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what will the next major scientific breakthrough be..?
Scientific discovery is an ongoing process.. for perhaps a thousand years or more people have sought to record the answers.. 400 years ago Harriot's telescope got turned to the sky's.. since then we have discovered many things..
microbiology, astrophysics, electricity, radio waves, the list goes on..
When self-taught Van Leeuwenhoek started explaining about his 'animalcules' he was roundly discredited but this is just one example of our understanding of the world being turned on it's head..
From [url= http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/anyone-believe-in-ufos ]this[/url] thread it appears that many posters with a deeper interest in science think that the majority of science's work is done..
That we have pretty accurately accounted for much of what we see around us..
What will be the next revelation..?
Will it be in deep space or come from the minutae..? Or will it come from somewhere completely unexpected..?
What are your thoughts science monkeys..?
Self heating pop tart ?
Hopefully Hoverbikes, I was promised one back in the 70s dammit
Ah, time to dig out my second spectrum theory.....
So, once upon a time, before Isaac Newton and Galvani took their parts upon the stage of the Renaissance, mankind's experience of the electromagnetic spectrum was limited. We could see (visible wavelengths) and we could feel the warmth of infrared from fires and sun upon us; we could detect static electric charge from fur and other fabrics, but that was all. The rest of the all-encompassing electromagnetic universe was hidden from us. In the few hundred years since then, we have detected and found how to use wavelengths from gamma-rays to radio.
Science explains nearly everything we experience. That's a "nearly". Many people have reported phenomena that are not explicable, however. Coincidental dreams, premonition, animal behaviour before earthquakes, synchronicity. I know that I have experienced my own share of events that are not explicable nor at all probable. So here's a hypothesis: there is a second, parallel spectrum of radiation which is transmitted and vaguely detectable by humans under certain circumstances. Think of feeling warmth from a distant fire as an analogy. It happens, we just cannot explain it at present, and we have not invented the instruments which could isolate and detect this vibration in the ether. That's why humans adopt a consistent posture of worship in most religions: we give ourselves the shape of radio aerial receivers as an unconscious effort to improve our ability to pick up the "divine". Conversely, transmitters of magic or healing in most cultures make pointing gestures to maximise their ability to radiate.
That's the hypothesis. How could it be proved or disproved without instruments? How could we design detectors or transmitters without the knowledge of what comprises this second spectrum?
Sometimes the explanation that you can"t find the car keys in the morning, isn't a "parallel spectrum of radiation" or poltergeist activity, its just that you didn't put them down where you normally do.
To add to this, most scientists I know (and I know plenty) think that current science's job is only starting, let alone "nearly done". We hardly understand how biology works at a molecular level, epigenetics is turning 50 years of DNA research upside down, and new materials are improving electronics and photonics at a massive rate. It's a good time for science.
Stem Cells - It would be nice if my daughter could re-grow her pancreas.
Hydrogen fuels cells - Our dependency on oil/gas and the geographical locations where it is found mean that there are bound to be lots of big brains in labs trying to crack that particular nut.
depends what you can get funded to do, innit. You got to stay in strategic areas to win grants.
Aren't hydrogen fuel cells just a way of storing energy, unlike oil/gas which a way of generating energy?
EDIT: ok, not "generating" energy - but you know what i mean
From this thread it appears that many posters with a deeper interest in science think that the majority of science's work is done..
Except absolutely no one on that thread, save you, made that statement yunki.
The work of science will [u]never[/u] be "done".
Anyways, the CERN Hadron experiments seem the most likely place for the next "breakthrough" to me.
Controlled self-sustaining fusion would be nice. Might solve a few problems in the world with any luck. Next 25 years maybe?
From this thread it appears that many posters with a deeper interest in science think that the majority of science's work is done..
That we have pretty accurately accounted for much of what we see around us.
I know you've been active on that thread Yunki, but you wouldn't think you'd read any of it from that statement.
Anyway, fusion is the obvious one. Things like quantum computing maybe?
Next major breaktrhrough? Something in the information space, to do with processing big data, the world's getting more and more connected, it affects us more and more.
Consider the technology you can have in your pocket now, compared to a desktop PC 10 years agon. And in another 10 years...?
Also smarter rather than just faster devices (hence point one) application of AI techniques is just getting started in everyday lives.....I could go on (and on...this is my field of expertise).
For close at hand, my lifetime stuff, I would say pre-biotic chemistry / origin of life is on the verge of a breakthrough. 2 years ago a group at Manchester published a paper that gives a very convincing picture of how individual ribonucleotides could be assembled under plausible pre-biotic conditions. These things take time to be accepted, but the signs are that this will be a landmark paper.
From the other direction, several groups (Joyce in the US being the most high profile) have made significant process in understanding how RNA can self-replicate and function as a catalyst.
When / if these two lines of research meet in the middle we will understand how inorganic minerals plus simple C1 and N1 building blocks can produce what might be termed a living system.
This may prove to be merely a monumental contribution to knowledge plus a Nobel prize or two, with little application. Or, it may turn synthetic biology on its head. Hard, as ever, to predict.
An other thing to note is that pre-biotic chemistry deals with very open-ended questions, so it is unlikely to ever be wrapped up neat and tidy. We can postulate what pre-biotic conditions were like from geology etc, but its always going to be a best guess at what chemicals really were available and what the atmosphere was like etc.
time to dig out my second spectrum theory.....
You're too late, Amstrad did it already.
Next major breaktrhrough? Something in the information space, to do with processing big data, the world's getting more and more connected, it affects us more and more.
What is all this "big data" mumbo jumbo?? Mathematical techniques to deal with lots of information have existing for ages in the scientific field, is this just a buzz word for the Business world which is just catching up?
From this thread it appears that many posters with a deeper interest in science think that the majority of science's work is done..
not at all, just that the fundamentals are unlikely to be overturned...
example: we know Einstein was on the right track with all his stuff on 'relativity' - GPS is evidence of that.
we may find something that can't be explained by relativity (Neutrinos travelling faster than light - that kind of thing*), but it won't suddenly mean that relativity is 'wrong' - merely too simple.
there's a difference.
(*it turns out they don't, at least not in switzerland)
as for 'next breakthrough' - i'd like to think that we'll find a way of using twinned particles to communicate with aliens...**
(**forgive me - i'm only an engineer/computer programmer - i expect to be told that this can't work for many reasons i'm too thick to understand)
not at all, just that the fundamentals are unlikely to be overturned...
To be honest it isn't even that, it's that if the fundamentals are overturned then science will have a way of explaining it/accounting for it.
From this thread it appears that many posters with a deeper interest in science think that the majority of science's work is done..
That's the sort of thing my father in law comes up with...
[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_physics ]List of Unsolved Problems in Physics[/url]
The Reynolds number of the turbulent flows it is possible to predict using DNS is increasing with the increase in compuational power available. This will provide us with an accurate description of turbulence which has many industrial applications.
What is all this "big data" mumbo jumbo?? Mathematical techniques to deal with lots of information have existing for ages in the scientific field, is this just a buzz word for the Business world which is just catching up?
Yes, and no. It's an abused term, I'll give you that. And it *is* a scientific field. (also, define "ages"? 5 years? 10 years? 30 years? longer? CERN produces 27TB per *day* that's a whole lot more data than anything produced 10 years ago).
It's not just the mathematical techniques, or the volume of data, large massively parallel systems let us apply tecnhiques that weren't possible before, to analyse data in new ways. And the sheer mass of data means you can use approaches not valid with lesser data sets.
E.g. how google translate works (very roughly!) not on a knowledge of the meaning of words and translating them, but on the statistical patterns in language over a very large corpus. E.g. do you know you can identify the language used in text by zipping it and analysing the compressed file? That gives you a very simple intuition.
Anyhow, I need to go set up an experiment, too much to type here...
Hangover cure that works would be good
It depends what you mean by breakthrough.
Definitely premature to say to say we've learnt everything. Things might be totally different from what we expect.
But I think the time for breakthroughs may have finished. Everything seems to come in lots of little steps, with lots of groups working on the problem. Not one big bang.
Also even if we discover the world is vastly different from what we know would it matter.
We already know the world is vastly different from what common sense would tell us thanks to relativity + quantum theory.
However say Mechanical Engineers still base there world around a Newtonian model. (although obviously some of the models built contain quantum theory).
I think most people can only really grasp the world at a newtonian level as thats what we have evolved to do. I dont think many people can really see beyond that except in drips and drabs.
So even if there are big advances will we notice anymore ? We're so used to thing changing constantly that big advances might slowly creep up on us with out really noticing.
With the information example if 15 years ago you'd shown be how ubiquitous the internet is I be really impressed, (although probably would have expected it) but its just slowly built itself into our lives without people really spotting it.
The one we really need, and the one which is becoming achieveable, is nuclear fusion. Solve that, and so many big problems go away.
Also proteomics - the genetic code was just the alphabet, we still don't know much about what the words actually say.
The one we really need, and the one which is becoming achieveable, is nuclear fusion. Solve that, and so many big problems go away.
Apparently the human race spends more each year on chewing gum than nuclear fusion. Either people don't consider it very viable or the world is rather under-funding our saviour.
On-the-fly tyre pressures...
Moses +1
Controlled self-sustaining fusion/ fission +1
Renwables and transport. the move away from oil and gas will be a major step.
A pessimisstic view, but it's most likely to be a new weapon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/13/cut-military-research-spending
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex
thread it appears that many posters with a deeper interest in science think that the majority of science's work is done..
That we have pretty accurately accounted for much of what we see around us..
We did not do anything of the sort we said we know some stuff.
Definitely premature to say to say we've learnt everything.
I doubt anyone has actually ever said that[scientist or not] and I doubt we will ever achieve a point where their is nothing left to know.
I will go for a Universal theory of everything as I am ever the reductionist optimist*
Fussion /fission
Failing that hover bikes or some sort of gyroscopic anti crash device
😥
It will be a weapon wont it
* none of that sentence may be true
Arthur C Clarke wrote a nice little story called 'The Lion Of Commare'
where the main idea was that society had slumped into ennui because everything that could be discovered had been, in science and engineering. Well worth reading.
Isn't it the case that science throws up more questions than answers?
Which is an exciting idea to me as it may mean that we haven't a clue about the real nature of the universe.
Isn't it the case that science throws up more questions than answers?
I've quoted this elswhere this week. Albert Einstien said (I think it was him):
"as the pool of light gets bigger so the circumference of darkness around it increases"
Moses - Member
To add to this, most scientists I know (and I know plenty) think that current science's job is only starting, let alone "nearly done". We hardly understand how biology works at a molecular level, epigenetics is turning 50 years of DNA research upside down, and new materials are improving electronics and photonics at a massive rate. It's a good time for science.
i agree with moses , however epigenetics isnt turning genetics upside down, its complementing perfectly what we already know about dna and filling in some of the gaps in our knowledge
synthetic biology certainly has a lot of buzz at the moment
personalised medicine eg cancer therapy, is going to be big for screening purposes of new drugs and determining efficacy of existing drugs; its your genetics that determines if a medicine will work for you
all of this is really riding on processing power of computers,
the human body is an insanely complex system, 30,000 standard proteins, thousands more variants of each all interacting in different ways
some huge improvements in life expectancy for certain diseases, types of cancers HIV etc have been seen in the last few years
i think the biggest worry is that the big cuts to scientific research funding, the nhs and universities is going to see a big slow down in advances in the coming years
Unequivocal evidence of the non-existence of God as an early Xmas present for Cougar.
Moses - Member
Ah, time to dig out my second spectrum theory.....So, once upon a time, before Isaac Newton and Galvani took their parts upon the stage of the Renaissance, mankind's experience of the electromagnetic spectrum was limited. We could see (visible wavelengths) and we could feel the warmth of infrared from fires and sun upon us; we could detect static electric charge from fur and other fabrics, but that was all. The rest of the all-encompassing electromagnetic universe was hidden from us. In the few hundred years since then, we have detected and found how to use wavelengths from gamma-rays to radio.
Science explains nearly everything we experience. That's a "nearly". Many people have reported phenomena that are not explicable, however. Coincidental dreams, premonition, animal behaviour before earthquakes, synchronicity. I know that I have experienced my own share of events that are not explicable nor at all probable. So here's a hypothesis: there is a second, parallel spectrum of radiation which is transmitted and vaguely detectable by humans under certain circumstances. Think of feeling warmth from a distant fire as an analogy. It happens, we just cannot explain it at present, and we have not invented the instruments which could isolate and detect this vibration in the ether. That's why humans adopt a consistent posture of worship in most religions: we give ourselves the shape of radio aerial receivers as an unconscious effort to improve our ability to pick up the "divine". Conversely, transmitters of magic or healing in most cultures make pointing gestures to maximise their ability to radiate.
That's the hypothesis. How could it be proved or disproved without instruments? How could we design detectors or transmitters without the knowledge of what comprises this second spectrum?
You don't have any connection with a physics teacher in Bolton do you?
He used to offer a similar theory as a potential to explain the paranormal.
What amazes me about 'big data' (CERN, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon).... is how the hell do they build servers quick enough to keep up with demand??
Do they literally just have a constant incoming stream of servers, each configured with the largest disk space possible, getting installed 24/7 around the globe??