04.06.2007

Frank Wilczek forecasts the future

I can't choose a single most important breakthrough, since different ones will be important in different ways. Here is what I hope for, and expect, on three fronts.

Fundamental physics - the search for new laws - will experience a new golden age, catalysed by the LHC. We'll learn why the weak interaction is weak, and unify our descriptions of the (superficially) different forces of nature, and (superficially) different building blocks of matter.

At present, information processing is mainly based on manipulating electrons in two dimensions. We'll augment our power by bringing in light and electron spin as information carriers within three-dimensional, self-assembling structures. After that machines with superhuman intelligence will become common.

The sun rains about 10,000 times as much energy onto Earth as we now use. We'll learn how to capture at least a thousandth of that energy, thus vastly increasing the world's wealth.

Brilliant Minds Forecast the Next 50 Years – find many more in our exclusive Special Report. You can also have your say on what the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years will be, in our New Scientist Forum

From issue 2578 of New Scientist magazine, 18 November 2006, page 59