Buzz
The distinction between a know-it-all and a true scientist lies in the fact that the former believes they have all the answers, while the latter humbly admits their ignorance. Experts from any field will openly acknowledge that the vast expanse of what they don't know far outweighs what they do. This is why we have science—to explore the endless mysteries of the cosmos. Yet, some of these mysteries are so ordinary that it feels as though we are still on the first level of the universe’s grand puzzle. For instance, we still can’t explain:
10. Dreams
Since the earliest days of humankind, from the first caveman's late-night fantasies to today, people have dreamed. Every night, millions of people, including you and me, drift into sleep, yet science remains baffled as to why this occurs. We aren't short on theories—some suggest that dreams help us clear our minds or manage stress, while others claim it's simply for no reason at all. This isn't baseless guessing—research has shown that dreams might even predict future health events, such as Parkinson's or dementia. Even stranger, a study in New Mexico has proposed that teaching people how to control their nightmares could hold the key to curing depression. Although dreams have been an integral part of human experience for millennia, we still haven’t figured out why they occur.
9. Death
Death remains one of the greatest unknowns. No one can say with certainty what happens when our bodies cease to function, but scientists are working tirelessly to uncover the truth, raising more questions than answers. One major puzzle is the phenomenon of Near Death Experiences. Countless individuals have reported seeing white lights, hearing music, and floating above their bodies—experiences that cannot be dismissed as mere hallucinations, since they occur while the brain is essentially flat-lining. This leads to another mystery: what happens to our consciousness after death? According to Dr. Sam Parnia, a global leader in resuscitation research, people have been revived even after being clinically dead for over ten hours, with no lasting harm. This suggests that our conscious mind might persist even after the body has stopped functioning. While this doesn’t prove the existence of an afterlife—since brain cells begin to decompose and there’s no coming back after that—it highlights how much we still don’t understand about death, despite centuries of human experience with it. And it’s not just the act of dying itself that eludes us; from birth to death, we still don’t fully grasp…
8. Life
Let’s not kid ourselves; we’ve made significant strides in creating artificial life. However, despite our best efforts, we still can't definitively explain how life—the life we see around us—first came into existence. What we do know is that around 3.8 billion years ago, something triggered molecules to begin increasingly complex chemical reactions, leading to RNA, and thus, life. The catalyst for these reactions remains a mystery. Theories range from chance to divine intervention, from ultraviolet light to a form of proto-evolution, but no one has yet found the ultimate answer. Despite countless attempts to recreate the conditions of early Earth’s primordial soup in laboratories, we’ve yet to witness that pivotal moment. For now, the only answer to perhaps the greatest question humanity will ever ask is an uncertain shrug.
7. The Universe
We know, without a doubt, that the Universe is expanding—there’s no question about it. What is puzzling, however, is that it’s also speeding up, which it shouldn’t be doing. Gravity, in theory, should be slowing everything down in preparation for the so-called ‘Big Crunch’—a reverse Big Bang we now know will never happen. So why is this acceleration occurring? Most scientists attribute it to Dark Energy and Dark Matter, two mysterious components that supposedly make up nearly all of the universe. But here’s the catch: we have absolutely no direct evidence of either. For entities that are believed to constitute nearly everything, they remain entirely undetectable. They may still reveal themselves, or the answer could lie in quantum gravity, some obscure aspect of String Theory, or even a mistake on our part. The bottom line is, the universe appears to be flouting its own laws, and we’re left to make guesses about why.
6. History
We tend to think of history as a continuous story that leads us to the present day. And in a way, it is—but with some massive gaps in between. While we have a fairly clear understanding of periods like Roman times, there are centuries of history where our knowledge is based on either a single account or mere speculation. Take sixth-century Britain, for instance. With Rome's influence fading, Christianity on the rise, and Scandinavia preparing for future conflicts, can you guess how many accounts we have of this crucial period?
Just one. That’s it—only one. A single sermon written by a somewhat unstable monk, who spends most of the text ranting about divine judgment. Even when we look at periods like Rome or ancient Greece, we’re still missing huge chunks of information. Much of what we know about the Emperors comes from biased and unreliable sources, and it wasn’t until recently that we discovered the Greeks had invented a computer two thousand years before Charles Babbage decided to create the future. With such scant records, we can’t even be certain the Early Middle Ages ever happened. Who’s to say this isn’t actually 1716? Think about that for a moment. The fact that a trained historian can confidently assert that three hundred years of history may not have occurred should at least highlight how frustratingly little we understand about the past.
5. Art
Ask any artist, writer, or creator why they make art, and you’ll probably get a vague response. That’s not just them trying to seem enigmatic—humans, as a species, honestly don’t understand why we do it. Consider this: there’s no evolutionary reason for us to start decorating cave walls. It doesn’t offer any survival benefits, like keeping us warm or fed, so why do we bother? As with many things on this list, nobody knows. But that hasn’t stopped us from offering explanations. One idea is that all forms of creativity—be it music, sculpture, or writing entertaining lists—are simply the human equivalent of a peacock’s tail feathers. In other words, we get creative to attract mates. If that’s the case, then every painting, song, or movie you’ve ever enjoyed is just the result of our ancestors trying to impress one another. Is this true? Who knows—there are many other theories out there, and for now, that’s all we have: theories.
4. Dinosaurs
If you were a child when Jurassic Park hit theaters, you probably went through a dinosaur phase. Maybe you even visited your local Natural History museum to see the dinosaur skeletons displayed in the entrance hall. What you likely didn’t realize was just how many of those skeletons were based on guesswork. See, fossils don’t just happen—they need very specific conditions to form. This means that not every species makes it into the fossil record, and those that do are often incomplete. Take the Middle Triassic period, for example—our entire fossil discovery from that time consists of a single arm and a few pieces of spine. That’s just a couple of bones from a period that spanned ten million years. Even when we find a decent number of fossils, they’re usually tiny fragments. National Geographic reports that more than fifty-nine percent of dinosaur genera are represented by only a single set of incomplete remains. Unsurprisingly, this often means we have to make educated guesses to fill in the gaps, which leads to some rather outlandish mistakes.
3. Anything
Imagine science as a delicate house of cards, with each groundbreaking theory as a massive ten-ton steel ball crashing into it—you’ll get the picture. By the end of the 19th century, we truly believed we were nearing the limits of human knowledge—then, along came Einstein with his famous equation, and everything we thought we knew fell apart. So, we rebuilt it, and things were looking good until we noticed that black holes weren’t behaving the way we expected. Now, we seem to be in the middle of yet another slow-motion collapse. This means we’re about to have to rewrite some fundamental truths about our existence. For instance, String Theory might ‘prove’ that we’re all living in some sort of hologram being projected from the edges of the universe. While it’s not a widely accepted theory, it does hint at how bizarre the truth could end up being. To sum it all up: nothing makes sense, and you might just be a hologram projected from the edge of space for no other reason than existence is utterly insane. Good luck wrapping your mind around that.
2. Gravity
Earlier, I mentioned Dark Matter as an explanation for why the universe doesn’t seem to follow the laws of gravity. I forgot to mention that gravity doesn’t obey those laws either. Without going into a migraine-inducing explanation, let’s just say gravity is the only one of the four fundamental forces that not only contradicts itself but also appears to switch off when you zoom in small enough. It’s so much of a headache that some physicists have simply declared it doesn’t exist—though whether that’s a crazy idea or a stroke of genius depends on your perspective on how little we understand. But that’s the essence of modern physics: every time we make a new discovery, we realize we understand even less about the universe than we thought we did. Which leads us to the final thing we still don’t get…
1. Literature
By now, you’ve probably figured out the drill—so when I ask, ‘Guess how much we really know about our greatest playwright?’, you already know the answer: ‘Not much.’ And you’d be right. When it comes to William Shakespeare’s life, all we really know is that he wrote some plays, bought two beds, and eventually died. Which, I guess, is still a lot more than we know about Christopher Marlowe. Go even further back in time, and the picture gets even murkier. Take the Greek poet Homer, for example—the author of the Odyssey. The sum total of what we know about him is basically ‘maybe he existed.’ And even more uncertain is whether the books we have today in any way resemble what he actually wrote, since they weren’t even written down until three centuries after his supposed death. As for Roman literature, only two novels from the era have survived—and even those are just fragments. And that’s not even considering the lost works or those destroyed in fires, wars, and other catastrophes. In short, there are literally a bazillion gaps in our literary history that most scholars would give just about anything to fill in.
