What big question would you like to see answered by scientists?

big question? You can do it here!

Send the big question you’ve been trolling your whole life – or just a few minutes, that’s allowed too – to the email address [email protected]. Science editors for De Volkskrant It picks the six questions from all the entries we’ll be working on this summer.

Only four simple criteria apply to your entry:

1) big. This is a big question of two capital letters. For example, your question is significant in terms of scientific or philosophical impact, in terms of the size of the topic, or in terms of the emotions emitted.

2) (Almost) unanswerable. Your question explicitly approaches the limits of our scientific knowledge. Figuring out the answer quickly leads to practical problems. So your question has not been definitively answered in the scientific literature (as far as you know).

3) specific. You ask a specific question in your entry, in a sentence with a question mark at the end.

4) incentivize. You give a (brief) impulse with the question. Why are you so curious about the answer?

Submit your question no later than Sunday, May 21st.

Then the science editors present the six silliest, interesting, and intriguing questions to experts and experts. We present the findings in a series of articles that will appear on the site this summer and in the Books & Science section this weekend.

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