Question: What can you predict for future of science and technology?
Keywords: future, predict, science, technology
Comments
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admin_kristin
Wow sarzcaza, that’s a good question.
If then government invests well in science and technology I think Australia has the potential to make a big difference. We have some of the worlds best scientists right here and new technologies are helping us understand the world in which we live and make improvements all the time.
I think the biggest discoveries and developments will happen in the use and production of energy (can we make nuclear fission work!?), information technology, and medical research – our health and nutrition. Its hard to predict exactly what the discoveries will be, but its a very exciting time to be in science, because we have great new technologies and SO much information at our finger tips and not enough time to sort it all out!
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Hi sarzcaza,
That is indeed a good question — and very hard and open-ended!
I think that science does more than making material improvements to our everyday lives — that’s technology, the application (use) of science. (Disclaimer: I know I’m disagreeing with Louis Pasteur here…)
Science is, of course, needed for technology, but it also satisfies human beings’ deep thirst TO KNOW. Not necessarily to know something so you can use it, but “just because”.
For example, we want to know how old the universe is, how our galaxy/solar system/planet formed, and how special we are — are there alien civilizations “out there” and if so, where? And I think we would want to know even if there was no direct USE for the answers: if, for example, the answer was ‘there ARE alien civilizations, but they can never visit us’.
Incidentally, some of the biggest technological breakthroughs — that have made big differences to our everyday lives — have happened as “side effects” of science that was trying to answer “big questions” like these. GPS would not be possible without Albert Einstein’s famous Theory of (General) Relativity; the Internet was invented at a physics research centre called CERN in Geneva; and wireless internet depends on a piece of mathematics done (at our very own CSIRO) to improve radio telescopes that were looking at distant galaxies.
(But of course, being an astrophysicist by training, I would say all that…)
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