Slashdot Mirror
Science's 125 Big Questions
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?"
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's.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
What is the nature and origin of the Universe?
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