Things That Science Doesn't Understand
Big Bang Many people now believe that science is their God and science can explain everything. I cannot figure how people can think this way, when there is so much that science cannot explain. For those of you that are regular readers of this website, you know that every once in a while I talk about something that science cannot explain. In the past a couple of the things that I have mentioned are, what is electricity and why do our spacecrafts sometimes speed up on their own when they reach a certain position over the Earth? These are only minor things compared to some of the things that science does not understand. Getting down to the very basics of the universe, science doesn't really know and can't really explain where that supposed super atom came from that exploded and caused the Big Bang. Some will say things like it was formed after the universe contracted and that every once in a while this happens. This certainly does not explain the start of things and science is no closer to knowing that than the first one of us that crawled out of a cave. It might just turn out that this will never be able to be explained by science. There is no doubt that science is a wonderful tool and has given us many great inventions and explanations, but this doesn't mean that science can solve every riddle out there. Sometimes, just by the passing of time, something can become so mysterious that its origins might be lost forever. Right now there is an ancient plaque that has writing on it that science has not been able to decipher. They have tried for many years, but all the tries have been in vain. A series of books have been found in China that are quite ancient. The language appears to be the same as found in the Youyang Tujia habitation that sits on the border between Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou Province,and Chogqing City. There was a race that lived there many centuries ago that were said not to have a written language and yet these books keep getting found that have a language that nobody has been able to interpret. The characters in the book look almost like traditional Chinese characters, but they are not. Another one of these books without a cover, turned up in an old house that was conducting an auction. No one knows how many more of these old books exist. Will scientists ever be able to decipher this language? We seem to have enough computer power today to do it and yet we have not been successful. It is believed that the particular book that was found, is a dictionary and yet the language still remains unsolvable.
Gravity I think that many of us believe that if Albert Einstein was not the greatest scientist that ever lived, he was certainly one of them. One of his famous remarks was that he believed that the origin of the Earth's magnetic field was one of the greatest mysteries of physics. It is believed that there cannot be any magnetic material deep inside the Earth, because it is too hot inside the Earth. When I say magnetic material I am talking about material that would be able to influence these magnetic poles, I am not talking about finding a piece of metal, a lodestone or anything like that on or near the surface. Without ferrous material how can there be magnetism? One way to create magnetism is with an electromagnet. Somehow the rotation of the earth might be generating magnetic fields, but nobody can be exactly sure. If we look at some of the other planets we see that Venus has no magnetic field. Most scientists believe that Mars may have had a magnetic field at one time, but it no longer does. There is a theory that says that the motion of the molten core inside the Earth is what causes the Earth's magnetic fields, but this is only a theory. Jupiter has a huge magnetic field and Mercury has a weak one. We can't help but hear constant references to extinctions on Earth. Scientists say that these extinctions were do to meteors and asteroids entering Earth's atmosphere and plunging deep into the earth. They say that these bodies released huge amounts of debris into the atmosphere causing years of darkness thus killing the plant life, which many of the animals subsist on. Scientists don't really know if this is what destroyed such animals as the dinosaurs or not. There are several other theories out there, such as the one that states that certain types of insects were able to lay their eggs inside dinosaurs and this was found out by examining fossilized dinosaur dung. Even so, the asteroid theory is the most prevalent and yet a mysterious event has been found. David Raup and J. John Sepkoski are two paleontologists who decided to collect a huge amount of data on what could have caused Marine life extinctions. What they found was quite interesting. They found that every 26 million years or so, an extinction event occurred. This begs the fact that a random hit by a meteor or asteroid could happen exactly 26,000,000 years apart. If this is true than what other events could have caused these extinctions? They determined that it could be a large body with a very elongated orbit around the sun. They theorized that when this body approached closely to the Earth, it upset the orbital dynamics which then let more foreign bodies enter the solar system. What they are saying is that maybe it was an asteroid or meteor that hit the Earth, but the cause of all of this is a hidden companion circling the sun. The object was nicknamed nemesis and it is believed by some to be about 2 1/2 light years away at its farthest point in orbit. There is another theory though, that states that volcanic action filled the atmosphere with dust and debris and this is what eventually kills the plants and destroyed the dinosaurs. So you see science still does not really know what caused the different extinction events on Earth. One area in which there are plenty of unexplained things, is the area of artifacts. Things that we've found from our past that we cannot explain today. One of these objects is a stone ax that is so big and heavy that a human today could not wield it. It has been estimated that it would take a giant to use it. Another problem with it, is that it is about 7 1/2 million years old. This far predates what science believes are the first humans. There are also all of those things that are found inside pieces of coal, rocks, etc., every once in a while something will be found inside a lump of coal. Delicate silver or gold jewelry has been found inside of them, along with different small objects. Again this would put the objects as having been made before man existed. I have never heard a reasonable explanation by a scientist about this, but if you read the book Forbidden Archeology by Michael Cremo, he states that man is far older than science will admit. To prove his point, he points out the fact that human skeletons were found in ancient mountains in California when the Gold Rush started and the skeletons were about 7 million years old and that fact was hidden from us, because scientists didn't want to be ridiculed by their peers. There seems to be a lot of hidden contradictory evidence to the fact that we are a young race. Android Another area where science is sorely lacking is the area of artificial life. Right now scientists have no idea how to tell if a robotic device becomes sentient, or self-aware. It is actually an age-old question. It is very possible that a robotic device could someday seem to us to be a life form by interacting so perfectly with us that we would feel that it is self-aware. The problem is that all this could just be the result of clever programming. Where does clever programming let off and self-awareness start? We may never be able to answer this question. Some say the question itself is not important, what is important is whether we believe we are interacting with a living being or not. Other scientists say that this is not true. They feel this way because a being that is self-aware would present all different types of interaction with humans, some of which we might not care for. Another problem would be what do you do with an old self-aware machine, destroying it might be considered murder? Could the machines eventually turn upon us? Some say that this could never happen, while others say that there is a chance that it could. In any case determining if machines are self-aware might just be an impossible task as I said. Even though we feel that we are now greatly advanced as a race, we still have no idea of how many species exist on this planet. That includes creatures on land and creatures in the sea. More is known about the move than the oceans our own planet. We are just starting to dive to depths of the oceans and every year many new species are found on our planet. Some think that there are more species of insects that have not been found, than have been. It may be that we will never find every single specie that exists. I would like to end this article by talking about one of the greatest mysteries of all, gravity. Gravity is not understood very well. We know some things about it, such as a larger body will attract a smaller body, but we really don't know what makes gravity work. At least with electricity, even though we don't know exactly how it works, we do know how to produce it, but not so with gravity. Some scientists equate parts of gravity with magnetism, but this may not be the case at all. If we look up the definition of gravity, it is said to be a force pulling together all matter, and with more matter there is more gravity that is produced. As the bumper sticker says, "Gravity.... it's not just a good idea. It's the law". Einstein suggested that the heavier an object, the more space around it is warped and that this has something to do with gravity. Gravity remains one of the biggest mysteries in the scientific field and one that we are going to have to solve if we ever expect to fly through space, in any meaningful way. |
