Unexplainable

The Nobel Prize has rewarded some amazing discoveries. It’s also contributed to scientific tunnel vision. This week, how the Nobel impacted our understanding of an enormous cosmic mystery, and what a new and improved Nobel Prize could look like.

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To look into deep space is to look back in time. With the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists hope to see “cosmic dawn,” a period long ago when the first starlight transformed the universe. But what happened before cosmic dawn? The Webb can’t tell us, though future telescopes could.

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After decades of planning, NASA is finally (finally!) set to launch the successor to the Hubble. The new Webb telescope will be a paradigm shift for astronomy, exploring places in the cosmos that have been completely invisible to us until now. But first, it has to safely reach a point nearly a million miles away from the Earth.

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For decades, Alzheimer’s researchers have been stubbornly pursuing a single theory, but they’re starting to wonder: is this narrow focus the reason we still don’t have a cure?

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Several years after US diplomats in Cuba claimed they were attacked by an invisible weapon, similar incidents continue to be reported around the world. Scientists haven’t been able to determine a definitive cause, but the possibilities point toward something just as mysterious as the illness itself: the inner workings of the human brain.

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Once upon a time, there were no anuses. These ingenious organs allowed our primordial ancestors to grow bigger and more complex, but scientists still don’t understand how they evolved. And they’re still grasping at a mystery that literally surrounds it: Why is the human butt so big?

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This common chronic condition — where tissue similar to what grows inside the uterus grows elsewhere in the body — is barely understood. So why is a condition so prevalent and painful still so unknown? It has a lot to do with who gets to ask research questions.

Correction, August 18: An earlier version of this episode implied that the tissue involved in endometriosis is the same as the endometrium, which lines the uterus. It is similar tissue, but not identical.

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Two scientists. A billion-dollar wager. One unanswered question: Is the first human who will live to 150 already alive? The technology to make that happen may already be in development. But if it works, there will be new, unsettling questions for humankind to answer.

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Earlier this year, Nicole Yamase explored the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest place in the ocean, where few people have ever been. The rest of the seafloor is almost as mysterious — 80 percent remains unmapped — but the few glimpses scientists have gotten have completely revolutionized our understanding of the planet.

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8 minutes, 24 seconds. That’s the average amount of warning time people get before a tornado touches down. To do better, and to understand tornadoes, scientists need to confront more of these storms, head on.

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