# Do we have more or less questions about the universe **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 25, 2018, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901 "2018-09-25T17:50:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/21 "2018-09-26T14:50:27Z")
And also to the extent that mathematics matches our physical universe, there will always be experimental results which are undeterminable from known previous results, and which can only be learned by performing a new experiment. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/22 "2018-09-26T15:43:31Z")
> [@sweepkick](#): > > This may be a bit of an aside, but I think it’s related. Do scientists believe that the human mind will actually be able to comprehend the true nature of the universe, reality, etc? Or are we limited by our wetware… such that our cognitive limitations could be likened to a cat trying to understand the details of how a car engine works? > > If its the latter, does our use of computers make it attainable or at least closer? I am sure scientists typically avoid assuming the human mind is up to the task of comprehending true nature and reality, which of course implies in totality (as a partial picture is not comprehension of truth). Those of us who have thought about this very question (which I bet is nearly all) would have to more or less realize there’s no reason to expect that the nature of the universe and reality would have a complexity limit, much less a limit near at hand; nor that the human mind, which does come at some evolutionary cost, would have been equipped with the surplus power to do this. I sit here with my beloved cat purring behind me on the chair, our customary online pose. I am sure he will never comprehend integration by parts, or how the mysterious inner interpreter of FORTH can be a single microprocessor RTN instruction, or why helium might exhibit second sound. I also doubt he can see that he won’t. And I’m sympathetic, because on the grand scale we’re not very different. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/23 "2018-09-26T17:43:10Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And also to the extent that mathematics matches our physical universe, there will always be experimental results which are undeterminable from known previous results, and which can only be learned by performing a new experiment. Which experiments we perform, where and how and why we decide to look, and how we interpret the results, all depend on our theories. > [@](#): > > But science is about more than mathematics and predictions—it’s about building a picture of the way nature works. And that picture, that story about the world, informs both the day-to-day practice of science and the future development of scientific theories, not to mention the wider world of human activity outside of science. > > For any given set of equations, there’s an infinite number of stories we could tell about what those equations mean. > > Picking a good story, and then searching for holes in that story, is how science progresses. The stories told by the best scientific theories determine the experiments that scientists choose to perform and influence the way that the outcomes of those experiments are interpreted. As Einstein pointed out, “The theory decides what we can observe.” The history of science bears this out over and over again. > > – Adam Becker, _What is Real?_ And the theories we come up with depend on our world-view and the capacities of our minds and imaginations. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/24 "2018-09-26T21:52:43Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > I sit here with my beloved cat purring behind me on the chair, our customary online pose. I am sure he will never comprehend integration by parts, or how the mysterious inner interpreter of FORTH can be a single microprocessor RTN instruction, or why helium might exhibit second sound. I also doubt he can see that he won’t. And I’m sympathetic, because on the grand scale we’re not very different. Yes, and I can guarantee that 99% of all humans will never understand those things either. I’m pretty smart, and I kind of remember doing integration back in college, so I suppose I might be able to learn it again if I tried hard, but I don’t feel like trying hard, so that’s out. At least I can help my kids with their algebra and geometry homework without looking like an idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/25 "2018-09-26T23:18:41Z")
And even among the humans capable of understanding such things, none will ever understand _all_ such things, because there’s just too much to know. And yet there are functional systems that depend on more knowledge than any one person can know, in order to operate. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/26 "2018-09-26T23:43:43Z")
Fewer. Not less. Fewer. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/27 "2018-09-27T00:16:36Z")
Point of clarification, If you pay attention close enough you can generally guess the education level of a writer on the subject of physics by how often they use qualifying remarks. The usage of words like [_could, should, may_] generally increases with education or knowledge. Physics is descriptive not prescriptive. These observations do not happen because of these equations, equations describe our observations. While there may be reasons for making absolute claims when teaching in k-12 or in other situations, you can generalize the idea that an expert is an expert because they realize how much they do not understand about a subject. While _science_ is commonly used as a noun is is really a process and should be a verb. Focusing on what the process itself produces and not the process misses a large portion of what makes science one of the most valuable human inventions. It is merely curious people trying to find out more about our world. Even with less hard pursuits I am unaware of any topic that has been chased to a point of full understanding. I would argue that if anyone think that they fully understand any subject that is merely a mark that they have reached the limitation of their creativity. It is not that no more questions remain, just that they are unable to come up with new questions themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/28 "2018-09-27T01:36:47Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > Fewer. Not less. Fewer. That’s a pet peeve of mine, too. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/29 "2018-09-27T03:03:57Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > That’s a pet peeve of mine, too. While I can try and empathize with prescriptive grammarians and this pet peeve as this is GQ I want to point out that _less_ has been used for countables in English for over 1000 years and even by Alfred the Great. Sure Robert Baker who is obviously one of the premier personalities of Prescriptivism preferred it but it does not seem he is demanding it. > [@](#): > > This Word is most commonly used in speaking of a Number; where I should think Fewer would do better. No Fewer than a Hundred appears to me not only more elegant than No less than a Hundred, but strictly proper. – Robert Baker 1770 While I realize popularity of this preference has risen recently, even countables may be considered as quantities rather than numbers in some contexts. I would argue it that is possibly the case here. Perhaps this is because the unidiomatic hypercorrection of “one fewer” is a pet peeve of mine. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/30 "2018-09-27T03:17:00Z")
To clarify, In both historical and present-day usage; _fewer_ is _restricted_ to count nouns but _less_ is often used with count nouns. Baker’s preferences simply conflicts with the typical usage by native speakers. Hopefully that information gives you one _less_ problem to worry about. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/31 "2018-09-27T13:09:56Z")
So, is \< the “fewer than” sign? ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/32 "2018-09-27T14:13:40Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > So, is \< the “fewer than” sign? Few people would say so. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/33 "2018-09-27T15:49:54Z")
I’m wondering if over time questions follow a bell curve shape almost where the X axis is time and the Y axis is unanswered questions. At first the more questions you find and answer, the more that come up. But the universe (and everything in it) is finite in complexity, so over time the number of unanswered questions starts to decline. However who knows when the hump occurs. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/34 "2018-09-27T16:10:17Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > So, is \< the “fewer than” sign? Look at it this way–if iconic SF actor Matt Frewer were in an accident that resulted in the amputation of a limb, there would be less Frewer. If he were to die from his injuries, the world would have fewer Frewers. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/35 "2018-09-27T16:13:02Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > The big debate in cosmology today is whether the number of questions will continue to expand infinitely, or, instead, will some day reach a maximum and then turn around and start to get smaller again. There is another aspect of this, cosmologically speaking, in that as the universe expands in an accelerating fashion, there is more of it that we will not be able to access (at least, without superluminal travel or non-local connectivity), so as time goes on we’ll actually know less and less of the physical world. > [@sweepkick](#): > > This may be a bit of an aside, but I think it’s related. Do scientists believe that the human mind will actually be able to comprehend the true nature of the universe, reality, etc? Or are we limited by our wetware… such that our cognitive limitations could be likened to a cat trying to understand the details of how a car engine works? > > If its the latter, does our use of computers make it attainable or at least closer? As **Chronos** notes, our brains–which are evolved for the tasks of recognizing facial expressions, finding food, and making simple tools–are already overtasked with understanding the modern world and the complexities of it notwithstanding the fundamental mechanisms of physics which defy our everyday experience of causality to the point that people often describe aspects of quantum mechanics as paradoxical and we can only describe it accurately using mathematics of probability. Everything from systems biology to modern finance _requires_ the use of computer modeling systems to make all but the most trivial predictions of cause and effect, and we are already at the point where sophisticated heuristic systems (complex neural networks) are [doing things in ways researchers can’t explain](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/). The use of computers for visualization (i.e. representing data in conceptual or abstract ways that lets our monkey brains comprehend it in a limited fashion), prediction, and control allows us to expand our abilities, but it is wrong to think that it gives us a true comprehension of the information. As an analogy, you can draw a picture of a bicycle, create a free body diagram, describe the mathematics of how it operates, but none of that makes you able to ride a bike without the oft-painful learning process of falling off of a bike until you learn the complex balance. Comprehension of the more complicated systems of the world is like riding hundreds of bicycles at once; we just are not physically equipped to do it, so at best we can ride one bike and invite friends to ride the others together. > [@Chronos](#): > > And also to the extent that mathematics matches our physical universe, there will always be experimental results which are undeterminable from known previous results, and which can only be learned by performing a new experiment. In fact, the math we used to describe the physical universe is probably just a poor approximation of what is really going on, and it may be beyond our ability to really accurately describe the underlying mechanisms and make predictions without actually creating a simulation which is as complex as the universe itself, which is thermodynamically impossible. In terms of the actual questions we have about “the universe”, it has grown by such an immense amount even in the last couple of decades that we now have not only more data than we know what to do with (so-called “Big Data”), but actually too much data to practically categorize by human effort alone (“Colossal Data”). We are going to have to build artificial cognition systems just to be able to even identify the right questions to ask, and that will inevitably lead to even more questions. Those people who complain that we are at an “end to physics” just because we haven’t discovered new particles beyond the Higgs boson (which is not strictly true, even if we cannot access the energies for supersymmetry) are ignoring that we have so much information now we can barely even formulate the right questions to ask, much less run all of the experiments and observations to find answers to them. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/36 "2018-09-27T16:14:41Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Look at it this way–if iconic SF actor Matt Frewer were in an accident that resulted in the amputation of a limb, there would be less Frewer. If he were to die from his injuries, the world would have fewer Frewers. Is Frewer’s compressibility limit determined by maximum headroom or minimum legroom? Stranger ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/37 "2018-09-27T18:00:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > So, is \< the “fewer than” sign? For the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker or the de Sitter–Schwarzschild metric? 🙂 With the understanding that there is no personal judgement being made this is a good example of my previous statement. Us humans tend to disfavor ambiguity and we typically error to concrete rules. I am sure that there is some reason that this was probably selected for but I am unaware of what that would be. Just as in Physics where undergrad and classical physics often speaks of laws and truths language enthusiasts and writers sometimes tend to prefer prescriptive grammar. People who tend to focus on the study of language are rarely prescriptive and tend to focus on the descriptive aspects. One of the beautiful aspects of the scientific method is that it provides a framework to move past these basic human tendencies. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901/38 "2018-09-27T19:42:55Z")
And getting back to the OP. Even if you are an experienced astronomer and you search through a bunch of astronomical images like from Hubble you’re going to occasionally come across a “What the bleep is that?” stuff. A lot of weird things are discovered each year. OTOH, the number of weird things that are explained per year is quite low. Sometimes you get lucky and a whole group of odd stuff is seen to be caused by a certain phenomena, but there are many one-offs. If you are an astronomer (and more importantly if you are grad student), it’s the group explanation results that matter the most. That will get you fame and fortune. Well, maybe a beer at a conference. So the one-off things tend to pile up quite quickly with very few being explained. A lot of fields are like that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-more-or-less-questions-about-the-universe/821901.md?page=1)