Scientific breakthroughs
07/08/16 05:28
My wife’s grandmother lived to the age of 100. When she was in her nineties, she used to occasionally marvel at all of the technological advances in her lifetime. Born into the era of horses and buggies, she witnessed a revolution in transportation that included private automobiles, airplanes, the landing on the moon and regular airline service around the globe. As Marshall McLuhan observed, the rate of discovery and change is accelerating. It is likely that there have been as many scientific and technical discoveries and innovations in the span of my lifetime even though it is nearly four decades shorter at this point than 100 years. Prominent among the technical advances of my lifetime has been the development and miniaturization of computer technologies. People are quick to point out that there is more computing power in a smartphone than was used to guide the first landing on the moon. The latest generation of supercomputers and perform more than a quadrillion operations per second, allowing scientists to identify meaningful patterns in unfathomably large amounts of data and perform simulations with incredible accuracy.
I can’t help, however, being a bit less amazed and awed by scientific discovery and technical advance than was my grandmother-in-law. When I think of this relatively young century, it seems as if the “breakthroughs” of science have been softer and less surprising than was the case with previous generations. One possibility is that, having witnessed so much innovation and change, I’ve become a bit jaded. I think, however, that there is something different going on. The advance of powerful computing combined with the incredible costs of modern scientific experiments has resulted in most discoveries being predicted long before they occur.
Two of the biggest discoveries of experimental physics of the 21st century - the discovery of the Higgs boson and the detecting of gravitational waves - were predicted for a long time before the discoveries were announced. It seems almost as if scientists are only able to discover things that they are looking for.
Two factors are important in the current world of scientific exploration. The first is access t o incredible computing power. The ability to sort through enormous amounts of data and the ability to perform calculations at breakneck speed have resulted in pushing the edges of scientific discovery in so many directions that breakthrough discovery can only occur in places of specific and well-concentrated focus. There is no longer a process of just observing nature to see what surprise will occur. There is less unfocused creative thinking brought to science than was the case in previous generations.
The second factor is the enormous cost of modern technology. The price of many of the experiments required for discovery now has surpassed the capacity of single institutions. This means that only large collaborations can raise the funds required to conduct experiments. Science is no longer the product of isolated geniuses in their laboratories, but rather huge cooperative ventures with all of the administration, bureaucracies, and politics of complex human collaborations. In order to obtain funding for the experiment, scientists are forced to go public with their theories and the theories are tested in simulation multiple times before the experiment is undertaken in actual circumstances.
These are, of course, generalizations and there is a great deal of science that is being conducted in other ways and places. But the general result remains. We are able to yawn and take a bit of a lackadaisical attitude in regards to science because we have heard all of the predictions long before the event. I remember a time, not long after the discovery of the Higgs boson, when I had to get out my computer and look it up because I couldn’t remember if the actual discovery had taken place or that it had just been predicted. I had a similar reaction to the discovery of water on Mars. The models had predicted it so long before the actual detection that it is difficult to remember exactly when they first confirmed what they had so long predicted.
Some of the breakthroughs of contemporary science carry the capacity for life-altering consequences. The sequencing of the human genome and the advent of relatively common genetic testing is opening new doors for the practice of medicine. Scientists are on the verge of growing new organs from a patient’s own stem cells, curing previously untreatable diseases, and employing genetic modification to treat and cure cancer.
This morning in worship we will return to one of the older of Christian writings, the letter to the Hebrews that speaks of the nature of faith. One famous quote from that latter asserts, “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.” I’m pretty sure that many modern scientists would cringe at the thought of using the word “faith” to describe their experiments, but it does seem to me that we as a general public have placed a lot of faith in the process of scientific breakthrough and technical advance. We believe that things will get better and we expect technologies to solve some of the most demanding problems of humanity. And the scientists keep searching for things that are unseen because they have predicted that those things exist. At the micro level, in the field of particle physics, virtually all of the experiments are now conducted with all kinds of enhanced detectors because what is been sought is beyond the ability of direct observation. The search for the unseen continues and the scientists, in fact believe that the things for which they are searching exist. The neutrino detector failed to detect anything. The response is to build a bigger and more sensitive detector. No one at those fund raising sessions has dared to question the existence of neutrinos. They believe in things unseen.
I’m with them. I expect that they will continue to detect the forces and particles that they predict are present. And when they do they will not be discovering something new. They will be discovering particles and forces that have been present in the universe since long before humans began to be aware of them.
At my core, I believe that there is yet much more to be discovered about the nature of this universe and that as we learn we will realize that each new discovery makes another possible. I do not, however, believe that it is for us to fully understand in the span of this lifetime. We’ve still a great deal to learn.
I can’t help, however, being a bit less amazed and awed by scientific discovery and technical advance than was my grandmother-in-law. When I think of this relatively young century, it seems as if the “breakthroughs” of science have been softer and less surprising than was the case with previous generations. One possibility is that, having witnessed so much innovation and change, I’ve become a bit jaded. I think, however, that there is something different going on. The advance of powerful computing combined with the incredible costs of modern scientific experiments has resulted in most discoveries being predicted long before they occur.
Two of the biggest discoveries of experimental physics of the 21st century - the discovery of the Higgs boson and the detecting of gravitational waves - were predicted for a long time before the discoveries were announced. It seems almost as if scientists are only able to discover things that they are looking for.
Two factors are important in the current world of scientific exploration. The first is access t o incredible computing power. The ability to sort through enormous amounts of data and the ability to perform calculations at breakneck speed have resulted in pushing the edges of scientific discovery in so many directions that breakthrough discovery can only occur in places of specific and well-concentrated focus. There is no longer a process of just observing nature to see what surprise will occur. There is less unfocused creative thinking brought to science than was the case in previous generations.
The second factor is the enormous cost of modern technology. The price of many of the experiments required for discovery now has surpassed the capacity of single institutions. This means that only large collaborations can raise the funds required to conduct experiments. Science is no longer the product of isolated geniuses in their laboratories, but rather huge cooperative ventures with all of the administration, bureaucracies, and politics of complex human collaborations. In order to obtain funding for the experiment, scientists are forced to go public with their theories and the theories are tested in simulation multiple times before the experiment is undertaken in actual circumstances.
These are, of course, generalizations and there is a great deal of science that is being conducted in other ways and places. But the general result remains. We are able to yawn and take a bit of a lackadaisical attitude in regards to science because we have heard all of the predictions long before the event. I remember a time, not long after the discovery of the Higgs boson, when I had to get out my computer and look it up because I couldn’t remember if the actual discovery had taken place or that it had just been predicted. I had a similar reaction to the discovery of water on Mars. The models had predicted it so long before the actual detection that it is difficult to remember exactly when they first confirmed what they had so long predicted.
Some of the breakthroughs of contemporary science carry the capacity for life-altering consequences. The sequencing of the human genome and the advent of relatively common genetic testing is opening new doors for the practice of medicine. Scientists are on the verge of growing new organs from a patient’s own stem cells, curing previously untreatable diseases, and employing genetic modification to treat and cure cancer.
This morning in worship we will return to one of the older of Christian writings, the letter to the Hebrews that speaks of the nature of faith. One famous quote from that latter asserts, “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.” I’m pretty sure that many modern scientists would cringe at the thought of using the word “faith” to describe their experiments, but it does seem to me that we as a general public have placed a lot of faith in the process of scientific breakthrough and technical advance. We believe that things will get better and we expect technologies to solve some of the most demanding problems of humanity. And the scientists keep searching for things that are unseen because they have predicted that those things exist. At the micro level, in the field of particle physics, virtually all of the experiments are now conducted with all kinds of enhanced detectors because what is been sought is beyond the ability of direct observation. The search for the unseen continues and the scientists, in fact believe that the things for which they are searching exist. The neutrino detector failed to detect anything. The response is to build a bigger and more sensitive detector. No one at those fund raising sessions has dared to question the existence of neutrinos. They believe in things unseen.
I’m with them. I expect that they will continue to detect the forces and particles that they predict are present. And when they do they will not be discovering something new. They will be discovering particles and forces that have been present in the universe since long before humans began to be aware of them.
At my core, I believe that there is yet much more to be discovered about the nature of this universe and that as we learn we will realize that each new discovery makes another possible. I do not, however, believe that it is for us to fully understand in the span of this lifetime. We’ve still a great deal to learn.