Question: Where do you think science will go in the next 10 or 20 years?

Laurence Perreault Levasseur answered on 23 Jun 2014:

This is a pretty tough question. I mean, 20 years ago, no one had computers at home, office computers worked on DOS (I’m pretty sure your generation has never heard of DOS!), windows was not a thing yet, internet was really not widespread (I had never heard of it – ok, to be fair I was 6), no one had email addresses, cellphones were the size of a shoebox, and at home we had rotary phones. At that point, it was impossible to predict that in 20 years everyone would have a laptop and a smartphone, be reachable 24/7, with GPS and internet from literally everywhere on the globe, and that the power of computers and range of telecommunications would be as insane as it is today. An iPod would have been impossible to imagine (I had a state-of-the-art walkman), so no need to even mention iPhones or iPads!!

Nonetheless, we can think about where fundamental science is making big progress that could change and shape the world of tomorrow. If we can say that last century was the century of physics, then I definitely think the coming century will be the century of biology.

Biotechnologies are expanding faster than we can keep track of. Genetic engineering, gene targeting, etc.. are becoming more and more wide-spread and understood. GMOs, good or bad, are now everywhere in North America (more than 85% of the corn and soy in the US is genetically modified!). Maybe GMOs hold the key for the future of feeding the planet, by making rice with more proteins in it, or changing crops so more people can be fed with less, be more resistant to extreme climate fluctuations (like frost-resistant strawberries) and diseases.

I’ve read recently that scientists have put a gene in a bacteria that they can express on demand. So if they want, the bacteria can express the genes, and then they can take it back when they don’t want the bacteria to have it anymore. Do you realize how awesome this is? I can see here tremendous applications, even to humans!! Ok I’m dreaming here, but can you imagine changing your hair, eye and skin colour on demand, by altering your genes? Like the plastic surgery of the future! And then, even a bit more crazy, people growing wings or fins or shaping their body as they wish…. Ok that won’t happen in the next 10-20 years, but I can see progress being done in that direction over that period of time. And as I said, it’s probably not even possible to start imagining what crazy things science will bring us in the future…

On the front of physics, now, to talk about something I know a bit more, I think space exploration will grow in importance. I think private companies will join the game and that will push space sciences to develop a lot faster. I can totally see humans living on Mars in 20 years. Like Aimee said, Mars One is planning to send a one-way manned mission in 2024 (pretty soon!!!).

For fundamental physics, I think it’s hard to predict what will happen. A lot depends on what is found at the LHC in CERN over the next few years. If no new particles are found, it’ll become harder and harder to get funding for experiments of that scale. Regardless, I think scientists (like myself!!) will start to understand much more about the Big Bang, they will figure whether inflation happened or not, they will figure out what dark matter really is (now it’s one of the biggest mysteries of modern astrophysics!!) and, let’s dream, maybe even understand dark energy!!

On the front of energy, sadly, I’m not sure there will be huge changes in the next 10-20 years. That’s because the current reserves of oil will last (at least) for another 40-60 years (Forbes estimated 54 years in 2013, but some estimates even say 100 years), so until we start running out, it hard to imagine giants like USA, China and India making implementing new, green technologies. But I still think that the technologies will be developed over that period of time, they just won’t really be implemented until oil becomes to rare that it’s cost is too big to be worth it. Electric cars will become more common, as well as house sustainable electricity production (like with solar panels), but most of the world’s electricity, around 70%, will still be produced with fossil fuels (as opposed to nuclear or something clean like solar and wind), and factories and industries will still be running mostly on non-renewable fuel sources.