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10 questions science can't answer yet.

When the bubonic plague spread throughout cities in the Middle Ages, no one knew exactly how and why this terrible disease spread. Over the years, people realized that rat fleas and bacteria were to blame. It was a watershed moment showing the power of science.

Centuries later, science continues exploring complex issues every day. But even despite all the efforts of numerous researchers, we still do not have answers to many questions. In fact, some people may argue that we are only now learning how to ask really big and right questions.

What happens to us after we die? How did so much life appear on our planet when others seem to be deprived of it at all? Who, if anyone, is pulling the strings of our universe? Is it some kind of omnipotent god, or are there physical and mathematical principles that govern the engine of our existence?

Sometimes, after centuries of mistakes, we humans end up with real answers to real questions, such as why diseases are spreading. In other cases, we are left to grasp the darkness of our own ignorance and wonder what it really means.

In some cases, the questions are so complex that even our children's children are likely to still struggle for the truth. But humanity will continue to try to find out the answers.

1. Why do we see dreams?

Scientists and sleep experts know when people usually dream. Typically, you see them during part of REM sleep - one of the sleep cycles. You can see when a person (or even your cat or dog) is experiencing REM sleep because their eyes dart back and forth and their bodies may twitch and move as well. The electrical patterns of the brain are very active during this phase, almost in the same way as when you are awake.

But scientists don't know WHY people dream. It can be a way of thinking or de-stressing everyday life, or even an unconscious way to help unravel complex events. This can be the way your mind protects itself from threats and dangers.

For your brain, this could be a biochemical way of sorting, storing, or remembering short-term or long-term information. Perhaps dreaming is a way to reconcile our past and present experiences in order to prepare us for the future.

Whatever their purpose is, dreams are the cornerstone of the human experience. They entertain and haunt us throughout our lives and serve as a reminder that our inner world is as deep and amazing as the outer world around us.

2. How to beat cancer?

Malignant tumors are the real scourge of the twenty-first century. Millions of people die from various types of cancer worldwide every year.

Cancer takes many forms and affects many parts of the body, but the hallmark of these diseases is uncontrolled cell replication. Tumors expand and spread, destroying bodies and causing death.

The growth happens due to DNA damage. DNA, of course, provides instructions for all bodily functions, including cell growth. This damage can occur due to certain lifestyle factors, such as exposure to the sun, smoking tobacco, or exposure to carcinogenic chemicals.

Some estimates suggest that some cancers can be prevented by avoiding cancer-causing habits. However, life choices are only part of the equation.

Other factors come into play as well. Many people inherit defective DNA from their parents and are prone to developing certain types of cancer, even if they live perfectly healthy lives. It seems that nature itself uses cancer as a defense mechanism against the excessive spread of one biological species - humans.

Countless variables and the unique genetic makeup of humans make some scientists doubt that we will ever have a cure for any type of cancer.

The good news is that understanding of the causes and treatment of cancer is evolving. Every year we learn new aspects of the disease. So even if we can never fully understand and beat cancer, we will continue to fight it off, improve our lives, and make diagnoses less intimidating.

3. What happens when a person dies?

Many people on the planet would like to get a better idea of what will happen to them after death. And there are billions of people who already know the answer to this question. Unfortunately, they cannot tell us about it, because they are already all dead.

The subject of the afterlife - or its absence - is one of the oldest issues of concern to humanity. Will we all sail into eternal bliss? Or maybe we'll go to hell? Will our consciousness just disappear when our bodies die? Or will we all be reincarnated as other people or animals?

Scientists understand the initial stages of death. They know how the human body begins to die. Just as store workers turn off the lights in a supermarket after closing, our body cells begin to shut down, one by one, until our heart and brain stop functioning.

What happens after our brain shuts down is still a mystery. Many people who have experienced near-death experiences and then come back to life talk about tunnels of light or memories of life events or conversations with loved ones who have already passed away.

All these events can be of biological origin, possibly under the influence of a lack of oxygen or strong biochemical fluctuations.

Of the many questions we face with regard to our existence, this question will probably never be answered.

4. Are we alone in the universe?

Some scientists believe that we are the only intelligent life forms in the universe. If so, the universe is unimaginably lonely. Other researchers say that the Earth is not the only center of life - there may be up to 40 billion inhabited planets in our galaxy. This is a huge potential for alien life.

There are some necessary requirements for life to arise. Not only does the planet need the right combination of elements and conditions, there must also be a “spark” that gives birth to living things. Then, of course, these beings must somehow evolve into beings with intelligence.

Even for modern human science, the simplest life forms on our planet are still an extremely difficult complex of chemical reactions and cells. We do not really understand how they arise, develop and survive in incredibly diverse environmental conditions. This complicates the search for alien life greatly.

Despite these problems, scientists believe that we may find signs of life in the universe in the next couple of decades. More powerful telescopes may be one of the keys to such search.

Or it could be that life on Earth is just a statistical aberration, an accident of the strangest kind. Maybe our planet really is the gem of the universe, not unlike any other place elsewhere.

However, we know that water and essential elements exist on many other planets, and more recently we did not know this. If we continue to search and accidentally discover even tiny evidence of life, such as fossils or tiny bacteria, then it is more likely that somewhere among the stars, another intelligent species also looks up into the sky and asks a similar question - are we alone in the universe?

5. Where does consciousness come from?

We humans are aware of our environment and ourselves. Our minds are filled with inner conversations and questions about who we are and our purpose in the world. As far as we know, we are the only beings with such an active consciousness. We also do not know where this consciousness comes from.

Of course, our brain is the central computer of our body, which controls biological functions and helps us think through all life situations and make decisions.

The scans show how incredibly active our brains are, flickering with constant activity as our 100 billion nerve cells are continuously working like a compact but extremely complex digital network.

But the brain is not the same as mind. Electrical activity does not explain how physical matter can create non-physical substance such as consciousness. Some religions explain the presence of consciousness in a person as a gift from God built into our bodies to guide us through this world.

Scientists are more inclined towards biological origin - they view consciousness as a set of biological processes that gradually lead to more and more complex thinking, which ultimately ends in self-awareness.

Scientists have determined that animals, such as dogs, are almost certainly conscious, but that this is a lower (or different) level of awareness than humans. Nevertheless, the question of where consciousness comes from remains open.

6. How many species of living beings are there on Earth?

The earth is home to a huge variety of animals and plants. However, we will never know for sure how many different species of living organisms roam our planet. There are too many of them. But this does not stop scientists from trying to determine this elusive number.

Scientist Carl Linnaeus realized two and a half centuries ago that humans need a system to track the species on our planet. He began to classify plants and animals using a taxonomic language to name, rank, and classify animals and plants.

After many years of work, it is estimated that humans have described only 1.5 million species, or about 15 percent of the total. This means that most organisms still need an adequate description.

This is especially true of underestimated and as yet undiscovered species such as mushrooms, of which scientists have actually described only 10 percent. On the contrary, scientists have done a pretty good job with mammals, most of which have already been recorded.

The total number of species on Earth is just a statistical guess, so people will probably never know how accurate it is. Maybe it is more worrisome that species are now disappearing faster than ever. After all, if sentient beings disappear en masse, we humans might be next.

7. Is reality real?

Human reality is a slippery concept. Anyone who wakes up from a vivid nightmare knows what it feels like to be stuck somewhere between a memory and a dream. This experience tells us that our senses have limitations. Perhaps our eyes, ears, and sense of smell don't really tell the whole story about the reality around us.

Perhaps the things and people in our life are just illusions. How do we know that any of these objects and creatures actually exists? Perhaps they are constructions of our own internal mechanisms, generated by our subconscious for unknown purposes.

The universe could be a hologram, a Matrix-style computer creature designed to take over our minds and enslave us for a nefarious purpose.

Scientists and physicists are not sure if we will ever understand the nature of reality. The deeper we delve into physics, the more bizarre the mechanics of our universe become. We continue discovering new particles and fundamental forces, from molecules to atoms that govern our bodies and our world.

It is possible that the universe could be made up of tens or thousands of dimensions that we will never experience in any direct way.

No matter how smart our species gets, reality will always be an abstraction that we can never pinpoint.

8. How did life appear?

Our planet is extremely rich in life. But how in the world did life begin in the first place? How did the mass of cells evolve from an inert collection of organic molecules into a living, and sometimes even intelligent, being?

The short answer is: we don't know exactly how life began. There is a possibility that 4 billion years ago, aliens dropped a few microbes on sterile earth and allowed them to multiply. And, of course, all religions have supernatural explanations for the origin of life.

Many scientists believe that life is the natural evolution of planets that contain essential biological components such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other fundamental building blocks.

With the right conditions, these cornerstones slowly develop into cell walls and DNA that are suitable for reproducible life. Researchers are constantly conducting similar experiments in laboratories, hoping to find out the formula for creating life.

But so far it remains a mystery how parts of inanimate matter gathered into real living beings. It is possible that we still do not know the characteristics that really define life.

In any case, the search for the source of life will undoubtedly continue for a long time.

9. Is time travel possible?

As science fiction concepts show, time travel is one of the most exciting. It’s hard not to wonder what it’s like to go back in history to witness the battle of Rome in reality. Perhaps even more intriguing is the thought of what our world would look like if you could instantly glimpse the future 1000 years ahead.

It turns out that time travel might not be fiction. Perhaps we just haven't quite figured out how to make time work for us.

One possibility is wormholes, which are bridges that can help people move through time and space. If we could get close to a wormhole, we could theoretically enter it and then be on the other side of the galaxy in a different place and time.

We could try traveling at the speed of light, and at that moment our world would slow down a lot compared to the world we are leaving behind.

Perhaps we could orbit massive black holes that have such an incredible gravitational pull that they actually slow down time.

Or perhaps we could use cosmic strings, the so-called cracks in the universe, to travel through time. These strings (which are also sometimes loops) are so massive that they can actually cause space-time to vibrate around them.

Manipulating any of these scenarios could enable us to finally implement time travel. But even if we can understand science, there are numerous paradoxes that can make time travel impracticable or downright dangerous. So while time travel is just a science fiction novel and movie.

10. Is the Universe Infinite?

When you look into a dark night and see stars scattered across the sky, you can imagine the universe as infinite.

As with everything else, researchers have theories on this score. After analyzing maps from observations made with the Baryon Oscillation Spectrographic Survey (BOSS), a superpower telescope in New Mexico, a team of astronomers determined that the universe was extremely “flat”.

The study was based on observations of "only" 1.2 million galaxies, which is a drop in the sea, but this is a sign that our universe is not spherical, or a sphere so large that it appears flat to us.

So is the universe infinite? It is impossible to tell. One thought is that the Big Bang is causing the universe to expand constantly faster than the speed of light. Since we cannot see beyond the speed of light, we will never know if the universe has an edge.

It is easy for modern people to look at their ancestors with some disdain. They had very little to know, to hunt mammoths, live in caves and walk in animal skins; complete savages, aren't they?

But most of us understand that in 1000 years our descendants will look back at us with the same gentle sympathy, considering us primitive and ignorant.

The evolution of human science and knowledge has such an effect. So maybe in 50 or 100 years this list of unanswered questions will seem strange and naive. However, it is more likely that at least some of these questions will stand the test of time.

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