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That passage really brings into perspective how old Scientific American is, or maybe how little ago it must've been that the composition of the sun was discover
by jolmg 7y ago
That passage really brings into perspective how old Scientific American is, or maybe how little ago it must've been that the composition of the sun was discovered. This was during the American Civil War.
- empath75 7y agohttps://zenodo.org/record/1429642#.XrC1NCUpDDs https://zenodo.org/record/1429642#.XrC1NCUpDDs It wasn’t until 1920 that the first paper suggesting it could be nuclear fusion was published.
- QuesnayJr 7y agoIt's shocking how in a century (say from 1850 to 1950) we went from basically knowing nothing to basically knowing everything.
- haunter 7y ago>basically knowing everything How bold! I'm pretty sure someone make a comment like yours too in ~2150 reading articles from today.
- pfdietz 7y agoHe's incorrect in that the Standard Model firmed up in the 1970s. But since then, fundamental physics has been nearly stagnant. More broadly, the era of exponentially growing knowledge of the basic foundations of the universe cannot last long. Historically it will be seen as highly anomalous. Most of history will be one of scientific stagnation.
- weregiraffe 7y agoWhy not? You don't know how much knowledge the universe contains.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 7y agoAny exponential growth process runs into fundamental limits soon enough. This is as true in physics as it is in any other field. Accelerators are close to their practical limits, for example.