As far as Science magazine is concerned, the 125 questions they listed are the biggest puzzles yet to solved by science. Some of them are directly related to my theories, and I believe they all have a common factor - something big from outer space that hits Earth every 5000 years or so...

Where do ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays come from? Above a certain energy, cosmic rays don't travel very far before being destroyed. So why are cosmic-ray hunters spotting such rays with no obvious source within our galaxy?

What powers quasars? The mightiest energy fountains in the universe probably get their power from matter plunging into whirling supermassive black holes. But the details of what drives their jets remain anybody's guess

What drives the solar magnetic cycle? Scientists believe differing rates of rotation from place to place on the sun underlie its 22-year sunspot cycle. They just can't make it work in their simulations. Either a detail is askew, or it's back to the drawing board.

What causes ice ages? Something about the way the planet tilts, wobbles, and careens around the sun presumably brings on ice ages every 100,000 years or so, but reams of climate records haven't explained exactly how.

What causes reversals in Earth's magnetic field? Computer models and laboratory experiments are generating new data on how Earth's magnetic poles might flip-flop. The trick will be matching simulations to enough aspects of the magnetic field beyond the inaccessible core to build a convincing case.

How can genome changes other than mutations be inherited? Researchers are finding ever more examples of this process, called epigenetics, but they can't explain what causes and preserves the changes.

What caused mass extinctions? A huge impact did in the dinosaurs, but the search for other catastrophic triggers of extinction has had no luck so far. If more subtle or stealthy culprits are to blame, they will take considerably longer to find.

How many kinds of humans coexisted in the recent past, and how did they relate? The new dwarf human species fossil from Indonesia suggests that at least four kinds of humans thrived in the past 100,000 years. Better dates and additional material will help confirm or revise this picture.

Source: ScienceMag.org