5 Unsolvable Mysteries of Science

We like to think of science as a steadily expanding bubble of knowledge—one where we can focus our time and energy on specific fields, and answers will inevitably appear. Humans have consistently pushed the boundaries of understanding further and further back to such an extent it’s easy to assume these boundaries no longer exist.

And yet, for all our greatness in the fields of physics and chemistry, for all the dramatic leaps forward in medicine, and our excellent present-day knowledge of biology—both within us and in the broader world—there remain several enormous gaps that may never be filled.

Admitting that there may be limits to human knowledge is an uncomfortable concept. It begins to question our role within this existence and whether we are anywhere near as omnipotent as we make out. We like to think we’re in control, especially regarding science and the development of human understanding. However, the awkward reality is there are countless scientific questions out there that may never be answered.

What are dreams?

Humans have a good idea about the mechanics behind sleeping. We know about sleep cycles and that we move through different levels of sleep, including Rapid Eye Movement (REM)—we even have apps that can track our slumber and give us nicely packaged data in the morning. But when it comes to dreaming, we’re still grasping at theories.

Dreams have puzzled homo sapiens ever since our consciousness appeared—and we’ll return to that enigmatic black hole a little later. We’ve been asking ourselves, “What do these dreams mean” for thousands of years, and yet, even with the full might of our scientific insight, we’re not really any closer.

There are, of course, plenty of theories. Research has shown that dreaming perhaps has something to do with storing memories or sifting through millions of pieces of information to find what we need. Newer theories suggest it could have something to do with brain plasticity and could be our natural way of protecting ourselves by allowing the brain to effectively stay on while we sleep.

This all makes a lot of sense, but what does it mean when you wake up and realise you’ve been dreaming about chasing a purple toad through a Mexican town while dressed as a chicken? I know it sounds absurd, but we’ve all had dreams so far into the bizarre that they puzzle us for days. If the brain is really organising its waking-hour memories, where does the purple toad come from?

In the past, we thought of dreams as perhaps a way of talking with our ancestors, communicating with the gods, or even predicting future events. As psychiatry came to the fore in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Sigmund Freud suggested that dreams were a direct road to the unconscious and that we might hope to unlock our inner demons by carefully studying them.

So much work has been done on sleep and dreaming, and while many ideas are out there, nothing concrete or remotely conclusive has yet to emerge.

What is consciousness, and why do we have it?

If we ever hope to understand dreams, we must go to the darkest corner of what makes humans human—our consciousness.

We all have a pretty good idea that the world operates outside of our physical being—trees grow, animals feed, and other humans go about their daily lives—but when it comes to what’s going on inside our own minds, now that’s a mysterious abyss if there ever was one.

Human consciousness is our subjective understanding of what is happening. It governs our thoughts, emotions, and judgements—it essentially creates a unique version of our world and moulds the I or ego that can often get us into so much trouble.

This self-awareness helps us learn and develop as humans. It helps us make decisions, prioritise, adapt, love, hate, and almost everything we do. And yet, the consciousness has a dark side. Why do we have an inner monologue that throws relentless obstacles in our way, and how does consciousness manifest itself in the mind of a psychopath? What role does consciousness play in depression and mental health disorders?

Our scientific understanding of the exterior world has developed dramatically over the last few hundred years. And yet, our knowledge of what is happening inside the human mind remains virtually non-existent. Scans can reveal over 100 billion nerve cells constantly firing throughout the brain. Is this consciousness? It might be some part of it, but most will agree that the brain and the mind are entirely different.

We don’t really even know where the mind is or if it has a specific location. Could it be connected to our gut, or does every cell in our body contain a small piece of this elusive mind? Who knows. Whatever the mind and our consciousness are, their power is extraordinary. They allow us to believe in religion, an afterlife, and other dimensions. They are the difference between humans and their egos and apes and chimpanzees who, as far as we know, don’t have the same level of consciousness.

What’s out there?

Moving from the inner sanctum of the human mind to the astonishing size of what’s around us. This is not simply a question of whether there are other life forms but also what the hell the universe is all about. Whenever you hear somebody say that there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on Earth, the human mind struggles helplessly to understand what it’s just heard. It is a numbing fact that we often feel hopeless in the face of.

The 20th Century saw us take an enormous leap forward in our understanding of space, and this led to countless TV shows and films dramatising our hypothetical adventures into the great unknown. Stories of UFOs were openly mocked for much of the second half of the century, however, with a rising number of sightings, often now accepted by governments and even militaries, there is a steadily increasing acceptance that there might be somebody or something else out there.

But that’s just the start. If you let the mind really get going, countless questions about space can daze the mind even thinking about—many of which we might never fully understand.

What are black holes, and where do they lead to? What is dark matter and dark energy? Why is the universe expanding? And if it is increasing, what’s at the edge of it? And probably the most perplexing, what came before the Big Bang?

It is likely that, at some point, some of these questions might be answered, but it’s entirely likely that yet more questions will simply replace them. The nature of the universe and the astonishing levels of mystery that make it up mean that human beings will almost certainly never completely answer the question of what’s out there.

How Do Animals Migrate?

Considering how much research has been done on the migratory habits of animals, we still don’t have a firm idea about much of it. However, before we go on, we should say that there’s plenty we do understand about migration, such as reasoning and exact patterns, but the mechanics behind it can be bewildering.

Let’s start with the Monarch Butterfly. Each year they fly around 4,800 kilometres (3,000 miles) from Canada to Mexico and then back again. Now, that’s astounding for a single butterfly, but what makes this situation all the more puzzling is that it’s not one butterfly. This epic journey is completed over three to five generations, meaning female butterflies lay their eggs along the way, then die, and then their offspring continue the journey.

This means that sometimes it is the great great great grand butterfly of the original butterfly mother that arrives in Mexico shortly before winter. While there have been suggestions that they use the Earth’s magnetic fields as a compass, we have no idea how these butterflies know instinctively that they need to head North or South shortly after bursting from their cocoon.

Another strange and, as of yet, completely unexplainable phenomenon is natal philopatry—when an animal returns to the place of its birth to breed. And here, we’re not talking about returning to the same rough area. Some animals, such as the female antarctic seal, return to the exact place where they were born to within one body length. Considering they might travel thousands of miles in between, that’s quite an achievement.

There are cases of incredible migration across the animal world, both on land and in the sea. Caribou in North America travel 640 km (400 miles) yearly, making it the longest terrestrial migration, while the grey whale puts in an astonishing 10,000 miles each year to take the water crown.

However, both are blown out of the water by the Arctic tern, which might fly 71,000 km (44,000 miles) in a single year as it shuttles between Greenland and Antarctica. A monstrous achievement, but why does it do it, and what internal biological rhythms let it know where to go and when? If you really want to expand the mind, why has evolution not developed in such a way that this small bird needn’t fly almost twice around the equator each year?

And while we’re on the subject of evolution, what on Earth is that all about, and what are its limits? We like to think of ourselves as individual beings, but we are evolving as a species as if our homo sapien blueprint is being slowly tinkered with over time. Why and how?

Considering the concept of evolution is just over 150 years old, our understanding of it all is rudimentary at best. Will we ever be able to completely answer these questions? Maybe—maybe not.

What is the Placebo Effect?

In 1955, Henry K Beecher wrote his book The Powerful Placebo, in which he outlined a controversial theory at the time that stated the human body can self-regulate pain and stress when it believes it’s getting a helping hand through external sources such as drugs—even when those drugs have absolutely no medical value to them. In doing so, he became the first scientist to quantify the placebo effect.

Nearly seventy years later and the placebo effect has become an established fact. However, we have yet to learn why the body can do this and, perhaps even more intriguingly, what the limits are. The fact that the body can effectively self-soothe opens up the tantalising possibility that maybe we are not quite as helpless in the face of illness and disease as we’ve always thought.

Placebo is Latin for “I will please” and was associated with scientific failure for years. In research studies, one group was often given a real drug—the subject of the trial—while another was told they were but was actually given a placebo—usually a sugar pill or a saline drip.

The idea was that the control group given the placebo would show significantly fewer signs of improvement, so underlying the drug’s effectiveness. However, that’s often not what happened. Placebo groups often perform much better than expected, and researchers have only recently found that this might not be down to the drug’s ineffectiveness but rather the placebo effect’s mysterious power.

There have been plenty of studies into the placebo effect, and while we understand that there is an increase in neurotransmitters, like endorphins and dopamine, along with more significant activity in brain regions linked to moods, emotional reactions, and self-awareness, we have no idea why or how.

Before we get carried away thinking that the placebo effect can cure cancer or shrink a tumour, we should point out that placebos work on symptoms modulated by the brain, like the perception of pain. As far as we know, it can’t cure you, but it can certainly make you feel better. It’s all been shown to affect depression, sleep disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, and menopause.

It’s clear that there is a link between how much we expect something to happen and it actually happening. And yet, it doesn’t seem to be a case that we can simply wish ourselves better.

Scientists believe that the medical ritual is important—taking a pill, being examined by a person in a white coat—but even in migraine studies where one group’s drugs are labelled clearly “placebo”, a positive effect was shown in 50% of the participants.

Our vague acknowledgement of the placebo effect has inched open a door that could potentially revolutionise our understanding of the human brain and its relationship to disease and illness. Indeed, with the power of placebos seemingly rising and even outperforming drugs in some studies, it could transform how we think of medicine.

But this could also be one of those questions that lies well out of reach. How taking a pill that we know doesn’t contain any medical substance but can still calm our pain might be one question that sits just over the edge of human knowledge. A thrilling aspect of the human mind, but one that continues to stump scientists to this day.

Key Takeaways

• Human knowledge has limits, with numerous scientific questions potentially unanswerable.
• The mechanisms behind dreaming and consciousness remain elusive despite extensive research.
• Animal migration patterns, like the Monarch Butterfly’s multi-generational journey, defy full explanation.
• The placebo effect, while recognized, lacks a clear understanding of its mechanisms and limits.
• Fundamental questions about the universe, such as what lies beyond the Big Bang, may never be answered.

Sources

• Original Side Projects video: 5 Unsolvable Mysteries of Science

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