As the Royal Society launches its Summer Science exhibition, including a display of what was cutting-edge science in 1923, we ask experts what the world will make of today’s research 100 years from now.
Prof Steve Brusatte, vertebrate palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh
I think in 100 years, we’ll be marvelling at the pace of medical research. I can imagine that doctors in 2123 will still be using many of the procedures and medicines developed in the 2020s.
And I suspect that if one century from now there is an exhibit of scientific objects from 2023, it will have to include one of those blue disposable masks we’ve become accustomed to during the pandemic, with a label explaining how incredulous it was that such a simple and useful object became such a lightning rod of emotion.
Andrea Sella, professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London
Chemists will look back and marvel at the wastefulness of how we make molecules today; they will be amazed that chemists worked at the lab bench just as they did in the 19th century.
They will wonder why it took us so long to move from lithium batteries to much more robust energy stores based on Earth-abundant elements. And we’ll look back at the baby steps of quantum computers and laugh at our luddite fears of AI. I hope they will look in amazement at the inefficiency of basing our transport systems on individual vehicles.
But all of this is predicated on our predictions of climate scientist colleagues being wrong. I think it’s more likely that [people in 2123] will look back at the start of the 21st century with envy. They will wonder why we didn’t act to curb modification of the atmosphere before the temperature reached 4C-5C above preindustrial [levels], and why we didn’t listen to the science. Will there even be room for science in such a different world?
Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, space scientist
Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project that aims to develop technology for interstellar travel using ultra-fast, light-driven spacecraft. Its proposed spacecraft, called “nanocrafts”, would be gram-scale robotic probes equipped with a variety of instruments and communication systems.
If successful, Breakthrough Starshot could get to our next-door star system [Alpha Centauri], not in 76,000 years [as would be the case with a standard spacecraft] but in just 20. It would revolutionise our understanding of the universe by enabling closeup observations of exoplanets and their atmospheres, and potentially even detecting signs of life.
In 100 years’ time the question ‘are we alone in the universe?’ may seem as ridiculous as [the idea of] the Earth [being] at the centre of the universe, when we are in contact with a dazzling array of alien life out there.
Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician and Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science at the University of Oxford
I think we are at an inflection point in the power and reality of the quantum computer. Before this year I think we thought a computer exploiting quantum physics was just a theoretical curiosity. That is really beginning to change. In 2123 we will look back and laugh at the fact that in 2023 we still entrusted our secrets to prime numbers, given that the construction of a working quantum computer of sufficient size will be able to crack current prime number codes in no time.
