Physics:
- WTF is Dark Matter?
- Where antimatter?
Chemistry/materials:
- Better batteries
- Better solar cells
Biology/medicine:
- What causes aging, and how do we stop it?
- Cure cancer
- More HHV vaccines
- Extinct malaria
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
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What causes aging, and how do we stop it
While I do want this solved I am horrified by the idea of tech oligarchs monopolizing it and living forever.
Selfishly, as a biologist, I would like to see:
- Reconciliation of rates of evolution that scales from microevolution to macroevolution
- Accurate/reasonable estimation of lineage death rates for macroevolutionary diversification analysis
- (extension of previous) Reasonably estimate fossilization probability for (more) accurate clade age estimates
- Moving beyond phylogenetic trees (phylogenetic networks are a step in the right direction I think)
As a citizen of Earth, I would like to see:
- Actual plastic recycling that dramatically reduces the need for virgin petro-chemicals
- A 3D printer beyond plastics (I think this kind of a thing, but I would like it to scale for consumers and industry)
- A less massive battery that can be used for commercial flight
- Better earthquake detection
As a person who enjoys knee-deep sci-fi, I would like to see:
- FTL travel
- Futurama style heads-in-a-jar
- A Dyson sphere or swarm
- A hyperloop
As a (frustrated) scientist I would like to see:
- Society move beyond "societal utility" of scientific studies/discovery and embrace "science for the sake of science"
What I would like to see solved:
- The hard problem of consciousness
- Why is there something instead of nothing?
But it's unlikely within my lifetime.
I want to see tiny batteries that can store a ton of power, or tiny engines that can pull energy from their surroundings. Would lead to soooooo many innovations.
I wanna see the light barrier broken. IE FTL travel. I assume it is being worked on, somewhere, but I want to see it actually happen in my life time.
So do I but I always think if we can see the sound barrier busted what would light travel look like getting busted?
Very red or very blue, depending on where you're observing from.
A sidenote that is a neat name the way you did it....no sarcasm. Which I could change mine to that. Anyway why just very red and very blue?
I wanna see more on generalized random Fibonacci sequences. Like calculate the Viswanath constant and Embree-Trefethen constant to more digits, examine more of the interesting fractal behaviors you see with some parameters, etc. Not for any real reason, it's just super neat and not at all intuitive lol.