Some of the unsolved problems in physics are theoretical, that is when existing theories cannot explain an experimental result, such as dark matter. Others are experimental, because it hasn’t been possible to create an experiment to test a theory, like the evaporation of black holes through Hawking radiation.
Everything we know about the Universe requires human perception, so can we fully understand the cosmos without understanding consciousness first?
We seem to live in an Universe with 3 dimensions + time, but nothing in physics dictates that it has to be that way, for instance, string theory requires 11 dimensions of spacetime to mathematically describe reality. We don’t really know how many dimensions exist or why.
The Anthropic principle states that the Universe with all its critical physical parameters is the way it is because otherwise we would not exist to observe it, for example, if the laws of electromagnetism and nuclear physics were slightly different to what they are, chemistry and biology would be impossible, nevertheless we don’t really know why there is something instead of nothing.
The experience of consciousness, time, and the force of gravity are three of the most familiar aspects of our lives, we know what they do, however how these phenomena emerge, and what they actually are, remain a mystery.
Given the size of the universe with hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, and trillions of galaxies out there, it would be shocking it life was just present on Earth, but we don’t know.
Is the emergence of life on Earth a random occurrence in the cosmos such as Saturn’s rings or Jupiter’s 79 moons?
Science can explain what life does, but at the moment not what life is or if it exists outside our planet.
Colours and sounds don’t exist in nature, they are what our conscious mind perceives when our senses are exposed to certain electromagnetic and pressure waves respectively. Consciousness is perhaps the most familiar and at the same time most mysterious aspect of our lives. We know what consciousness does, but not what it is or how it emerges and operates.
The Universe seems to have just mathematical properties. The mathematical underpinning of nature is a mystery and there seems to be no rational explanation for it, also we don’t know for sure if the Universe we are all part of has any non-mathematical properties.
A wormhole is a structure connecting 2 points in space-time that could be light years away from each other. They are a theoretical solution compatible with Einstein’s general relativity equations, but whether wormholes actually exist remains to be seen.
We don’t know how to derive theoretically fundamental physical constants such as the speed of light (c), the vacuum energy (Λ), or the gravitational constant (G), we only know their value through measurement.
The holographic principle is a theory within physics stating that the universe we know could be viewed as holographic, which means that all the information, laws, and mechanics of the 3-dimensional universe we experience can be encoded onto a 2-dimensional membrane surrounding this 3-d universe. So, would this holographic universe be all there is and therefore the 3-dimensional universe we perceive just an illusion?
Awarenergy 