematics which if solved were supposed to usher in a new era of logic and formalism."

Comments

some real questions that may give you a nobel

[dario_moreno]

1) explaining high Tc superconductivity
2) explaining turbulence at all scales
3) developing something more advanced than DFT
in order to solve the quantum N body problem
accurately for large systems : then, "compute"
drugs and understand life
4) make quantum computers that work, on a
desktop, with plenty of qubits

That's called hijacking the agenda

[ynotds]

If I was a politician with half a clue (yeah I know that's oxymoronic) and was presented that list as a guide to what the astronomy and physics (read space science) communities want to invest many billions on in the coming decade(s) they would be sent packing.

During the past decade there has been enormous progress on a much wider range of problems than just the far ends of cosmology and particle physics that are the focus of those eleven questions ... much in areas that are a lot closer to home and in those areas progress has been much more rapid and, IMHO, much more interesting.

As planetary creatures, the progress in our knowledge of planetary bodies both in our solar system and beyond has undergone more fundamental revision than either quantum mechanics or relativity has in several decades.

What we really need is research that focuses on how quickly we might grow our endeavours in the planetary arena ... issues from orbital mechanics to mineralisation in non-terretrial environments which are going to constrain our abilities to further explore (often robotically) and eventually exploit other parts of the solar system.

If we really want to blue sky, we need look no further than starting serious research into how we might eventually be able to send probes towards nearby stars in the kind of practical timeframes that will require acceleration to a useful fraction of the speed of light ... but even that is sure to need serious industrialisation outside earth's gravity well.

Meanwhile we will at least be able to get a much better picture of other solar systems through new generations of instruments ... especially space-based instruments.

Yeah I know most of these big picture types are caught up in the dream of finally answering the big "Why?" but the history of science suggests to me that there is no likelihood such an answer will be found any time soon, so it is better to focus on learning what we can about the details so we may better answer "What should I do?"