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Cosmology has many unsolved problems, including the cosmological constant (dark energy), dark matter, and the abundance of matter versus antimatter. These problems require radical new thinking and hiring PhDs who pursue their own ideas. The anthropic principle may offer some answers, but there are still numerous other unsolved problems.
Cosmology, the study of the universe, is plagued by many unsolved problems. Historically, these unsolved problems have led to new developments in physics that have continued to revolutionize the field, but over the past half century, cosmologists have discovered new problems and come up with fewer corresponding solutions. Finding the solutions to these problems may require radical new thinking and greater tolerance for hiring PhDs who are inclined to pursue their own ideas rather than simply following those of senior scientists.
One of the most conspicuous problems in cosmology is the cosmological constant, which governs the expansion of the universe, also known as dark energy. A substantial portion, about 60%, of the mass energy in the universe is in a mysterious form of energy that is pulling the cosmos apart at an accelerating rate. What is this energy and where does it come from? Cosmologists have no real idea.
While given a similar name, there is another problem in cosmology, so-called dark matter, which is actually unrelated to dark energy, except to the extent that it involves things we don’t understand. About 90% of the mass in the universe is in a seemingly invisible form of matter we call dark matter. This dark matter can only be measured by the gravitational pull it exerts on the objects around it, and all the galaxies we observe contain large halos of it, often extending hundreds of thousands of light-years beyond the boundary of the luminous matter. Is this dark matter real matter, such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), or is it perhaps just an observational artifact caused by an improper theory of gravity? Any cosmologist who understands this would be virtually guaranteed a Nobel Prize, yet no one has succeeded.
Another mystery is why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. According to physical theories, these forms of matter are essentially equivalent, but conventional matter is observed in much greater abundances than antimatter. Were there a great deal of both types in the early universe, and they mostly annihilated each other to leave today’s matter? Or was there a much more conventional issue from the start? If you’re a cosmologist, this is the sort of thing that keeps you up at night.
Some of the answers to the above questions may come from the anthropic principle: the idea that the observed values were very different, the universe would be hostile to life and therefore there would be no cosmologists to ask these questions. But others see the anthropic principle as a loophole, because it offers a convenient explanation for pretty much everything we want. There are numerous other unsolved problems in cosmology, having to do with the mass generation for neutrinos, the question of entropy in the distant past, and the condition of the universe immediately after the Big Bang. If you want to know more, go read a book on the subject by a respected cosmologist.
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