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As I’ve written before, humans are incredibly intelligent and mind-numbingly ignorant when it comes to understanding our universe. As Bill Bryson so eloquently put it, human knowledge is “a mountain of theory built on a molehill of evidence.”

Again, humans are incredibly smart. But it’s amazing what we still don’t know. And there are no greater scientific mysteries than these.

1. What is consciousness? We experience thoughts, feelings, awareness, but we don’t know why. No scientific theory fully explains how brain activity produces subjective experience. That’s crazy!
2. What happened before the Big Bang? Our entire universe has a timeline, but the first moment — or what “before” even means — is conceptually murky. After all, how can time have a beginning or end and how could it possibly exist without one or the other?
3. How did life begin? We know how life evolves, but not how it starts. What turned chemistry into biology? Did it begin in deep sea vents? Lightning-charged pools? Comets? First cause? Multiple origins? What?
4. Are we alone in the universe? With billions of planets, the odds of other life seem high. But in our observable universe of millions, we’ve seen and heard nothing. So if aliens exist, why haven’t we seen them? And is intelligence really that rare?
5. What is dark matter made of? Dark matter makes up 85% of the universe’s matter, but we can’t see or touch it. We’ve built detectors for decades and found nothing. Either it’s something entirely new or our physics are wrong.
6. Why do the laws of physics work so perfectly to support life on Earth? Why are the constants of nature — gravity, electromagnetism, floating ice — just right for life and complexity? Is it sheer luck, intelligent design, necessity, what!!??
7. How does the brain actually store memories and thoughts? Despite brain scans and mapping, we have no idea. Zero. Zilch. Nada! So are memories like files? Are they holographically distributed? Is forgetting a bug or a feature? We still don’t know.
8. What is the full blueprint of human genetics? We’ve sequenced the genome. But we don’t know what 98% of it (specifically the “non-coding” DNA) really does. It could be junk — or it could control higher-level processes, behavior, and evolution.
9. How do placebo effects work? We’ve scientifically measured that around 30% of people who unknowingly take fake sugar pills labeled as medicine will actually overcome disease, infection, and illness to amazingly cure themselves. How the hell does that work?
10. Is there life after death? No empirical evidence exists, yet the majority of personal and mystical experiences across cultures suggest continuity of self (or the soul) beyond the body and mortality. Near-death experiences hint at something beyond life but remain inconclusive.

Honorable mentions:

• Why can’t science “disprove” miracles or verify supernatural causation?
• Do prayers work by divine intervention, placebo effect, or psychosomatic pathways?
• What happened during the 25 “hidden” years of Jesus’ life?
• Why is abbreviated such a long word?