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Nat Geo Writer: Science Is Running Out of "Great" Things To Discover

Posted by samzenpus on from the nothing-new-under-the-sun dept.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "John Horgan writes in National Geographic that scientists have become victims of their own success and that 'further research may yield no more great revelations or revolutions, but only incremental, diminishing returns.' The latest evidence is a 'Correspondence' published in the journal Nature that points out that it is taking longer and longer for scientists to receive Nobel Prizes for their work. The trend is strongest in physics. Prior to 1940, only 11 percent of physics prizes were awarded for work more than 20 years old but since 1985, the percentage has risen to 60 percent. If these trends continue, the Nature authors note, by the end of this century no one will live long enough to win a Nobel Prize, which cannot be awarded posthumously and suggest that the Nobel time lag 'seems to confirm the common feeling of an increasing time needed to achieve new discoveries in basic natural sciences—a somewhat worrisome trend.' One explanation for the time lag might be the nature of scientific discoveries in general—as we learn more it takes more time for new discoveries to prove themselves.

Researchers recently announced that observations of gravitational waves provide evidence of inflation, a dramatic theory of cosmic creation. But there are so many different versions of 'inflation' theory that it can 'predict' practically any observation, meaning that it doesn't really predict anything at all. String theory suffers from the same problem. As for multiverse theories, all those hypothetical universes out there are unobservable by definition so it's hard to imagine a better reason to think we may be running out of new things to discover than the fascination of physicists with these highly speculative ideas. According to Keith Simonton of the University of California, 'the core disciplines have accumulated not so much anomalies as mere loose ends that will be tidied up one way or another.'"

9 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Level of public funding ? by makapuf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, I think this might have to do with the level of basic science funding (of course I don"t have any figures to back that). Also, this reminds me of chemists after organic chemistry / atomic physics discoveries saying that basically, science was done. Just in time for quantum physics to be discovered ...

    So, that's great : saying this just means that we're on the verge of a big event in science !

    1. Re:Level of public funding ? by crgrace · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's not necessarily a bad thing. Science is worthless if we don't use it in practical applications. But if we're looking for reasons why less basic research is getting done, this could play a role.

      I think it's a bad thing. Most of our great advancements in consumer electronics, medicine, and computing are based on mining basic research (that was mostly publicly funded). When that mine is played out where will the raw material for new advances come from?

    2. Re:Level of public funding ? by blue+trane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."

      Michelson, 1903

    3. Re:Level of public funding ? by SEE · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Right now, our current observations combined with general relativity say 96% of the universe is unaccounted-for by anything resembling a solid theory in quantum mechanics. Or, conversely, our current observations combined with quantum mechanics says general relativity is so wrong that it only can be made to work by assuming a mass-energy budget 25 times greater than that of the actual universe. So how can there not be anything huge to discover?

      Granted, the stuff might be beyond our ability to discover, but we pretty blatantly don't know what's actually going on.

  2. Until warp drive is invented... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hundreds of years ago, there was a "diminishing return." The Rennaisance led to a bunch of discoveries, followed by a period of "plateau." Then a hundred years ago there was massive explosion in discovery and theory. To think we've discovered it all is naive, like proclaiming after Newton that there is nothing left in Physics to discover. It might take a while before the next Einstein but it will probably happen again.

  3. Heinrich Hertz - 1875 by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Sometimes I really regret that I did not live in those times when there was still so much that was new; to be sure enough much is yet unknown, but I do not think that it will be possible to discover anything easily nowadays that would lead us to revise our entire outlook as radically as was possible in the days when telescopes and microscopes were still new."

  4. I've heard this one before ... by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Attributed to C. H. Duell, Commissioner of US patent office, 1899.
    "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Attributed to Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943
    "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olsen, DEC, 1977

    They might as well start preparing an entry for him in the book of silly predictions.

    There is still plenty of physics to figure out. The same with biological systems. Plenty of math to work out too.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  5. this again... by dala1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many times has this been said before, and proven wrong?

    "The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
    - Albert Michelson,1894

  6. Meh, not this guy again. by Gavin+Scott · · Score: 5, Informative

    Horgan has been going on about stuff like this for years. He wrote a book in 1997 called "The End of Science" which I read and thought was completely ridiculous. My recollection (possibly faulty as it's been quite a few years) is that he came across as very anti-science and wandered off into religion later in that book. It feels to me as though he WANTS science to fail at some point.

    I don't know why he seems hell-bent on convincing everyone that we're going to run out of things to discover, but I just don't buy it.

    Even if we manage to get to the "bottom" of Physics some day that's cool and all but it's hardly the end of much. The biology of even simple cells is fantastically complex and there's lifetimes worth of discovery left there. Also even if some day we we know most or all of the "rules", the possible applications of these simple rules are virtually infinite, so no scientists or technologists or explorers are likely to be unemployed any time soon.

    Every time humanity thinks it knows everything, someone thinks up a clever new idea for measuring things and boom, a whole new world of complexity opens up. There might be an end to the turtles at some point, but I'm not worried :)

    G.