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: partially addressed — narrowed 2026-08-06. Papers 1, 2, and 4 derive galactic rotation curves that flatten without invoking unseen matter, using scale-dependent effective gravity ($G_{eff}(l)$) instead. Two things have to be said alongside that. First, a second and different proposal — that the medium’s own mass density simply is dark matter — has been retracted: bounding the medium’s opacity from Lunar Laser Ranging, and its heat exchange from Earth’s measured surface heat flow, caps its density well below what dark matter requires — by at least ~5×, and by ~60× on the most direct reading of PBT’s own conventions (the multiplier depends linearly on an $O(1)$ geometric factor; the direction does not). See Dark Matter Isn’t Missing, which now carries that retraction in full. Second, the $G_{eff}(l)$ route above is untouched by that result but has its own documented problems — the fit against real SPARC rotation curves gives $\chi^2/\text{dof}\approx82.5$ against MOND/NFW’s 1–5, and Paper 1’s flagship 220 km/s figure is not reproduced by the paper’s own stated parameters (see the Reference Guide’s second corrigendum). “Addressed” here means a mechanism is proposed, not that it fits the data.

2. Dark energy — why is the universe’s expansion accelerating? PBT status: mechanism proposed, fine-tuning unresolved — narrowed 2026-08-06. 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. What has to be said with it: bounding the medium’s momentum flux from the measured value of $G$ and from Lunar Laser Ranging puts its energy density around $10^{47}$ times the cosmological critical density. For the residual to come out at the observed dark-energy value, it must therefore be about 1 part in $10^{47}$ of the total. That is the cosmological constant problem, restated in this theory’s own vocabulary — inherited rather than solved. In fairness both ways: standard quantum field theory’s version of the same problem runs to $\sim10^{120}$, so PBT is not uniquely embarrassed here. But a mechanism carrying an unquantified 47-order fine-tuning is not the same thing as an answer, and this page should not have implied otherwise.

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.

11. Gravitational waves — what are they, mechanically? (added 2026-08-06) PBT status: not addressed. Across all nineteen papers, gravitational waves appear only as constraints — GW170814 for polarization, GW170817 for propagation speed — and nowhere as something PBT explains. The gap is structural rather than incidental: Paper 18’s W8 states the wave sector does not produce gravity, while the shadowing sector (A1–A8) is a flux of particles, not a wave. A directly measured phenomenon therefore has no home in either component. Recording it here because this page is supposed to be the honest ledger, and it had been missing from it.

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 tally

(Tally revised 2026-08-06: eleven questions now, and the dark-matter entry has been narrowed — see item 1.) Of eleven major open questions, PBT makes a real, checkable proposal on two (dark matter — mechanism only, and only via the $G_{eff}(l)$ route; and 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 five at all (including gravitational waves, item 11). 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.