Ask HN: Where are the great scientific theories of our lifetime?

Well, you didn't say when you were born. But let me have a go:<p>Inflation theory (1980), Gluons (1979), Experimental verification of quarks (mid 1970's), Quantum Chromodynamics (1960, modern version 1975), Quantum Computing (1982), Spintronics (1980s), Josephson effect (1962), SQUIDS (1964/1965), Semiconductor Photolithography (1982), Nanotechnology (1980s), high temperature superconductivity (1986).<p>Nothing interesting happened after 1994 because of the invention of the Spice Girls and because the eighties were over and everyone became obsessed with having answers immediately and looking it up on the web instead of reading books and so on. (It's just possible that this is when I gave up reading books and so I don't know about anything that happened since then. But I'd rate that possibility at less than 10% based on a back of the envelope calculation.)

At least part of the problem is in communicating great discoveries to the general public. Let me give an example. In the last few decades, Cosmology transformed from being a speculative, mostly theoretical field to a precise, quantitative science. Experiments that measured the Cosmic Microwave Background (WMAP in 2001 and others) enabled us to form a history of the universe that is backed by evidence. Measurements of supernovae (1998) showed the universe is accelerating (an amazing fact by itself) and from this we understand its future behavior.<p>Within Cosmology, I think the theory of inflation (Guth, 1980) deserves special mention. Its purpose is to explain what happened before what most people think of as The Big Bang, and it does so successfully, agreeing with highly nontrivial experimental tests (with data collected by WMAP and others). The fact that we can say something meaningful about what happened before the big bang, and then check it experimentally -- isn't it just mind blowing? What's fascinating is that inflation requires quantum mechanics and general relativity to work together to produce the effects we measure in the microwave background -- the very effects that are later crucial for the formation of galaxies. [1]<p>And yet, no one I talked to outside the physics community is even remotely aware of any of this. We are making great strides toward understanding where we came from -- the very origins of the universe -- and yet almost no one seems to notice. Wouldn't surprise me if there are similar examples in other fields.<p>[1] The basic picture is that the microscopic uncertainties of QM are amplified by GR to become cosmic-scale perturbations, which later collapse (due to gravity) to form galaxies.

Listing Godel's incompleteness theorem is a bit unfair to mathematics. What about K-theory, Schemes, Motives, the Langland's programme, Agrawal-Kayal-Saxena on primes, Number Field Sieve, RSA and Elliptic Curve Crytography, all more recent. The list goes on, forever.... Proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem, the class number 1 conjecture, the Bieberbach conjecture, Catalan's conjecture, Serre's conjecture, Kepler conjecture, Poincare conjecture (Thurston's geometrization conjecture)....

I think groundbreaking theories just aren't as obvious anymore because many of the big general questions have been answered and with these answers, disciplines are constantly dividing and subdividing. Therefore, the great ideas of today don't seem as far reaching. Take evolution, for example - pioneered back when the study of "biology" was mostly just taxonomy and natural history; it now has applications in the vast array of modern biological sciences, including ecology, medicine, genetics, and even computing.<p>There are some great movements in science today that wouldn't have been possible in the past. Bioinformatics, working with huge amounts of genomic data, is one example - how about the Human Genome Project, which was completed in the last decade? Another is James Brown's "macroecology," the idea of using statistics and huge amounts of data to learn about general patterns in the world at enormous temporal and spatial scales (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroecology" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroecology</a>) and answer questions like "what effect would climate change have on the world?" And, depending on how old you are, the potential global application of immunology to eradicate infectious diseases such as smallpox and polio.

<i>At first I was a detractor but it seems Lee Smolin agrees with you. From "The Trouble with Physics" (free preview part):</i><p>The period of time I will address -- roughly since 1975 -- is the span of my own professional career as a theoretical physicist. It may also be the ... most frustrating period ... since Kepler and Galileo....<p>The story I will tell ... tragedy. To put it bluntly...we have failed. We inherited a science ... that had been progressing so fast for so long ... model for ... other kinds of science.... For more than two centuries, until the present period, our understanding of the laws of nature expanded rapidly. But today, despite our best efforts, what we know for certain about these laws is no more than what we knew back in the 1970s.<p>How unusual is it for three decades to pass without major progress in fundamental physics? Even if we look back more than two hundred years, to a time when science was the concern mostly of wealthy amateurs, it is unprecedented.

Maybe you are adding up all of the great discoveries throughout all of history and comparing them to a 50 year period.<p>Another issue is that many of the "great" theories were considered to be crocks at the time. It took decades for them to be proven and/or accepted. Anything equivalent discovered now might not be proven for a hundred years.<p>For example theory of manmade global warming. Telomere theory of aging - may lead to everlasting life Genetic basis of disease How viruses are integrated into our genome<p>Things that are yet to be proven but there are competing theories. Some may turn out to be correct Origin of species Unified theory Extraterrestrial life

I'd say it's because you consider the 'GREATNESS' of a discovery is correlated how well it answers a simple question that almost anyone can come up with. Evolution is a great answer to simple questions about life for anyone willing to accept it, but subatomic particle research just doesn't have immediate implications to most people.<p>Edit: Also, what are your thoughts on technology? While it isn't a theory or scientific discovery, personal computing has had a major impact on society in the last couple of decades.

I just read a book about astrophysics where he was lamenting just that.<p>They've been stuck by not being able to combine general relativity and quantum physics for decades now, entire careers. Pretty frustrating if you're in that field.

I once read that the 20th century was the domain of physics, and (by all predictions) the 21st century will be the domain of biology and chemistry. Perhaps the breakthrough advances are in those fields?

Prospect Theory is a great one. <a href="http://prospect-theory.behaviouralfinance.net/" rel="nofollow">http://prospect-theory.behaviouralfinance.net/</a>

The memristor is one to watch.

Maybe we do and they just are less visible in part because there are so many -- ie the big ideas are not towering head and shoulders over everything else in the landscape, so we kind of don't notice. "Can't see the trees for the forest" type thing.