When I was a child, I was mesmerised by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books, which depicted the rise and fall of a galactic empire. They were set far in the future, when humanity has forgotten the planet it came from. Reading the novels, I wondered what technology might be like millennia from now. When people say something is “impossible,” what they usually mean is that it is impossible with the technology of today or of the near future.
Now that I am a professor of theoretical physics, I realise that many “impossibilities” may actually become possible in the future; there is no law of physics preventing most of them from becoming a reality. All but a handful are just very difficult engineering problems. So I decided to rank these “impossibilities” into three categories:
Class I impossibilities do not violate any known law of physics, and may be possible within a few decades to a century. These include invisibility, teleportation, ray guns, anti-matter engines, telepathy, force fields, psychokinesis and star ships.
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
