Some (not very well calibrated) predictions for the 2020s: - No new experimental result in fundamental physics not explained by the standard model of particle

Some (not very well calibrated) predictions for the 2020s: - No new experimental result in fundamental physics not explained by the standard model of particle physics or GR. 70% - No satisfactory theory of quantum gravity developed. 80% - Lightspeed limit remains inviolable. 99% - Some fusion project (eg. General Fusion or SPARC, not ITER) achieves break-even, (though likely reactors won't yet be in widespread use by 2030). 65% - No AGI developed. 90% - Another "AI winter" happens, as the current neural network boom runs out of steam. (To be clear, I think people will still use the techniques, but will gradually stop thinking that the field's accomplishments are all that impressive.) 65% - Protein engineering improves dramatically. 90% - Okay, "dramatically" is kind of a cop-out, so to name something more specific, biochemists will be able to engineer a molecular Turing Machine (a universal turing machine running with an RNA strand as the tape) Since a molecular Turing machine would be kind of useless for computation, I'm not saying people would actually build one, just that they would be able to if they wanted. 60% - Another protein engineering prediction: Proteins that run on electrical current, rather than ATP. 50% - Proteins that synthesize specific DNA or RNA sequences based on electrical signals they receive, allowing cheaper synthesis of arbitrary sequences. 40% - Riemann hypothesis remains unsolved. 90% - P vs NP remains unsolved. 95% - P != NP if P vs NP is resolved. 70% - Progress on aging research, but no single advance adds more than 5 years to expected lifespan. (5 years might accrue as a result of several different advances, though) 80% - Universe not discovered to be a simulation. 99% - Universe not discovered to be an "accidental simulation". (see Greg Egan's sci-fi story "Wang's Carpets" if you don't know what I mean here) 98% - No intelligent alien life discovered. 97% - No alien life discovered. 93% EDIT: A few more: - Ideas from logic programming languages are incorporated into some "mainstream" programming language(s), similarly to how python currently has some ideas from functional programming in it. 60% - No new millennium prize problems solved. 70% - Quantum computing still impractical for factoring crypto-sized numbers. 80% - Quantum computing used to do something useful. 60%