Big Mysteries: Survey Reveals Physicists' Disagreements express

Original: "Big Mysteries Survey: Physicists' Views on Cosmology, Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Gravity"
arXiv:2605.11058v1 · 2026-05-11 · CC BY 4.0 · 1 min
A large-scale survey found that many 'generally accepted' ideas in physics are held by just over half of scientists.

Physics often resembles the construction of a giant ship — the Universe. The physicist-engineers have yet to agree on the basic blueprints. The large-scale 'Big Mysteries' survey exposed this: even the nature of black holes (about which Stephen Hawking argued for decades) and the Big Bang remains controversial. Dark matter and dark energy — the invisible scaffolding of the cosmos — are accepted by many, but Vera Rubin, who discovered anomalous galaxy rotation, sparked a discussion that hasn't subsided in half a century. Even spacetime curvature — a kind of structural beam of the edifice — still provokes heated debate.

The survey's biggest surprise: less than half of scientists consider quantum mechanics a complete theory. And yet every transistor in your smartphone is an indisputable miracle of it. So it goes: the ship sails, but the builders doubt the properties of water. Science is not a museum of answers but a living argument, where precisely disagreement promises breakthroughs.

According to the survey, less than half of physicists are confident that quantum mechanics is a complete theory, even though all modern electronics is based on it.

Scientists
Alan GuthAlexander FriedmannAndrei LindeGeorges LemaîtreJames PeeblesStephen Hawking
Concepts
quantum cosmology Cosmic Censorship Principle cosmology quantum foundations fundamental physics new physics survey sky survey gravity theories geophysics general relativity gravitational superposition experiments gravitational effects on small bodies cosmological constant problem astrophysics black hole information paradox cosmological homogeneity universe large-scale structure of the universe naked singularity