Unanswered Questions

I'm not sure why at certain times I find myself contemplating strange questions. I often stumble upon the unanswerable. Even the Intra-Web falls short in satisfying my curiosity. Damn that Al Gore!

So here are a couple of examples of my questions followed by today's mind bender. I ask for the opinions and thoughts of all my fellow ATSers with this thread.

These are just a random sampling to begin with:

1. How many children are born at sea each year?

2. What was the origin of human language?

3. When did Americans lose their european accents?
(I actually did a thread about this one a while back)
Here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

4. Why do we want to live and what are we striving for?

OK now for today's question to which I found some very surprising information.

*** How many living creatures are there on Earth?

I'm thinking only of Humans and animals not plants, grass and trees.

Well I quickly found out this question will not likely be answered in my or anyone living today's lifetime.

It seems we have only discovered and documented 10% of living creatures to date!!! What? Am I the only one feeling very disinformed concerning this subject?

Take a look at this: www.livescience.com...

This is just a discussion on "known" species. This would be an obvious first step towards answering the original question.

I'm starting to think Noah's Ark had to be much bigger than described.

This quote from the article posted above caught my attention.

“We’ve done a pretty good job of categorizing from the size of a fly up,” but anything below that is far less known, said Joel Cracraft of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

So from the size of a fly and larger we have a prety good idea of the number of species. Seems logical to me.

There is a massive undertaking concerning this very question. It's called The Tree of Life Project. Quite an effort I must say.

tolweb.org...

I guess I'll wrap this up with a Darwin quote. I'll ask my friends here to lend some input to this thread and please post any of YOUR unanswerable questions.

Thanks for the read,

Becker

"Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

From Darwin quotes here: www.darwin-literature.com...