• Question: At the rate of developing technology, how long would you say it would take for the next major scientific discovery and what do you think it will do.

    Asked by anon-199628 to Sylvia, Sumit, Martin, Kate, Bryony, Aryanne on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      You cannot predict this… though the government and business people would like us to do so!

    • Photo: Sylvia Soldatou

      Sylvia Soldatou answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I think it’s tough to know the answer to this question… Maybe the next major scientific discovery has already been made but not published yet!

    • Photo: Kate McGonagle

      Kate McGonagle answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      I think there are big scientific breakthroughs happening all the time, we maybe aren’t always aware of them all…but in all different fields of science people are making breakthroughs that have impact everyday. I don’t know how many trails of new medicines are happening right now across the world but I bet it’s LOADS!

    • Photo: Sumit Konar

      Sumit Konar answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Most of the Scientific breakthroughs do not happen in one day or by any one scientist or research group. Although not everyone gets nobel prize, but we do need to remember all the small findings that lead collectively to make a breakthrough. For example X-ray was discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895; and then Max von Laue and other scientists found that X-ray can not only be used in imaging but it can solve structure (1913). After that William Henry Bragg and his son solved lots of structures. DNA structure was solved. Now which one will you call it breakthrough? So to me breakthroughs are a continuous process. When people know about it through media they think that it all happened at that time. Very nice question though.

    • Photo: Bryony Hockin

      Bryony Hockin answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      I think this is a tough question to answer. Amazing and major scientific discoveries are made every day, but most people probably don’t know about it. Part of a scientist’s job is to make sure that everything they do is repeatable (e.g. the results aren’t just an accident or a mistake!) so lots of testing needs to be done on these discoveries before they can be talked about to the public. Also, the science that the media and the news are interested in is often the only science we hear about, when actually there are really cool discoveries happening all the time!

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