Peter Th. wrote:
Imagine how much we HAVEN'T done since Saturn V.
It's a HUGE mistake to extrapolate the last 100 years of advancement to the next million years in the future. Look, sometimes a breakthrough happens and then no progress is made for millennia. Tell me about all the great inventions between 2500BC and 500BC. This stagnation has happened before, it'll happen again.
Since Saturn V? Ahem:
-Quantum teleportation (1992)
-The creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate (1995)
-The accelerating expansion of the universe (1997)
-Experimental proof that neutrinos have mass (1998)
-The sighting of the Higgs boson at Cern (2012)
-Hadron therapy - targeting tumors with miniature, table-top particle accelerators.
-Neutrino Mass: surprisingly, neutrinos have a nonzero mass, which provides a window into particle physics beyond the standard model.
-Topological Insulators (TIs): we’ve known for a long time that solids, liquids, gases and plasmas aren’t the only phases of matter; but only recently, we’ve unexpectedly discovered a huge new class of phases.
-Quantum computing (insanely powerful in the future) using Quantum Error Correction (QEC) and Shor’s Algorithm
-Graphene - for electronics and super-strong materials & nanotechnology
-Nanoscopic "superlenses" using evanescent light.
-Power on the go - kinetic energy harvesting using triboelectrics.
-The freakin internet and worldwide communications
-Semiconductors
-Scanning probe microscopes
-Giant magnetoresistive effect
-MRI
-Semiconductor lasers and light-emitting diodes
-Carbon fiber & reinforced plastics
-Materials for Li ion batteries
-Carbon nanotubes
-Digital technology
-Robotics
-Genetic Sequencing
-MEMS
... yeah bro. Real stagnant.