Questions No One Knows Answers To

On a typical day at school, endless hours are spent learning the answers to questions, but right now, we will do the opposite. We are going to focus on questions where you cannot learn the answers because they are unknown. I used to puzzle about many things as a boy, for example, what would it feel like to be a dog. Do fish feel pain? How about insects? Was the Big Bang just an accident? Is there a God? If so, how are we so sure that it is a He and not a She? Why do so many innocent people and animals suffer terrible things? Is there really a plan for my life? Is the future yet to be written, or is it already written, and we just cannot see it? Then, do I have free will? I mean, who am I anyway? Am I just a biological machine? Then, why am I conscious? What is consciousness? Will robots become conscious one day? I mean, I rather assumed that someday I would be told the answers to all these questions. Someone must know, right? Guess what! No one knows. Most of those questions puzzle me more now than ever. Diving into them is exciting because it takes you to the edge of knowledge, and you never know what you will find there. So, let us explore two questions that no one on Earth knows the answer to.

How Many Universes Are There?

Sometimes when I am on a long plane flight, I gaze out at all those mountains, deserts, and try to get my head around how vast our Earth is. Then I remember there is an object we see every day that would literally fit one million Earths inside it- the Sun. It seems impossibly big. However, in the great scheme of things, it is a pinprick, one of about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which you can see on a clear night as a pale white mist stretched across the sky. Moreover, it gets worse. There are maybe 100 billion galaxies detectable by our telescopes.

So, how many universes are there? Recent theories in physics, including one called string theory, are now telling us there could be countless other universes built on different types of particles, with different properties, obeying different laws. The leading version of string theory predicts a multiverse made up of 10 to the 500 universes.

However, even that number is minuscule compared to another number: infinity. Some physicists think the space-time continuum is literally infinite and that it contains an infinite number of so-called pocket universes with varying properties. How is your brain doing? Quantum theory adds a completely new wrinkle. The only meaningful answer to the question of how many universes there are is one. Only one universe. A few philosophers and mystics might argue that even our own universe is an illusion. Therefore, as you can see, right now there is no agreement on this question, not even close. All we know is the answer is somewhere between zero and infinity.

Why Can't We See Evidence of Alien Life?

Somewhere out there in that vast universe there must surely be countless other planets teeming with life. Nevertheless, why don't we see any evidence of it? This is the famous question asked by Enrico Fermi in 1950, where is everybody? In the past year, the Kepler space observatory has found hundreds of planets just around nearby stars. For sure if you extrapolate that data, it looks like there could be half a trillion planets just in our own galaxy. If any among the said planets has conditions that might support a form of life, that is still 50 million possible life-harboring planets right here in the Milky Way.

Here is a riddle: Our Earth did not form until about nine billion years after the Big Bang. Countless other planets in our galaxy should have formed earlier, and given life a chance to get underway billions, or certainly many millions of years earlier than happened on Earth. If just a few of them had spawned intelligent life and started creating technologies, those technologies would have had millions of years to grow in complexity and power.

However, there are numerous possible answers, some of them quite dark. Maybe a single, super intelligent civilization has indeed taken over the galaxy and has imposed strict radio silence because it is paranoid of any potential competitors. Alternatively, maybe they are not that intelligent, or perhaps the evolution of an intelligence capable of creating sophisticated technology is far rarer than we have assumed. Maybe even that was incredibly lucky. Maybe we are the first such civilization in our galaxy. On the other hand, perhaps civilization carries with it the seeds of its own destruction through the inability to control the technologies it creates.

Conclusion

Either way, the quest for knowledge and understanding never gets dull. It is actually the opposite. The more you know, the more amazing the world seems. The crazy possibilities, the unanswered questions pull us forward. So, stay curious.