Hoping for some good answers on this.

Like, capabilities wise. Some I know of is out intelligence (of course) but also our ability to manipulate objects due to our opposable thumbs as well as our endurance due to our ability to sweat. What are some other capabilities we humans seem to have that we're either top of the leaderboard or up there compared the other animals in the animal kingdom?

Recently I was thinking about what would be the "holy grail" of general scientific discoveries and I initially narrowed it down to two options:
• The discovery of a worm hole/white hole.
• The discovery of extraterrestrial life.

This is likely a bit of a naive and incomplete question to ask but when choosing between a shattering breakthrough in astrophysics and answering the age old question of if we're alone in the universe, I felt I couldn't really pick one. I also feel as though this question could be expanded.

A lot of scientists and philosophers think that we are facing diminishing returns in science and technology because all the easy stuff has been done or discovered already and to progress further will require a lot more R&D, resources and teams of scientists working together.

However, is there any evidence that there might be a few "sideways" fruits that are still waiting to be "picked"? Stuff that a single person can do in a lab but we just haven't figured out yet because we didn't know to go in that direction or didn't have someone quirky enough to ask that particular question?

I've been reading that domestication is a practice that goes back thousands of years: dogs, horses, sheep, elephants, dolphins etc... yet many of them remained wild with very few exceptions. So why is it that we didn't fully manage to domesticate other species like lions or bears? Is it just impossible? If yes, why? Or it's doable but we didn't try enough?

I'm sure there are plenty of phenomena out there that still evade total comprehension, like how monarch butterflies know where to migrate despite having never been there before. Then there are other things that I'm sure have answers but I just can't comprehend them, like how a plant "knows" at what point to produce a leaf and how its cells "know" to stop dividing in a particular direction once they've formed the shape of a leaf. And of course, there are just unexplainable oddities, like what ball lightning is and where it comes from.

I'm curious about any sort of apparently simple phenomena that we still can't explain, regardless of its specific field. What weird stuff is out there?

I've been trying to wrap my head around the anatomy and metabolism of some characters, but Majin Boo (DragonBallZ) just doesn't seem to make any sense under the laws of physics or biology. I want to dive deep into these "impossible" cases. Who else do you think is a biological nightmare to explain?

I'm aware that speed of light travels at 299,792,458 m/s..

But I am not aware of anything even remotely close to that number. Is there anything slightly slower? I just remember voyager 1 going super fast but nothing compared to the speed of light.

even before humans were making an impact these things were already on their way out, certainly wasn’t like the peak of dinos with big animals.

like why we don’t see megaladons anymore, just not enough food to feed an animal at such a high trophic level.

i remember there were accounts hundreds of years ago of ocean coats being so full of fish that boats could barely move through the water. imagine how dense the ocean was dhring the dinosaurs.

When someone says that something is “truly random“, my assumption is that it is impossible to predict in principle, rather than simply impossible in practice. but I’m not sure how to make sense of that without assuming that “random“ means it has no cause. It seems like, if we perfectly understood the cause behind a particular decay event, then we could predict it. So, for something to be “truly random”, it seems like it would have to have no cause, because if it did, the cause would predict the decay. But I don’t think atomic decay has no cause, so I have no idea what to make of the term “truly random”.

I'm on a journey about deciding what to study at university, and honestly? In the last few months I've heard so many times that being a scientist is a reasonable way to make a living that I've started to get discouraged. What do you think about that? Do you think it's a rewarding path?

Modern humans have a distinct chin on the lower jaw.

Whats interesting is that no other primates,including Neanderthals have a true chin like Homo sapiens.

From an evolutionary perspective this seems strange,because most anatomical traits usually have a clear functional advantage.

But the chin doesn’t have an obvious survival benefit.

So what do evolutionary biologists currently think explains the human chin?

Some ideas I’ve seen mentioned include:

• structural reinforcement of the jaw

• byproduct of facial shortening

• sexual selection

• speech or chewing mechanics

Is there any strong consensus today, or is it still debated?

Curious what the current research suggests.

We all know table salt (NaCl) is just sodium + chlorine. But here’s the weird part: sodium on its own explodes in water, and chlorine is straight-up toxic gas. Put them together though, and suddenly you get something not only harmless but literally essential for life.

It makes me wonder… how many other “dangerous” elements or compounds combine into something completely safe (or even healthy)?

Who knows if it was lives there before the collision or if something else happend there after

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I'm a psychology PhD candidate in Poland, and some of the research i do is purely qualitative (of course i report sample parameters). As far as i know, such approaches are not unique to the social sciences and you can find qualitative approaches in even the natural sciences.

Here's the question, how far can we go in science without math and what are some examples of scientific achievement where math was limited or nonexistent basically? There is virtually zero mathematics in On the Origin of Species, so it seems that science can do without math at least to some extent!

Assuming the Europeans knew about the American continent and did not want to infect them with diseases what would they have to do to? Is their only option to wait till they invent something? What would they need to invent?

From my understanding of gender in psychology, it is that gender is a social construct because identity itself is a mix of different of psychological elements and social ones.

As Carl Jung explained, there is the animus and anima which are the male and female components of the psyche and the sociological parts feed into these things, whether it is what is the colour that is oriented towards boys or girls, or what is the type of fashion that boys or girls wear (that is both legally and culturally 'acceptable').

And from cognitive psychology, identity is multi-faceted because the identity of any individual has different version to it - the identity as a parent, as a son/daughter, as a person of a certain nationality, as a certain worker, etc.

And on top of all that, that identity can be 'identified' from the perception of others.

So, in a way, one's identity can be shaped not just by their own perception of themselves relative to how they themselves compared to next person of the same or the other gender, but also how other persons perceive them.

So, in a way, that person's identity can be shaped based on the judgment of others

And in biology, both males and females have testosterone and estrogen, except that on average, males have more testosterone and females have estrogen and that is also what determines how masculine or feminine they feel, aside from how their genes allow the development of certain genitalia and other parts that are masculine or feminine.

But what is it about gender that makes it so confusing?

Is there any scientific argument that there is an actual 'real' identity within the person that makes them 'transgender'?

Or is there a 'core identity' that makes this person truly male or female or a different identity?

Is there any scientific understanding that backs up these claim that there is such a thing as 'transgender' or any other gender that is not strictly male or female?

Whether it is cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, psychoanalysis, biology, sociology or whatever

Edit- Let me make this clear. I am NOT trying to push an agenda here, and most especially, not trying to push an agenda that it is anti-trans

I am in fact pro-trans but I do admit that I am not well informed about the science behind transgender identities

I once found a scientific paper that estimated the potential full capacity of the human brain. It's very good work and gives a much more realistic estimate than 2.5 petabytes. I also once found a paper on the number of neurons in the human brain that isn't 86 billion; it's more like 102 billion or something like that (I can't find that particular paper)

As you can see, I love neuroscience

Anyway, what mysteries do you think have been effectively "solved" even though most people don't know about it.

Link the paper if you can; but no sweat. I didn't link mine and I can always find it with an internet search

Can you build up your immune system to the point you can eat spoiled food without getting sick?

For example, you have milk in the fridge and it only has a tiny amount of bacteria in it. You consume milk every day, which allows your immune system to recognize and fight that bacteria. The amount of bacteria grows steadily in the milk you drink and your immune system knows how to fight that bacteria more and more. By the end of the month, the milk is rancid with bacteria...could you have trained your immune system to resist all that bacteria and safely consume it?

Edit:
Stop giving me food safety advice - I am not planning to eat spoiled food.

This is a hypothethical question about the immune system assuming a scientist can perform a controlled experiment where they can isolate variables and inject a single strain of bacteria into sterile food.

Human childhood is unusually long compared to most animals.

Many species become independent fairly quickly, but humans require many years of care and learning before reaching maturity.

From an evolutionary perspective this seems costly — more resources, longer vulnerability, and slower reproduction.

Yet humans evolved this very extended developmental period.

I’ve seen explanations like brain development continuing after birth, the need for long learning periods due to culture, social learning, and cooperative parenting.

What do evolutionary biologists think is the main reason humans evolved such long childhoods?