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Summary
Scientists sometimes possess impressive powers of divination. Time and again, with only their minds and meager evidence to guide them, researchers have predicted natural phenomena long before they turned up in experiments.
James Clerk Maxwell foresaw radio waves a couple of decades before their discovery. Numerous elements of the periodic table and a whole zoo of subatomic particles were intuited before they materialized. And in a lecture not long after the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, Francis Crick outlined how proteins might be synthesized from genes. He got it basically right; he was a sage for modern biology.
Likewise, scientists — along with science fiction authors — have been surprisingly spot-on in imagining how science and technology advances would affect society. We’ve got bionic bodies, long-distance space voyages, cyber warfare and test-tube babies, along with related ethical quandaries that were discussed and debated before they ever became real.
Yet, there’s also a lot that scientists failed to foresee. The shocking discovery in 1998 that the expansion of the universe was speeding up came at a time when most everyone expected the expansion to be slowing down. For a long time, experts believed there was no practical way to release the enormous amounts of energy packed into atoms; those scientists were proved wrong. Many too have failed to foresee the environmental damage of a whole range of new chemicals and materials from chlorofluorocarbons to DDT to plastics.
Science is thus marked by brilliant predictions and moments of blindness. This collection explores the power and limits of human imagination through stories of what scientists, and other forecasters of the future, saw coming — and what they missed.
Spotlights
A century ago, Alexander Friedmann envisioned the universe’s expansion
Alexander Friedmann saw that Einstein’s equations predicted multiple cosmic scenarios, including a Big Bang.
Here are the Top 10 times scientific imagination failed
Some scientists of the past couldn’t imagine that atoms or gravity waves could one day be studied – or nuclear energy harnessed.
Wally Broecker divined how the climate could suddenly shift
Wally Broecker’s insight into the shutdown of the great ocean conveyor belt spurred the study of abrupt climate change.
How a scientist-artist transformed our view of the brain
The book ‘The Brain in Search of Itself’ chronicles the life of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who discovered that the brain is made up of discrete cells.
Nudge theory’s popularity may block insights into improving society
Small interventions that influence people’s behavior can be tested. But the real world requires big, hard-to-measure changes too, scientists say.
How climate change may shape the world in the centuries to come
Climate projections need to be pushed long past the established benchmark of 2100, researchers argue.
The Top 10 scientific surprises of Science News’ first 100 years
In the 100 years since Science News started reporting on it, science has offered up plenty of unexpected discoveries.
What 20th century science fiction got right and wrong about the future of babies
A century of science has pushed the boundaries of human reproduction even beyond writers’ imaginations.
Hope for life on Venus survives for centuries against all odds
Early scientists often assumed that Venus, though hotter than Earth, hosted life.
How understanding nature made the atomic bomb inevitable
On the anniversary of Hiroshima, here’s a look back at the chain reaction of basic discoveries that led to nuclear weapons.
A century ago, astronomy’s Great Debate foreshadowed today’s view of the universe
The argument between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis 100 years ago was ultimately settled by Edwin Hubble.
Can time travel survive a theory of everything?
It’s not yet clear whether a theory that unites general relativity and quantum mechanics would permit time travel.
Many fictional moon voyages preceded the Apollo landing
Landing on the moon for real dramatically demonstrated the confluence of science with the moon’s cultural mystique.
Black hole image validates imagining the unimaginable
Human creativity conjured up the most extreme of astronomical phenomena long before they could be seen.
Gravity waves exemplify the power of intelligent equations
Discovering gravity waves confirms Einstein and illustrates the power of the human mind to discern physical phenomena hidden in mathematical equations.
Robert Redford film foretold Shor’s quantum computing bombshell
Twenty years ago, Peter Shor showed how quantum computers could break secret codes, turning the movie Sneakers from fiction to fact.
Quarks celebrate their 50th anniversary
In a 1997 interview with Context blogger Tom Siegfried, Murray Gell-Mann discussed the origin of the idea for the subatomic particles that he named quarks.
A Mind from Math
Alan Turing, often considered the father of computer science, was born a century ago, in June of 1912. He foresaw machines’ potential to mimic brains.
Human imagination Milestones
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Our climate change crisisBritish mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson (shown at center) proposes forecasting the weather by piecing together the calculations of tens of thousands of meteorologists working on small parts of the atmosphere.
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Quantum realityIn the journal Naturwissenschaften, physicist Erwin Schrödinger coins the term Verschränkung, meaning “entanglement,” and develops his famous thought experiment of a cat that exists in a state of simultaneously being alive and dead.
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The future of computingAlan Turing (shown) sketches out the theoretical blueprint for a machine able to implement instructions for making any calculation — the principle behind modern computing devices.
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Cracking the atomIn July, the United States tests the atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. In August, the U.S. drops two bombs on Japan, killing more than 100,000 people and hastening the end of World War II.
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Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (shown) become the first people to walk on the moon.
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The mystery of reproductionLouise Brown is the first baby born using in vitro fertilization.
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Dolly the Sheep (shown) is the first mammal cloned from the DNA of an adult mammal. Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell of the Roslin Institute transferred the nucleus of an adult mammary gland cell into an egg cell, showing that adult DNA can be reprogrammed to grow a new organism.
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Our brains, our futuresA paralyzed woman controls a robotic arm with her mind, enabling her to drink coffee from a bottle.
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Cracking the atomPhysicists at CERN near Geneva report discovery of the final particle predicted by the standard model, the Higgs boson. Its existence confirms scientists’ beliefs about how fundamental particles obtain mass.