Gaps in Science

May 2026

Physics has gaps. They exist now and need to be filled. That’s not a criticism of science — it’s what science is: mapping the unknown, proposing mechanisms, testing them, and being ready to be wrong. Below are ten of the field’s biggest open questions. Pressure-Based Theory takes a real stab at some of them. It doesn’t touch others at all, and says so plainly here rather than stretching to cover ground it hasn’t earned.

The ten gaps

1. Dark matter — what’s holding galaxies together, given the visible mass isn’t enough? PBT status: addressed. Papers 1, 2, and 4 derive galactic rotation curves that flatten without invoking unseen matter, using scale-dependent effective gravity ($G_{eff}(l)$) instead.

2. Dark energy — why is the universe’s expansion accelerating? PBT status: addressed. Paper 9 attributes it to residual pressure density in the medium at the largest scales ($\varepsilon(l\to\infty)$), feeding directly into the Friedmann equation.

3. Quantum gravity — how do general relativity and quantum mechanics fit together? PBT status: partially addressed. Papers 1, 8, and 9 offer a mechanical unification narrative — forces and quantum effects both emerging from the same underlying particle flux — but this is a conceptual framework, not a formal reconciliation of the two mathematical structures the way a graviton theory or loop quantum gravity attempts.

4. Black hole information paradox — does information falling into a black hole get destroyed? PBT status: touches this. The published paper’s Singularity Avoidance Hypothesis proposes collapse stabilizes into a dense, finite core rather than a true singularity or horizon — which would imply information isn’t lost — but this is asserted, not derived in detail.

5. Matter-antimatter asymmetry — why does the universe contain far more matter than antimatter? PBT status: not addressed. None of the papers touch baryogenesis or CP violation.

6. Consciousness — how does subjective experience arise from physical processes? PBT status: not addressed. This is physics, not neuroscience — PBT makes no claims here.

7. Origin of the universe — what, if anything, came before the Big Bang? PBT status: touches this. Paper 9’s infinite-scale cosmology treats the universe as eternal across infinite hierarchies rather than beginning from a singular point, sidestepping the question rather than answering what preceded it.

8. Neutrino masses — why do neutrinos have mass at all, and how much? PBT status: barely touched. Paper 11 cites a seesaw-like estimate ($m_\nu \approx 10^{-3}$ eV) that aligns with existing measurements, but doesn’t derive the mass mechanism independently.

9. How did life begin? — the jump from chemistry to the first living cells. PBT status: not addressed. Outside the scope of the theory entirely.

10. Are we alone? — the Fermi paradox, and the search for other intelligent life. PBT status: not addressed. No astrobiological claims are made anywhere in this work.

The honest tally

Of ten major open questions, PBT makes a real, checkable proposal on two (dark matter, dark energy), offers a partial or conceptual take on three more (quantum gravity, black hole information, the universe’s origin), touches one lightly (neutrino mass), and doesn’t address the remaining four at all. That’s not a weakness to hide — it’s the actual shape of one person’s attempt at a few pieces of a much larger puzzle. See the papers for the mechanics, or the published paper for the formally citable version with testable predictions.

These gaps are where progress lives. Closing the universe entirely isn’t the goal — narrowing the unknown, one testable idea at a time, is.