GOD PLAYS DICE™
What we know, and what we don’t know yet
Some big questions have clear answers. Others sit at the edge of what anyone knows. This board takes about twenty of them, from dark matter to consciousness, and shows for each one what we know so far, what nobody knows yet, what would change the picture, and what data come next. Each label is the one the linked Library answer gives for that exact question, and each row links to that answer and lists its own sources. Where a question belongs to philosophy or faith rather than measurement, the board says so. Future dates are the ones the agencies and teams publish, and they can slip.
How to read this board. Each question shows the label from its Library answer: Established Supported, still debated Open question Not supported Beyond science What the labels mean →
What is dark matter made of?
Open question
- What we know
- The pull of unseen mass, called dark matter, is well measured: stars at the edges of galaxies orbit too fast, galaxy clusters hold together too tightly, and light bends more than visible matter can explain. The Planck satellite’s map of the oldest light fits about five times more dark matter than ordinary matter.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows yet what dark matter is made of: one new kind of particle, several kinds, or something else. No lab has clearly caught a dark matter particle, and the one unexplained event the LZ detector reported in 2026 was not claimed as a discovery by its team.
- What would change the picture
- A clear, repeated detection of a dark matter particle in a lab would tell us what it is, while a single theory of gravity that fits galaxies, the Bullet Cluster (two galaxy clusters that crashed together) and the oldest light with no unseen mass would force a rethink.
- What comes next
- More data from the LZ detector, which planned in 2024 to collect 1,000 days’ worth before it ends in 2028. ESA’s Euclid sky survey plans its Data Release 1 for mid 2027, though ESA says its release dates are tentative.
Why is the universe’s expansion speeding up?
Open question
- What we know
- Distant exploding stars showed that the expansion of the universe began to speed up, and later observations support it. Scientists call the unknown cause “dark energy”; the simplest model treats it as a constant property of space, and that fits much of the evidence.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows what dark energy is, or whether it changes over time. In 2025 the DESI galaxy survey, combined with other data, hinted that it may be weakening, though not strongly enough to count as a discovery, and newer checks are mixed.
- What would change the picture
- If several independent methods clearly showed dark energy weakening, a changing dark energy would be favored over a constant one, and the forecast of a slow “big freeze” for the universe would lose its lead.
- What comes next
- DESI expects the first dark energy results from its full five-year survey in 2027. New sky maps will also come from the Rubin Observatory’s 10-year survey, which began in June 2026, and from NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, launched on August 30, 2026.
Is there a real gap in how fast the universe is expanding?
Supported, still debated
- What we know
- Nearby galaxies say space is stretching at a rate near 73 (in the units astronomers use), but the early-universe prediction built on the Planck satellite’s data is about 67; astronomers call this gap the Hubble tension. A 2026 community report put the local rate at 73.5, with a precision of just over 1%.
- What nobody knows yet
- One team using the Webb telescope gets about 70, which fits the Planck value within its error bars, so the gap is still debated. Nobody knows yet why the measurements disagree: it could be several measurement errors pushing the same way, or a missing piece in our model of the universe, such as a surprise in dark energy, dark matter or gravity.
- What would change the picture
- Finding measurement errors that explain the gap, or a new model of the universe that fixes it, would change this picture.
- What comes next
- ESA’s Gaia Data Release 4, planned for December 2, 2026, and built from 66 months of star measurements; star distances from an earlier Gaia release were one of three yardsticks behind a 2022 local measurement. NOIRLab says next-generation observatories are expected to give even more precise measurements.
What happened before the hot Big Bang?
Open question
- What we know
- About 13.8 billion years ago the universe was extremely hot and dense, and it has been expanding and cooling ever since; that part is well measured. Many cosmologists think a burst of extremely fast expansion, called inflation, happened in a tiny fraction of the first second, but NASA says scientists aren’t sure what came before inflation or what powered it.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows whether time had a first moment or our hot beginning grew out of something older; physicists have proposed a start with no edge (the “no-boundary” idea), a big bounce, endless cycles or colliding “branes” (membrane-like worlds), and a branch of a larger multiverse, and none is confirmed. A separate idea, HD-Blast, proposed by Ricardo Maldonado, author of GOD PLAYS DICE, is labeled Author’s hypothesis: its benchmark curve is frozen, and no test of the frozen curve against later, independent pulsar-timing data (from teams that time spinning dead stars like clocks) has been published.
- What would change the picture
- A clear signal from before the hot Big Bang would change this answer, especially a pattern in gravitational waves (ripples in space and time) or in ancient light that one model predicted in advance and the others did not.
- What comes next
- Searches for the distinct pattern that ripples from inflation could leave in how the oldest light is polarized. They include the Simons Observatory in Chile, whose large telescope saw first light in 2025, and the Japan-led LiteBIRD satellite, which is aiming for launch in Japanese fiscal year 2036.
Why is there more matter than antimatter?
Open question
- What we know
- The young universe had both matter and antimatter, and when matching particles met they turned much of their mass into energy. Matter had a small lead (CERN puts it at about one extra matter particle for every billion antimatter particles), and that surplus became the stuff in stars and in our bodies.
- What nobody knows yet
- Experiments have found some ways in which matter and antimatter behave differently, but nobody knows what gave matter its lead. CERN says the difference that known particle physics predicts is far too small, by many powers of ten, to explain the imbalance.
- What would change the picture
- A new idea that predicts the size of the surplus and passes tests in labs and in space could explain why matter was left.
- What comes next
- Experiments that compare neutrinos with their antimatter partners, antineutrinos; neutrinos are tiny particles that pass through ordinary matter almost without a trace. Japan’s Hyper-Kamiokande aims to start observing in 2028, and the U.S. facility for the DUNE experiment is under construction.
What happens inside a black hole, and is anything that falls in lost for good?
Open question
- What we know
- Black holes are real: telescopes have pictured the dark shadows of two of them (in 2019 and 2022), and detectors have logged 390 gravitational-wave signals (ripples in space and time) since 2015, many from black holes colliding. Nothing that crosses the boundary called the event horizon can get back out, not even light.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows what matter is like inside the event horizon, or whether the “singularity” at the center, where Einstein’s theory predicts infinite density, is real or a sign that the theory breaks down there. Whether information that falls in ever comes back out, a puzzle Stephen Hawking raised in 1976, is still argued.
- What would change the picture
- Spotting Hawking radiation, the faint glow black holes are predicted to give off, would settle one open part of the story, while a solid surface where the horizon should be, or ringing after mergers that broke Einstein’s rules again and again, would change the main picture.
- What comes next
- More collisions to study: the teams behind the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA gravitational-wave detectors plan a six-month observing run starting in early to mid November 2026. ESA plans to launch the LISA space detector in 2035 to catch collisions of huge black holes at the centers of galaxies.
Can gravity and quantum physics be joined in one theory?
Open question
- What we know
- Physics has two great theories that each work very well, the Standard Model for particles and general relativity for gravity, but nobody has yet made them fit together.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows which, if any, of the leading attempts, such as string theory and loop quantum gravity, is right; most predict new effects only at energies far beyond any machine we can build. Nobody knows whether a final theory exists at all.
- What would change the picture
- A candidate theory that predicted a new, surprising measurement, which experiments then found, would change this answer quickly.
- What comes next
- Proposed small “tabletop” lab experiments that could catch quantum effects of gravity directly. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says some recent developments suggest the outlook for such tests might be brighter than once thought.
Is anything truly random?
Open question
- What we know
- Dice, coins and weather follow fixed physical rules, and their randomness comes from details too small to track, but quantum events are different. In practice no one can predict a single quantum measurement, and Bell tests on linked (entangled) particles, honored by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, ruled out one kind of hidden cause: pre-set instructions carried inside each particle with no faster-than-light influence.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows whether quantum outcomes are random at the root or follow a deeper order we cannot see, such as hidden particle positions or branching worlds. One such reading predicts the same results as standard quantum theory, so today’s experiments cannot tell them apart.
- What would change the picture
- An experiment that caught quantum results following a hidden pattern would change this answer, and so would a new theory that explains the quantum odds and makes a new prediction that passes a test.
- What comes next
- Tests of “collapse” models, which build chance into the basic laws of nature, and experiments that put ever larger objects into quantum superpositions (blends of states). So far such tests have ruled out some, though not all, collapse models.
How did life on Earth begin?
Open question
- What we know
- Rocks in Western Australia hold widely accepted signs of life from about 3.48 billion years ago, on a planet about 4.54 billion years old. Some of life’s building blocks can form without life, and samples from asteroid Bennu carry 14 of the 20 amino acids life uses to build proteins and all five nucleobases life uses to store genetic instructions in DNA and RNA.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows where life started, which chemical steps came first, or how the first cell took shape; no experiment has yet shown the whole path from chemistry to a living cell.
- What would change the picture
- A lab mix of simple chemicals that began to copy itself and evolve under early-Earth conditions would bring the answer much closer, and life that began separately, on Mars or an icy moon, would show whether life starts easily.
- What comes next
- NASA’s Dragonfly, a rotorcraft that will fly on Saturn’s moon Titan, is due to launch no earlier than July 2028 and to arrive in late 2034. It will study how far prebiotic chemistry, the chemistry that comes before life, has progressed there.
Is there life beyond Earth?
Open question
- What we know
- Planets are common: NASA’s Exoplanet Archive listed 6,372 confirmed planets beyond our solar system on September 25, 2026. No claimed sign of life beyond Earth has been confirmed, and a 2025 claim about the planet K2-18b fell short of the usual bar for a discovery.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows how easily life begins, because we have only one example, or how often simple life leads to complex life.
- What would change the picture
- Finding life that began separately from Earth’s, even microbes on Mars, or a sign of life on another planet confirmed by several teams and instruments, would be strong evidence that life is not extremely rare.
- What comes next
- NASA’s Europa Clipper is due to reach Jupiter in April 2030 to find out whether the icy moon Europa has conditions suitable for life. ESA’s Juice is due to arrive in July 2031 to study Jupiter’s ocean-bearing moons as possible habitats.
If aliens exist, where is everybody?
Open question
- What we know
- Our galaxy has many planets and has had a long time for life to arise, yet there is no confirmed sign of alien life or technology. Radio searches so far cover only some stars, radio bands, times and signal strengths: by one 2018 estimate, a very small share of what could be searched.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows how often life begins or builds tools, or what signs, if any, such tools would make; silence so far cannot tell us whether no one is there or we have missed them.
- What would change the picture
- A confirmed sign of life or alien technology would change this answer, and wider searches could rule out more kinds of signals even if they found none.
- What comes next
- Wider radio searches, including with the SKA Observatory’s radio telescopes. The observatory says they will expand the volume of our galaxy that can be searched for signals from alien technology by a factor of 1,000.
Is the mind just the brain?
Open question
- What we know
- The mind depends on the brain: damage or stimulate part of it, and what people see, feel or do can change.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows how brain activity gives rise to felt experience, a puzzle named the “hard problem” in 1995, or whether the mind is fully physical. In a 2020 survey, about half of the philosophers who answered leaned toward a fully physical mind, and about a third leaned the other way.
- What would change the picture
- A tested theory that explains and predicts why some brain activity feels like something would push the answer toward the physical view, and strong, repeatable evidence of a mind working without brain activity would push the other way.
- What comes next
- More “adversarial collaborations”, in which backers of rival theories register their predictions before the data come in. One, published in Nature in 2025, matched some predictions of both theories it tested and challenged key ideas of both. One of its funders, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, says five such projects in its program will test prominent theories of consciousness.
Could a machine ever be conscious?
Open question
- What we know
- There is no good evidence that any of today’s chatbots feel anything: a 2023 report by 19 researchers found that no current AI system is a strong candidate for consciousness. Talking like a person is weak evidence, because chatbots learn from huge amounts of human writing about feelings.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows what makes a brain conscious, so nobody knows what a machine would need, and there is no agreed test that could show from the outside whether a machine feels anything.
- What would change the picture
- A theory of consciousness that passed hard tests in brains would let researchers check machines against it.
- What comes next
- Checking new AI systems against “indicator properties” drawn from scientific theories of consciousness, the approach the 2023 report set out and applied to recent systems.
Sources (4)
Is free will real, or does the brain decide before we do?
Open question
- What we know
- In simple lab tasks, a slow brain signal builds up before people report the urge to move. Later work suggests that buildup may be random brain noise, and a 2019 study found it before random key presses but not before choices about which charity would get a real donation.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows yet what the signal really reflects, whether true randomness plays any part in the brain’s choices, or how finger-lift tests carry over to big life choices. What free will means is partly a question for philosophy.
- What would change the picture
- Tests that could reliably predict people’s real, thought-out choices long before they felt they had decided would weaken the case for conscious control.
- What comes next
- Studies of deliberate, real-life decisions instead of simple finger lifts, the gap the 2019 study pointed to. A 2021 review says recent advances call for a reassessment of what the signal means for free will.
Can meditation change the brain?
Supported, still debated
- What we know
- A 2022 study of 218 people found no evidence that an eight-week mindfulness course changed brain structure more than a matched health program or a waiting list did, though longer training shows more promise. The benefits people feel have firmer support: a 2014 review of 47 trials found that mindfulness programs gave small-to-moderate relief from anxiety, depression and pain.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows yet how much meditation, or which kind, is needed to change the brain’s structure, or whether such changes explain the benefits people feel; many studies are small and short, and few look for harms.
- What would change the picture
- Large randomized trials with matched control activities that found the same brain changes again and again would strengthen the brain claim, and if such trials kept finding nothing, even after longer training, it would weaken further.
- What comes next
- More trials that compare meditation with a matched activity rather than a waiting list. A 2018 review by 15 researchers cited an estimate that only 9% of research on mindfulness programs had made that kind of comparison.
Sources (5)
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Beyond science
- What we know
- Physics traces our universe back to a hot, dense start about 13.8 billion years ago, but every physics answer starts with something already there, such as laws, fields or energy. Even the quantum vacuum, space with no particles at all, which some physicists call “nothing,” is still full of fields and energy.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows what, if anything, came before the hot early universe. Philosophers still disagree about whether the question has an answer at all, and whether that answer is God, a universe that must exist, or no reason.
- What would change the picture
- A confirmed physics theory of what came before the Big Bang would push the science part further back, but it would still start from laws or stuff that already exist.
- What comes next
- No experiment is expected to settle it. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that no experiment could support the idea that there is nothing, and it calls the question “so far, a live question.”
Is the universe fine-tuned for life?
Supported, still debated
- What we know
- Many physicists say yes, in a limited sense: life as we know it seems to depend on some numbers of nature falling in narrow ranges. In one 2000 study, changing the strong nuclear force by more than about 0.5% cut the carbon or oxygen made in stars by 30 to 1,000 times.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows why these numbers, called constants of nature, have the values they do, or whether a deeper theory will fix them. A designer, many universes and plain luck are all serious answers, and none has been shown to be right.
- What would change the picture
- A deeper theory that forces the constants to their measured values would weaken the idea that they were tuned, and strong, independent evidence for other universes with different constants would change how we read the tuning.
- What comes next
- Physicists keep testing whether the constants change across space and time. A 2020 study used light that left a quasar, the very bright core of a far-off galaxy, when the universe was 0.8 billion years old, and found no sign of change over time. Whether a designer set the numbers is not something measuring constants can settle.
Where do right and wrong come from?
Supported, still debated
- What we know
- Research suggests our moral sense has roots in human nature and grows through upbringing and culture. Toddlers readily help others, some monkeys react to unfair treatment, and a study of 60 societies found seven cooperative rules treated as good wherever they appeared.
- What nobody knows yet
- How much of our moral sense is inborn and how much is learned is still debated, and a famous finding that babies prefer “helpers” did not hold up in a 2025 test of 567 infants. What ultimately makes right right, whether God, reason, human nature or something else, is a question science cannot settle.
- What would change the picture
- Large new studies that found a reliable moral preference in young babies would strengthen the case for an inborn moral sense, and finding societies that praised cheating or abandoning family would weaken the case for shared moral rules.
- What comes next
- Follow-up infant studies: the ManyBabies research network, which ran the 2025 test, lists spin-off studies of its helper-versus-hinderer project.
Why do we feel awe under the night sky?
Supported, still debated
- What we know
- Psychologists link awe to meeting something vast that our usual ideas cannot take in. In a large 2023–24 U.S. survey, 42% of adults with a religion and 39% of adults with no religion said they feel deep wonder about the universe at least weekly.
- What nobody knows yet
- Nobody knows for sure why humans evolved to feel awe, and many awe findings have not yet been repeated by other teams. No experiment can show whether awe is a glimpse of something beyond nature.
- What would change the picture
- Large repeat studies that failed to find awe’s reported effects, such as a smaller sense of self and more kindness, would weaken that part of the picture, but what awe finally points to is not something a measurement can decide.
- What comes next
- Repeat studies by independent teams: a 2018 review from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center said many awe findings have yet to be replicated, and it lists open questions such as how children experience awe.
Have UFOs been shown to be alien spacecraft?
Not supported
- What we know
- No UFO has been shown to be an alien spacecraft. U.S. government offices and a NASA study team have reviewed hundreds of reports, and the cases they solved turned out to be ordinary things, such as balloons, birds, drones, satellites and planes.
- What nobody knows yet
- Many cases are still unexplained, mostly because the data are too thin to tell, and a few reports describe odd motion that experts still want to study. Unexplained means the answer is missing; it does not mean the answer is aliens.
- What would change the picture
- Clear data from several good sensors at once, released for outside experts to study, could change this answer, and so could a physical object that labs outside the government test and find was not made on Earth.
- What comes next
- Further study of nine reports, received between June 2024 and May 2025, that AARO, the Pentagon’s office for UAP (the official U.S. term for things seen that could not be identified), flagged for more analysis. AARO’s archived cases stay open in case better data or analysis tools arrive, and it says its sensor projects aim at real-time detection and identification.
Was interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS an alien probe?
Not supported
- What we know
- 3I/ATLAS, found on July 1, 2025, came from another star system and behaved like a comet, with dust, tails and gases such as carbon dioxide and water. Radio searches found no artificial signals, and the paper that asked whether it was alien technology itself judged a natural object, probably a comet, by far the most likely outcome.
- What nobody knows yet
- Scientists are still working out why its gas was so rich in carbon dioxide and why nickel showed up early. Nobody knows exactly how big its solid core is, and its home star is unknown.
- What would change the picture
- A narrow radio signal traced to the object, a change of course that escaping gas cannot explain, or objects released from it, confirmed by independent teams using public data, would change this answer.
- What comes next
- Analysis of data already gathered: ESA says the rest of its Juice spacecraft’s observations arrived in February 2026 and instrument teams are analyzing them. ESA’s Comet Interceptor, with a launch period of late 2028 or early 2029, could visit an interstellar comet, though ESA calls that very unlikely.
Does quantum physics show that the mind shapes reality, or that “quantum” products heal?
Not supported
- What we know
- In quantum physics, an “observation” is a measurement by a device or the surroundings, not a human mind, and entanglement, a link between particles, cannot send messages faster than light. None of the sources the full answer checked reports a controlled trial showing a “quantum” healing effect, and in 2021 Dutch tests found that ten products, among them a “Quantum Pendant,” gave off low levels of radiation, and sellers were told to stop selling them.
- What nobody knows yet
- Physicists still debate what a measurement really is, and whether quantum effects play any special role in the brain is still being tested. One much-debated idea that links them to consciousness, Orch OR, is unconfirmed.
- What would change the picture
- A careful experiment, repeated by others, in which a person’s intention alone changed quantum results would change this answer, and so would fair trials showing healing that only quantum physics can explain.
- What comes next
- More tests of Orch OR, which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says needs further work to be backed up and should be neither too quickly celebrated nor dismissed offhand. A 2020 underground experiment already ruled out the natural “parameter-free” version (one with no adjustable settings) of the gravity-based collapse idea that Orch OR builds on.
Reviewed 2026-09-29. We update this board when new data arrive. Found something out of date? Tell us, and see the question paths for a guided way in.