Science, as with life in general, poses questions all the time. One mountain climbed often leads to another and another — and so, with breakthroughs in science.

As important as they may be, they often trigger more questions. That’s the story of science from its very beginnings with early modern humans and their predecessors.

And so, it was when Albert Einstein developed his theory, which linked space-time with mass, a theory he called general relativity.

His goal was to show how mass changed the curvature of space-time — a tough task that took several years and help from experts in the mathematics of curves. But in the end, he succeeded brilliantly.

However, what he didn’t anticipate were several important implications of his equations.

For example, if a mass was large enough, it might bend space-time into a gravitational sinkhole, a singularity — an implication pointed out to him by a German mathematician and physicist, who at that time was a serving artillery officer on the Eastern Front in the First World War.

Such possibilities were later called black holes.

Reviewed by other theoretical physicists, his equations also suggested that the universe might be expanding and if so, might have begun with something very much smaller, a theoretical insight supported by Hubble’s observations that galaxies were speeding away from one another, presumably carried by an expanding universe and led to the suggestion that the universe might have begun with what later was famously called the Big Bang.

Soon, a provisional cosmological model for the evolution of the universe followed, but solid scientific evidence was missing until, by chance in the 1960s, two electrical engineers discovered weak radiation in the radiofrequency bandwidth whose source they could not identify on earth, but which later was shown to emanate from all quarters of the universe.

Theorists suggested the radiation was what was left of the primordial Big Bang burst of intense energy and heat, which was stretched into the microwave range by the expansion of the universe and accompanied by a drop in temperature to just a few degrees above zero degrees Kelvin.

Further observations of what was now called the cosmic background radiation and the accompanying variations in temperatures throughout the visible universe were consistent with minor differences in the distribution of matter dating back to the earliest universe, just enough for gravity to act on and create the first stars and galaxies. The accumulating evidence led to several Nobel Prizes.

However, that model may need to change.

Recent observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that the formation of stars and galaxies began much earlier than suggested by the standard model. There’s even the wild suggestion that “too early” mature galaxies might be from another galaxy.

I choose the current standard model of the universe because it illustrates that all models are provisional and, even if based on the best data available, might have to change in the light of new evidence.

That’s precisely what’s happening these days as new evidence comes to light about the earliest period in the universe based on the James Webb telescope. And whenever periods of uncertainty emerge, they naturally invite challenges not only in cosmology, in this case, but other fields as well.

Which leads me, in my 86th year, to ask a few questions.

So, here goes — and by the way, I don’t expect many answers in my lifetime.

On the matter of the universe:

How big is the universe beyond what we can see with the best telescopes? What preceded and perhaps triggered the Big Bang? How was primordial energy transformed into specific particles and fields?

If there are other universes, would they have the same combinations of particles and forces as our universe?

Beyond dark matter’s impact as a gravitational shaper of matter in the universe, precisely what form of matter is dark matter?

And if dark matter isn’t enough controversy, what’s dark energy, which is very controversial these days and depending on who and what you read, seems to vary in time from the beginning of the universe to the present?

On the matter of life:

Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? Is it carbon based as life is on this planet?

Is there intelligent life equivalent to or even exceeding human intelligence in the universe?
What will become of our species and millions of other species in the next 100, 1000, 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 years and so on?

Will gene editing be used to create super-intelligent humans? How long can meaningful human life be extended with the aid of advances in biology and health care?

On the matter of AI and quantum computers:

What’s going to be AI’s impact on the future of nations and individuals? How will quantum computers transform the world?

Readers will have plenty of other questions, some of them science-oriented but might be of a more mystical or theological nature for some.

However, as these and other stories turn out in the coming decades and centuries, it’s clear to me that change is in the wind and likely to speed up unless some natural or human-generated catastrophe sets the clock back in the future.

Who in 1900 would have anticipated the enormous changes in nation-creating and breaking, and all the changes in science that have so changed human lives sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse and sometimes catastrophically, as some current world leaders threaten these days.

Dr. William Brown is a professor of neurology at McMaster University and co-founder of the InfoHealth series at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library.