Science in 10, 20 and 50 years?

[mike alexander]

The only area I have even limited ability is medicine.

10 yrs:
Progress toward specific apoptosis-inducing agents for neoplasms
Progress in cancer vaccines

20 yrs:
Safe and effective agents to reduce/prevent arterial plaque formation
Control of autoimmune diseases (Type I diabetes, arthritis...)


50 yrs:
Demonstration of maximal lifespan for individual humans
Preventive medicine and fundamental societal changes to a healthy lifestyle (OK, this is a fantasy, but the wealth freed up by this could easily allow us to settle the Solar System)

[Vallkynn]

Physics
+10: We'll just start collating data from the LHC and will have a glimmer of ideas on fusion design from that research.
+20: We'll think of a way to directly detect neutrinos for use in communications. We'll have achieved limited positive EROEI with Fusion power.

I don't think so, in the last 50 years we researched fusion and only a bomb came out of that, and we are still far from the target. LHC is a not the Holy Grail, it's just another particle accelerator. In a few years we'll find out that we need a powerful one.

Biology
+10: We'll be working on genetically modified plants that we can efficiently turn into biofuel.

Artificial photosynthesis is the path.

Astronomy and Space Exploration
+10: We'll still be working on sending people back to the Moon and to Mars.
+20: We'll have sent people to the moon and be starting the first Moon base.

The correct should be this:

+10: We'll still be working on sending people back to the Moon and to Mars.
+20: We'll still be working on sending people back to the Moon and to Mars.
+50: We'll still be working on sending people back to the Moon and to Mars.
+100: Plans to return to the moon have been canceled as teletransportation has been created

[Ara Pacis]

artificial photosynthesis is a path.

fyp

[blueshift]

Misdirecting asteroids will become so accurate that science will conduct experiments by slamming Ceres into Mars and then measuring the effects.

The following will become a macro- reality for solar power in 130 years:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1016141450.htm

This will be mass produced in a decade:

http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2008/ES080905.html

100 years and breakthroughs forecast the end of blindness and many cancers.

200 years- artificial replacements in humans exceeds 50% of body and brain functions.

-700+ years- as Cub fans are watching their 800 year wait possibly come to an end with just one more out, an asteroid slams right into the planet caused by a misdirected experiment.

[ravens_cry]

I have always thought that predictions even the most 'scientific' ones, tell more about the predictor then they are going to tell about the future.

[Ara Pacis]

I have always thought that predictions even the most 'scientific' ones, tell more about the predictor then they are going to tell about the future.

So, tell us about yourself and your "predictions" for the future.

[ravens_cry]

So, tell us about yourself and your "predictions" for the future.

Well, I think space will remain expensive, though less then it was before, unless some revolutionary increase in individual productivity occurs. I think that ads will become even more invasive, and I think that increases in medical science will mean we will become more more risk taking. . Robots will become more complex, as will video games, but I don't think VR is going to suddenly take off. I see 'mind reading' peripherals allowing completely paralyzed people to reenter the world, and much better prosthetics for amputees. I see 'green' technologies really moving forward, and big companies making a bundle off of it. I see babies who were once beyond hope, been given a chance to live. I see a cure for AIDS, and more and more effective treatments for cancer. Trauma care will continue to advance.
That's what I see. Not a utopia or a dystopia, just a world.

[tdvance]

Ads will become more invasive--I agree there. Defenses from ads will improve too--an arms race similar to the spam/anti-spam virus/anti-virus race today. It will be a lot more than 50 years before we Futurama-esque ads beamed into your mind while you sleep (sponsoring your dreams), but the Minority Report situation where John Anderton, trying to hide from the police, found his name being called by billboards all around the Metro station--that could easily be here in 20 years.

[HypothesisTesting]

. No new physics breakthrough with real impact was even found, not even in a research state. We're kind of stuck to fundamental concepts discovered in last 100 years.

Agreed. I was in grad school in the 1970s, when professors involved in particle physics were talking about the impending discovery of the W, Z, and gluon bosons, which are standard theory now. But since then, the only main advance has been on the string theory level, and that hasn't been experimentally verified. I'm not sure if even in 100 years that'll be verified, if ever. I still will be looking carefully at LHC results for advancements, that is a hope.

As for dark matter and dark energy, that is a tough one to find their natures also.

[Delvo]

Not in 10 years, but within 20 and increasing even beyond 50, mass deaths on scales we've never seen yet will cause overall human population decline and environmental strain at catastrophic rates, particularly in the poorer countries where human populations are the densest but rising the fastest and regulation is the weakest. That's not exactly a scientific development in itself, but will shift the public's attention, and thus the scientific community's attention, to trying to solve the problems (by which I mean not only finding ways for the remaining people to live sustainably and happily, but also restoring and rehabilitating destroyed environments). More and more of the effort of science in general will be directed into the environmental sciences, which will mean a larger and larger number of people professionally trained and employed in those sciences and more new kinds of specialties under that umbrella getting created, like the way the medical profession has grown in the last century or two to fill multiple separate hospitals and clinics per city with various scientific specialists such as doctors, nurses, radiologists, medical chemists, sonographers, therapists, microbiologists, and such... plus the schools to train them and new laws and certification procedures and such to regulate them.

[Ilya]

I wonder how often in the above situation, people in the same room will talk to each other on the "gogglephone"--analogous to sending e-mail to the guy whose desk is next to yours (or like I have done, get on the Netflix website to see what movies I have at home rather than walk over to the TV and look at the disks).

During a meeting earlier today I wished I had such capability. Sometimes you have a good reason to wisper something to a person across the table without anyone else noticing.