Wednesday, September 28, 2005

The world's 10 biggest ideas - Features

New Scientist presents what it says are the world's biggest ideas.
Certain questions define the way we see the world. How did the universe begin? What is matter made of? What shaped our planet? How did the amazing diversity of life arise? We take many of the answers for granted, but maybe we shouldn't.

When we asked 10 of the biggest names in science to explain the significance of their discipline we were surprised by their response: who would have thought understanding quantum theory was relevant to the abortion debate? Or that a diamond ring can take you back to Pangaea? Set your mind spinning with our guide to the World's 10 Biggest Ideas...

1. The big bang

2. Evolution

3. Quantum mechanics

4. The theory of everything

5. Risk

6. Chaos

7. Relativity

8. Climate change

9. Tectonics

10. Science
Unfortunately, to read the complete articles you have to subscribe to New Scientist.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Prof Abbott

I'm not sure if you have heard about my new religion. I believe in his noodlyness the flying spaghetti monster or in short FSM.

If you haven't already please check out these links its hilarious:

http://www.venganza.org/

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Become a pastafarian and you will be saved

Aslan

Russ Abbott said...

I've got my fork and tomato sauce, and I'm ready to join.

Anonymous said...

Also an interesting article from scientific American

http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/wackononsense.pdf