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Scientific American's Top 50
dptalia writes "It's that time of year again, where everyone is putting out their best of 2006 lists. Last week, Popular Science did it, and today, Scientific American has released their top 50 list. Of note are improvements in RFID technology, discoveries in nantechnology, and net neutrality."
Why not have a /. top 10 news stories of 2006, as slashback retrospective of the year 2006? Or something.
Then we can have a poll of the top five, to let the readers decide which one is the top story of 2006.
And I want my 15 min of slashfame for suggesting it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I thought it was interesting that the section on green cars ("on the road to green") mentioned GM and DaimlerChrysler for their work on new Hybrid technology, and HyMotion for their new plug-in Hybrid conversion kits, but didn't mention any of the advances with pure electric car designs. For example, the Tesla roadster has sold a couple hundred sports cars that perform well (0-60 in 4 seconds) with excellent range (250 miles). This achievement in a production auto certainly seems worthy of their top 50. While it's not exactly for your average consumer (it costs $100K), the company plans to offer family cars for their homepage.
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So, is there a reason that advances in pure sciences (e.g. Theoretical Physics and Mathematics) are not mentioned in these lists?
/Rant
While some of those projects are science, most seem to be technology projects. The irony of this of course is that business and policy makers are given recognition, rather than some scientists and mathematicians, who probably make more significant contributions (e.g. Grigori Perelman).
What's ironic, of course, is that these magazines are called Scientific American and Popular Science.
Wow. What a cranky old man. And one that replies to an unrelated post just to get to the top of the comment list.
Why don't you read the article? There are plenty of examples of messing around with fundamentals in the article. Try reading the one about "beginning to see the light". Two dimensional light waves able to take pictures smaller than the wavelength of the originating light. Quite amazing stuff.
Hate to break this to you, but fundamental shifts in science don't happen every day. If they did, they would not be so amazing. Often they come on the back of generations of hard work.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Get people predict the important stories of 2007 and then come back in a year to compare predictions. That'd sort out the real gurus and pundits from the wannabes.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Then we can have a poll of the top five, to let the readers decide which one is the top story of 2006.
Why don't we just pick the top 5, and they can dupe them to get the top "10"?