science in 5,10,20,100 years..

[Xenon101]

What will science tell me in the next 5..10...25...100 years...

Can we predict where science is going if we carry on at the same rate we have for the last 100 years...?

[jake-the-peg]

Do you mean science or do you actually mean technology?

In terms of science, Cern is due to switch on the "Large Hadron Collider" ring next year which hopefully in your 5-10 year frame should find ( or deny) something called the Higgs boson. This is crucial to understanding why somethings have mass and how much.

Following on from this is the ambition to find a Grand Unified Theory or GUT. There are 4 fundamental forces, Gravity, Electricity and the strong and weak nuclear forces. It's already been shown that the Electric and weak forces are two aspects of the same thing. It's believed the others are related in a similar way. It would be nice to think that we'd have a GUT in 50 to 100 years.

There are one or two big problems in Astronomy too, the first is the missing mass problem. This has been arouind for years - Basically what we see of the universe only seems to be a small fraction of what we can tell is there from gravity, the "dark matter" that comprises the majority is a mystery. Dark Energy is another puzzle - the Universe is expanding faster than it should and we don't know why - there may be a 5th force we haven't yet discovered.

Anyway if you fancy a Nobel prize in physics solve any of the above.

There's no nobel prize for mathematics but if you can solve any of these 7 problems you can win a million dollars

http://www.claymath.org/millennium/

[Peter Pedant]

No

If you look at science in 1895, the bigs like Lord Kelvin were saying everything that that was to be discovered, had been.

The progress of science is a bit like the Stock market

[TTG]

Predictions:

5 years - No shops, banks or places where you buy things....just the internet

10 years - 1 million terrabyte broadband connections as standard

25 years - Time travel

50 years - All the planets have colonys on them.

100 years - Humans live indefinately.

150 years - Only 2 companies exist...Google and Microsoft

200 years - The internet absorbs humans and becomes one giant being surfing itself.

500 years - The internet consumed by the Google search engine.

1000 years - Google consumes all matter.

2000 years - The Universe 'blue screens' but there is noone around to reboot..only option is to power-off....

THE END