I'm not a mod, so stating a personal and subjective opinion:
Let's suppose for argument's sake that unanswered questions get shown by default:
If someone answers a question, and it would get enough upvotes or an acceptance it would disappear from that screen, right? Even when answered by rep 1 users, or users with highly upvoted questions, but no answers or drunk users, or beginning users that think the question is answered bit Eg. the solution doesn't survive a reboot, ... and then it'd never show up again...
However, with the "hot" questions you get best of many worlds: the questions that are freshly posted and the ones that get freshly edited and the ones freshly answered so you can dig in and give an even better answer then the existing one.
However, if you want, you can make the "new" questions your personal home page on AU and then you have exactly what you like, but I like the default best...
#;-)