Scientists still do not fundamentally understand exactly why we need to sleep, despite it being a biological imperative that consumes roughly a third of our entire lives.

A closer look

Scientists still do not fundamentally understand exactly why we need to sleep, despite it being a biological imperative that consumes roughly a third of our entire lives. We know what happens if we do not sleep, which includes cognitive decline, hallucinations, and eventual death, but the actual root evolutionary purpose of rendering ourselves completely unconscious and vulnerable to predators for eight hours a day remains fiercely debated. Theories range from memory consolidation to flushing toxic waste products out of the brain, but none of them fully explain the immense evolutionary risk of taking a massive daily nap. It is delightfully absurd that in an era of quantum computing and space travel, the greatest minds in biology still basically shrug when asked why you feel the overwhelming urge to lie completely still in a dark room every single night