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Asked by anon-209877 to Verity, Sergio, Nick, Maria, David, Annette on 12 Mar 2019.
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Sergio Adan Bermudez answered on 12 Mar 2019:
If you are asking about science in general, I would say that there are two big problems that would be a major issue in the very near future. The need for renewable energy and global warming. They are both linked together as the incapability of finding a solid and effective renewable energy is causing to produce more residues and pollution, which leads to increasing global warming.
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Nick Werren answered on 12 Mar 2019: last edited 12 Mar 2019 6:08 pm
The big problem is climate change, and the only way to solve climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels. And the only way to stop fossil fuels is to find different sources of renewable energy. And the problem with renewable energy is it doesn’t work all the time, here’s some examples:
.Solar panels only work when it’s sunny, wind farms only generate electricity when it’s windy, etc.
.This means that the REAL issue facing the world is this: How do we store the energy generated by renewable energies for a long time. Lots of companies are working on special new batteries that can store energy efficiently. If we can find a cheap and easy way of storing electricity then we have the key to creating loads of renewable energy sources. After that we can really fight climate change – but we need the support of everyone on the planet!!!
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David Whitworth answered on 12 Mar 2019:
In science in general our biggest issue is global warming and climate change. This issue is now more of a political one though over science as we have the technology to produce clean and safe power, such as wind, solar and wave power, but getting governments and big business to take the lead and say that we need to do this is harder.
We need to reduce the ammount of fossil fuels we are burning and the amount of carbon being put into the atmosphere by cars, planes, boats, factories etc. -
Annette Raffan answered on 13 Mar 2019:
One of the biggest problem is probably being able to feed all the 7.5+ billion people on the planet and the increasing number that there will be in the coming years. We just do not have enough resources on the planet using current methods, climate change or no climate change. Climate change just makes it worse. If we are to feed everyone, then we need to change what we eat, how we eat it and how we grow it. This goes for clean water too. We do not look after our soils – think of them like fossil fuels (but good obviously) in that there is only a limited supply of soil and that it takes 10s of thousands of years to form. Without healthy soil we do not have a healthy planet. It cleans our water, grows our food and everything that we use on the planet comes from it somehow. But the major problem is that we don’t yet understand everything about it! It is the largest store of carbon in the world – important for climate change – yes! It contains more life in a teaspoon than all humans on earth! But we can’t see it easily and it’s very difficult to study because of such differences in scales. Things which happen at the nanometer scale – eg how carbon is eaten by microbes can have huge influences at the field or global scale!
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Maria Walach answered on 13 Mar 2019:
In my field of research in particular, there are a lot of questions about extreme space weather events, that we don’t know the answer to yet, so I am very interested in those. For example, how likely is it that we will see an extreme space weather event within our lifetime? What effects will it have on our atmosphere? Will it strip away some of our atmosphere or is our magnetic field strong enough to protect us?
I think there are a lot of big questions in science in general though, mostly they have already been answered by the other scientists. I think working out more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to source and store renewable energy is a big one!
A lot of the big questions that we are facing though are to do with society as a whole.
For example, we know climate change is real and human made and we know what to do about it, but a lot of people just aren’t willing to and have to be convinced first.
One of the big questions that we haven’t got the answer to for example is trying to come up with new drugs to fight off antibiotic-resistant bugs. This is one of the things that I think will eventually catch up with us if we are not too careful.
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