Word: faster-than-light
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...educating the public in a medium more approachable than academic journals. I personally owe much of my embryonic scientific knowledge to science fiction. For example, “Jurassic Park” first introduced me to DNA and cloning, “Star Trek” to faster-than-light travel, and “2001: a Space Odyssey” to artificial intelligence and to the idea that human evolution might not be finished. Most lay-knowledge of science ranging from aliens and asteroid strikes to time-travel paradoxes and nuclear holocaust scenarios can all be traced back...
HORGAN: My faith is based on common sense, Paul, and on science itself. As science advances, it imposes limits on its own power. Relativity theory prohibits faster-than-light travel or communication. Quantum mechanics and chaos theory constrain our predictive abilities. Science's limits are glaringly obvious in particle physics, which, as Steven Weinberg describes [in the Visions issue], seeks a "theory of everything" that will explain the origin of matter, energy and even space and time. The leading theory postulates that reality arises from infinitesimal "strings" wriggling in a hyperspace of 10 (or more) dimensions. Unfortunately, these hypothetical strings...
...Attention all scientists/inventors: science fiction would have us believe that with the year 2000 comes faster-than-light travel and matter displacement. Let's get a move on, eggheads. A simple orgasmatron will probably suffice...
...implication is that most scientists insist that their laws are absolutely valid. Yet even Einstein is now being questioned, and there is uncertainty about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. As knowledge is gathered, the old "laws" are found more and more to apply only to special cases. Faster-than-light travel will probably be possible when our frame of reference has expanded far enough...
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