London Telegraph The Royal Society's Science Sees Further: looking ahead - a guide to the future The Royal Society is celebrating its 350th anniversary by highlighting 12 huge challenges facing humanity – from alien life to geoengineering. Tom Chivers reports.
By _Tom Chivers_ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/tom-chivers/) 7:50AM GMT 30 Nov 2010 This year, the Royal Society – Britain’s oldest and most prestigious _scientific_ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/) body – has been celebrating its 350th anniversary. Since its foundation, our understanding of the world has changed beyond recognition. But what will be the challenges that define the coming centuries? As its anniversary year draws to a close, some of the society’s most eminent experts have published Science Sees Further, a report that selects the 12 key issues that will do most to shape science in the 21st century, and offers an educated guess about what we can expect in the years to come. • Search for alien life What do we know now? We know there is a lot of _space_ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/) for life to appear in – 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the universe. We have started to discover that some stars have planets: we have found 500 or so, of which around 20 are less than 10 times the size of Earth, and may be rocky. And we have found traces of water on Mars, as well as Europa and Enceladus, moons of Jupiter and Saturn, suggesting they are promising places to search for life. But still, we know very little. We have not found any life anywhere but Earth; we don’t know whether alien life will need water, or if water is common outside our solar system; and crucially, we don’t know how likely life is to appear. What will happen next? Impossible to say. We could detect a signal from an alien intelligence tomorrow – or never. But Dr Martin Dominik of the University of St Andrews and Professor John Zarnecki of the Open University argue that there are preparations we should make, just in case. For a start, we need to determine whether, if ET is out there, we really want to meet him. “As historical examples indicate, meeting a civilisation similar to ours might actually turn into a disaster.” Even finding alien microbes carries risks: “Any strategy must exclude biological contamination – not just to protect ourselves, but also to support cosmic biodiversity.” But, in the end, “the search for life is a search for ourselves: where we came from, why we are here, and where we will be going. If we want to know, we have to keep exploring.” • Greenhouse gases What do we know now? The realisation that the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere is increasing came half a century ago – and thanks to the work of the American scientist Charles David Keeling, among others, we have long known that it is predominantly due to human activity. Yet our knowledge of how much CO2 levels have actually risen is surprisingly patchy. There are many monitoring stations worldwide, but much of the surface of the Earth is missed out, records of the upper atmosphere are patchy, and analyses suggest that the emissions countries are declaring are in error, and in need of independent verification. What will happen next? New methodologies will soon allow us to move from crude global emission figures to region- and country-specific totals. After that, it is harder to predict. “Will ocean acidification and de-oxygenation cause large swathes of tropical oceans to become 'marine deserts’?” ask the society’s experts. “ Will plant growth increase as CO2 rises?” The answers will affect the lives of millions of people. • Coping with uncertainty What do we know now? The universe is unpredictable – both at the quantum level, where randomness reigns, and on the larger scale, where chaos theory shows that tiny changes can make huge differences to complex systems. “The problem of handling uncertainty is common across all disciplines,” says Professor Tim Palmer of Oxford University. But the public perception of science is that it involves definitive, confident answers. When erroneous predictions are made about a “barbecue summer” or an imminent flu epidemic, public trust is eroded. But rational decisions can be made using uncertain scientific advice. What will happen next? Scientists’ understanding of unpredictability is making great strides, especially with complex systems such as climate. And in understanding uncertainty they can develop techniques to reduce it. But they need to improve the way they communicate uncertainty better – both to the public, and between different disciplines. Prof Palmer argues that we need to become more comfortable with predictions that have odds attached – which could, he says, end the “false dichotomy” of belief in climate change vs scepticism about it. • Healthy ageing What do we know now? Optimism that we could find a “magic bullet” to slow ageing had faded recently, says Professor Dame Linda Partridge of University College London, as findings suggested that there was “no single ageing process, but a host of problems occurring in parallel”. But in recent years, ageing research has been revolutionised: creating mutations in specific genes, or altering creatures’ diets, have greatly extended the lifespans of a host of very different organisms, including yeast, roundworms, fruit flies, mice and primates. These do not just live longer, but become healthier, more youthful, and less prone to age-related diseases such as cancer and heart disease – and encouragingly, the equivalent genes have also been found in humans. What will happen next? “Some modest increase in lifespan may occur,” says Prof Partridge, “but this is likely to be minor in comparison to the steady increase in life expectancy of two to five years per decade that we have seen since the mid-19th century.” The real benefits are likely to come from medicines that stave off diseases of old age, allowing us to lead fuller lives for longer. • Cultural evolution What do we know now? What separates humans from animals? Many would say culture: how we pass knowledge down the generations, creating customs and traditions. Recently, however, it has become clear that local traditions have been found in dolphins, meerkats, monkeys and apes. Also, humanity’s culture has been shown to go back much further: stone tools have been discovered dating back 2.6 million years, while cave paintings and jewellery are thought to have developed 100,000 years ago – 60,000 years earlier than once thought. What will happen next? Hopefully, the development of a new field of science. The suggestion that cultural ideas – or “memes” – evolve in a comparable fashion to genes is being taken increasingly seriously, with some hailing it as a “second inheritance system” that sits alongside and interconnects with traditional genetic _evolution_ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/evolution/) . This could have profound implications for biology and anthropology. • Adapting to climate change What do we know now? Throughout history, our survival and success have been challenged by climate change, disease and shortages of food, materials and energy: at one stage, the aftermath of a gigantic volcanic eruption reduced humanity’s numbers to just 15,000. “It is a reasonable conclusion that if carbon and other emissions continue to grow at present rates, the changes will be so large and so rapid that the adverse effects will quickly outweigh any local benefits and come to dominate in all regions of the world,” say Professor Judith Howard and Professor Martyn Chamberlain of Durham University. Population growth, disease and water and food shortages will also pose problems for humanity. What will happen next? The key challenge will be energy management, via a “balance of renewables, nuclear and carbon-based sources”. New sources of food, including genetically modified crops, will also be important. “Pessimism in the face of formidable change is not the way forward,” say Profs Howard and Chamberlain. • Understanding self What do we know now? The brain, with its one hundred thousand million neurons, connected by one thousand million million links, “is often dubbed the most complex object in the known universe”, says Professor Colin Blakemore of Oxford University. Although almost all the things it can do – the richness of human language aside – have been seen in other animals, no other creature is as mentally versatile. However, we are only just beginning to take the first steps towards explaining our remarkable cognitive abilities in terms of how our brain actually works. New techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have revealed many details of which parts of the brain are involved in thoughts and emotions, but a huge amount is still unknown. What will happen next? Most of the really big questions are focused on the phenomenon of consciousness and our sense of self. Great strides have been made, thanks to studies of the effects of brain damage and ingenious experiments on decision-making and brain function, but scientists will be hoping to solve the “deep mysteries” of how our self-hood evolved, and why it experiences the world so vividly. • The internet What do we know now? Over the past 20 years, humans have built the largest information network in history – and there has been a growing recognition that the online ecosystem needs to be treated as an important area of study. This is a new field, but a constantly intriguing one: did you know that even though the Web has billions of pages, you can reach any of them from anywhere else in just 20 clicks? What will happen next? The most important things are the fundamentals – ensuring that the Web continues to grow (the experts warn that there is “nothing inevitable” about its continued existence, or its remaining stable, open and secure) and ensuring that the majority of humanity gets the chance to join the two billion existing users. The broader task of understanding how it actually works is, say the authors, so colossal a challenge that it is on a par with “ understanding the climate, our biological nature or the larger universe”. • Stem cells What do we know now? Stem cell research is one of the most promising areas in medicine – but taking the cells from human embryos has caused enormous controversy, especially among religious groups. These “pluripotent cells” are “extraordinarily useful” in research, as unlike the stem cells found in adults, they can turn into any kind of tissue from the body. Recently, however, researchers have developed a way to make adult cells behave like embryonic ones – although it’s a slow process, and therapeutic uses are a long way off. What will happen next? As these adult stem cells become better understood, it will become possible to take cells from people with inherited diseases and study the tissue, which could be of enormous help in combating motor neurone disease, blindness, Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s disease, heart failure and more. It is hoped that a “library” of stem cell lines will be created that would be sufficiently large to avoid immune rejection in the “ vast majority” of patients. Type I diabetes is one of the most promising areas for stem cell treatment. • Biodiversity What do we know now? “It is clear,” say Prof Anne Magurran and Dr Maria Dornelas of the University of St Andrews, “that biological diversity is under threat as never before.” Yet despite great efforts by generations of scientists, we still have an incomplete record of the natural world: the number of species thought to exist today is somewhere between five and 10 million, but it could be as few as three million, or as many as 100 million. What we do know, however, is that the figure is dropping. Three quarters of the ice-free land on Earth has been changed by human activity, while the oceans’ biodiversity is eroded by overfishing, pollution and climate change. What will happen next? Given that we depend on biodiversity to sustain our existence, we need to learn more about how the world has changed in the past, and how the natural world has responded. “This challenge is perhaps the greatest that our species has ever confronted,” say Prof Magurran and Dr Dornelas, “but unless we individually and collectively face up to it, our world will lose much of the diversity on which we depend, before we have had the opportunity to fully appreciate what is being lost.” • Geoengineering What do we know now? As concerns about global warming mount, the idea of deliberately altering the climate has been moving out of the realms of science fiction, partly thanks to a 2009 report by the Royal Society. Although some theories are fanciful, they fall into two basic categories: one hinges on capturing carbon dioxide in the air; the other on blocking solar energy to stop us heating up. What will happen next? A decision needs to be made about how large a role geoengineering has to play. Opponents say that it will distract attention from reducing carbon emissions, and any decision cannot be taken lightly: intervention in a system as complex as the climate could have unforeseen consequences for generations. Still, while geoengineering alone cannot stop global warming, it would, say the society, “be foolhardy not to formulate our Plan B”. • New vaccines What do we know now? Apart from the provision of clean water, there is probably nothing that has had a greater impact on global health over the past century than vaccination. Millions of lives have been saved, and two diseases wiped out – smallpox in the 1950s, and, much more recently, rinderpest, an infection of cattle. Polio, measles, rubella and many others have been hugely reduced, especially in developed countries. Meanwhile, forthcoming vaccines for hepatitis B and the human papilloma virus will, it is hoped, make strides in preventing cancers of the liver and cervix. What will happen next? Ideally, more of the same. Progress is being made towards vaccines for HIV and malaria, and even conditions like Alzheimer’s and addiction may be amenable. However, simply developing the vaccines is not enough. In developing countries, “infectious diseases are still responsible for the majority of childhood deaths”, say Professor Adrian Hill of Oxford University and Professor Brian Greenwood of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Making vaccines available cheaply, and enabling them to be stored without refrigeration, would do much to help. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
