25 of the most provocative questions facing science

NY Times (Science Times) ^ | Nov. 11, 2003 | Anon.

[Pharmboy]

(1) Does Science Matter?

(2) Is War Our Biological Destiny?

(3) Will Humans Ever Visit Mars?

(4) How Does the Brain Work?

(5) What Is Gravity, Really?

(6) Will We Ever Find Atlantis?

(8) What Should We Eat?

(9) When Will the Next Ice Age Begin?

(10) What Happened Before the Big Bang?

(11) Could We Live Forever?

(12) Are Men Necessary? ...

... Are Women Necessary?

(13) What Is the Next Plague?

(14) Can Robots Become Conscious?

(15) Why Do We Sleep?

(16) Are Animals Smarter Than We Think?

(17) Can Science Prove the Existence of God?

(18) Is Evolution Truly Random?

(19) How Did Life Begin?

(20) Can Drugs Make Us Happier? Smarter?

(21) Should We Improve Our Genome?

(22) How Much Nature Is Enough?

(23) What Is the Most Important Problem in Math Today?

(24) Where Are Those Aliens?

(25) Do Paranormal Phenomena Exist?

[rintense]

27) Does a missing link really exist?

[rintense]

(23) What Is the Most Important Problem in Math Today?

Easy. Simplifying the tax code (and balancing my check book).

[Truth666]

The big foreplay, with polaroid sunglasses ...

[laredo44]

Absolutely hilarious!

[Truth666]

polaroid sunglasses ... (10) What Happened Before the Big Bang?
What about a much more simple and basic one :
Post a better proof for the Big Bang than this one

[Chancellor Palpatine]

If a man says something in a forest and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?

[facedown]

28) Where do all my unpaired socks go?

[laredo44]

Interestingly, to me at least, a little more than a century ago, scientists produced a list of questions that science would never be able to answer. One of those was, "What is the sun made of?" That we answered the question is not even the most amazing part -- we discovered that it was, in part composed of the element helium, an element not even known on earth at the time it was discovered.

[Balto_Boy]

In fact, if men are on earth solely to preserve the species, there is already enough DNA in sperm banks to last for ages. Advances in cryogenics and turkey basting have rendered human males largely superfluous.

If true, this points to an incredile paradox. For all the accusations from men that feminism is trying to eliminate males from reproduction, it is men who ultimately enabled this to happen.

[general_re]

It's pack behavior at its finest. You want to get to know her. She's giving off the signs of wanting to get to know you. So what's the problem?

Her friends, in a nutshell. They hate you. You hate them. But you can't just be forthright about that, unless you want your romance to be really short and uneventful. So you have to force a smile and put on a happy face about her friends, rather than doing what you would rather do, which is choke the life out of that (expletive deleted) who's constantly telling the object of your affections what a loser you are because she just got dumped by some other loser and now hates anything with a Y-chromosome. It calls for a subtle and delicate touch, along with a quick decision about whether the target is actually worth the kind of AA fire you're going to get on your way into the drop zone.

My wife thinks that Budweiser commercial, the one that salutes the "wingman" who "takes one for the team" so that his buddy can get to know some other woman a little better, is hilarious, because she doesn't understand that, to men, that's not a joke. The "wingman" is just one of the many ways that men have evolved to deal with the nasty-girlfriend problem...

[weave09]

26. Will the Red Sox or Cubs EVER win the World Series?

[weave09]

26. Will the Red Sox or Cubs EVER win the World Series?

[MarkL]

Another question that was left out was

Does time exist?

It just may not.

Sure it does...

Time is nature's way of making sure that not everything happens at once!

Mark

[E Rocc]

7) Will the liberal media ever learn to count?

-Eric

[Gigantor]

The brain is an intellectual, he doesn't need to work.

That is correct, Pinky...

[Pharmboy]

They had a National Enquirer moment.

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[Pharmboy]

Where are my keys?

That is not a question for the Science Times, but rather for St. Christopher.

[Sinner6]

(9) When Will the Next Ice Age Begin?

Soon, because global warming(evil suvs) will cause it... er...

[Sinner6]

(20) Can Drugs Make Us Happier? Smarter?

Happier yes, smarter no