Ten years ago, science journalist John Horgan published a provocative book suggesting that scientists had solved most of the universe's major mysteries. The outcry was loud and immediate. Given the tremendous advances since then, Discover invited Horgan to revisit his argument and seek out the greatest advances yet to come.
One of my most memorable moments as a journalist occurred in December 1996, when I attended the Nobel Prize festivities in Stockholm. During a 1,300-person white-tie banquet presided over by Sweden's king and queen, David Lee of Cornell University, who shared that year's physics prize, decried the "doomsayers" claiming that science is ending. Reports of science's death "are greatly exaggerated," he said.
Lee was alluding to my book, The End of Science, released earlier that year. In it, I made the case that science—especially pure science, the grand quest to understand the universe and our place in it—might be reaching ...
