Celebrating New Scientist Magazine at 50 - Science in the next 50 years

reposted from: Podcast
http://media.newscientist.com/data/av/podcast/newsci-20070105-new-scientist-live.mp3
my highlights

Three renowned thinkers converge to discuss what the next 50 years will bring for physics, life sciences and the interaction of society with technology. This podcast includes excerpts from a special New Scientist Live programme hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences, featuring guest speakers EO Wilson, Sherry Turkle and Paul Davies.

EO Wilson on the Scientific Method
"the power of science does not so much come from scientists as from the method; the power of and the beaty the scientific method comes from its simplicity - the scientific method can be understood by anyone and pracitised with a modest amount of training; it stature arises from its cumulative nature - favoured sometimes by a unifying genius it is mostly the product of 100,000s of specialists united by the scientific method science has become the most democratic of all human endevours; science is not a religion; science is not an ideology, science makes no claims beyond what can be sensed in the real world; it generates knowledge in the most productive and unifying manner contrived in history - Science serves humanity without obesence to any particular tribal ideology."

Paul Davies
Astrobiology - is life easy to get started? Has life evolved more than once on Earth? Are their biomarkers from an alternative biological system right here on Earth in the rocks? Is alien life amongst us as microbes?

What will we learn in the next 50 years?
Origin of Universe by the scientific method (principles of physics); origin of mass; artificial life - life in the test tube; controlled fusion; colonise Mars; Dark Matter; Dark Energy; Origin of Life (are traces obliterated); nature of consciousness; End of the Universe; Multiverses; Ultimate structure of matter; quantum computation.