If I were to be asked to describe my own species in just one word, I would probably use the word, “seeker”. Everything that we are today is because of this one quality of ours.
Our journey from primates to modern humans took us millions of years. During this period, we evolved into the only intelligent beings on the planet, slowly discovering and inventing the millions of things that all form a part of the collective human knowledge.
We truly have come a long way since the days of living in a cave and hunting animals with spears and stones. Today, we are actively exploring the cosmos and are even able to manipulate the various elements of the planet itself.
But our search for knowledge has just begun, it seems, if you look at the larger picture and the grand scheme of things. There is so much we still don’t know and understand that you and I might be long gone by the time we even come close. Today, I want to talk about some of the biggest questions we have.
1. How The Universe Came To Be
The origin of the universe has always been a big mystery and almost an obvious question for anyone who would spare even a few moments contemplating the entirety of existence and where it came from.
Right now the general consensus among scientists is that the universe came into existence as the result of the big bang. Basically, it states that all of existence came to be from a single, tiny, but unimaginably dense point, and over 13.8 billion years, expanded to the current universe we all know and love!
This answers a lot of questions but raises even more. For example, what was there before the big bang? What was that single point surrounded by if there was no existence itself? How did that single point come to be if there was nothing before it and how could it give birth to such a huge universe?
2. Are We Alone?
Our universe is so unfathomably huge, that it’s just crazy. Scientists are now saying that there could be as much as 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. That’s right. 2 Trillion. With a T!
Imagine how many stars could be in all of these galaxies and how many planets, revolving around these stars. The number starts to get pretty big. Mind-bogglingly big!
In such a huge universe, it is statistically impossible for us to be the only life out there, and yet, we are still to encounter an extra-terrestrial being. Neither has one come to greet us nor have we seen any signs of one anywhere we’ve looked. So, where is everyone else? This question has haunted mankind for a long, long time now and we have no idea how long it will continue to do that!
3. Is Reality Even Real?
There is this theory called the “Simulation Theory” which asserts that all of reality could be nothing but a simulation inside a computer like device of some higher intelligent beings.
If that is true, we are nothing but game characters inside of some being’s video game and reality itself is not real. This has huge implications if you think about it.
We could all be working tirelessly towards nothing. Our lives may be totally meaningless and our entire existence might be at the whims of these beings and could be erased in an instant. Just as we format a pen drive!
4. What Happens After Death?
This is a question that has driven many people mad. Literally! There was a person who even killed himself to prove the existence of an afterlife. You can check this story out. It’s quite interesting.
According to religious texts, there is an after life where the soul leaves the body and wanders off to. Medical science disagrees with this and simply states that a person dies when the body is not longer suited to support life.
I have thought about it quite a bit too and I always get stuck on one question. At the instance of death, a person is alive just a second before death and just a second later, he is dead. So, what changes during that 1 second, that all of a sudden an alive person becomes dead?
5. Origin of Life
The origin of life on the planet is a mystery almost as old as the planet itself. It is estimated that the Earth is 4.8 billion years old and that the first simplest life form came to be around 4 billion years ago.
Although there are many theories, we just don’t know how a bunch of non-living matter came together to form a living matter that is able to move, eat, reproduce and even evolve!
Some say that the conditions were just right in the early days of the planet and some say that life might have started elsewhere in the universe and brought to Earth by ancient asteroids. This is one of the toughest questions to find an answer to because the answer to this might have been destroyed or lost to time and we may never find out.
All images used are taken from the public domain.