- Sir David King, former scientific adviser to the British Government Fifty Years On If we don’t reduce carbon emissions, the earth will become warmer, polar ice will melt and the oceans will rise. People will flock inland from coastal areas causing overcrowding in many cities, where the population is already too high. Cities like London and New York will disappear under the water. By 2100, Antarctica could be the only continent that is suitable for human life-the rest of the world will be too hot. Sir David King was the permanent Special Representative for Climate Change from September 2013 until March 2017. Sir David was previously the Governmentβs Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007, during which time he raised awareness of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the Energy Technologies Institute He also served as the Founding Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford; was Head of the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University 1993-2000 and Master of Downing College at Cambridge 1995 -200 Sir David has published over 500 papers on science and policy, for which he has received numerous awards, and holds 22 Honorary Degrees from universities around the world. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1991, a Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002 and knighted in 2003, Sir David was also made an Officier of the French Legion dβHonneurβ in 2009, for work which has contributed to responding to the climate and energy challenge.
2. Francis Collins, geneticist 100 and remain healthy. This will happen because we’ll be able to study each person’s genetic code and find the best way to treat and prevent illnesses in that individual. We’re close to finding the mistakes in the genome that cause cancer, so in the future diseases like this may no longer be life-threatening. In about fifty years’ time, the most important question for our society might not be ‘How long can humans live?’ but ‘How long do we want to live?
He also served as the Founding Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford; was Head of the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University 1993-2000 and Master of Downing College
3. J. Richard Gott, physicist During the next fifty years, our planet might suffer a catastrophthere is a possibility that the Earth could be hit by a comet, which is a big iceball. Humans could disappear, just like the dinosaurs and hundreds of other species did. The best way to make humans safe from extinction is to set ap self-supporting colony on Mars. Will we be smΓ¦nough to do it before money for investment in space exploration runs out? 4 Ellen Heber-Katz, biologist I believe that in the future we will have the technology to cause damaged body parts to grow again. Five years from now, we will be able to grow new fingers, and, a few years after that, new limbBoctors will soon be able to prescribe drugs that cause broken spinal cords to heal and hearts to regenera Within fifty years, renewing an old and malfunctionibody part will be the solution to the health problems of many elderly people. 5 Peter Norvig, director of research at Google Today, people all over the world have access to billions of pages of text on the internet. At the moment, they type a few key words into a search engite find information, but fifty years from now, people will simply discuss their needs with their computer. In response the computer will provides with a written report of the information we requested instead of just a list of links. At a later date, this report will actually take the form of a simple conversation. 6 Eric Horvitz, principal researcher at Microsoft Research In fifty years’ time, computers will be much more intelligent than today. They will help people work, learn, remember, plan and decide. Computers will help people from different countries to understand each other by translating and interpretiff.com one language to another. Soon they will be able to own. In fifty years’ time it will be computers that make important discoveries, not human scientists. reason their own in fifty years Time it will be computer that make important discoveries , not human scientists