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Science
Friday > Archives
> 1998
> August
> August 28, 1998:
Hour Two: The Big Questions
| In the years that humans have been on the planet, they've made some pretty amazing scientific and technological accomplishments. Fire? Pretty much under control. Wheels? Been there, done that. Man on the moon? Sure. Clone some mice? No problem.
Chemists have been able to take natural resources, turn them into chemicals, and build entirely new materials from them . Physicists using supercolliders have uncovered sub-atomic particles that make up the inner structure of matter. Biologists are on their way to learning the entire human genome. |  | But a lot of big questions still remain. Is there life elsewhere in the universe? How, exactly, do the chemical and electrical signals in the brain get turned into thoughts, memories, and emotions? How will the universe end? How are the structures of proteins and other chemicals related to their functions in the human body? Why does matter exist at all? And what can we do with the human genome, once it is finally decoded?
On this hour of Science Friday, we'll take a look at what we know now - and ask what new discoveries to expect in the years ahead.
Guests:
Floyd Bloom
Editor-in-Chief
Science
Chairman, Department of Neuropharmacology
Scripps Research Institute
La Jolla, CA
John Bahcall
Editor, "Unsolved Problems in Astrophysics" (Princeton University Press)
Richard Black Professor of Natural Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, NJ
Stuart Samuel
Editor,
"The Bible According to Einstein" (Jupiter Scientific Publishing Co.)
Research Physicist
Columbia University
Professor, Physics
City University of New York
New York, NY
Jane Maienschein
Science Advisor to Congressman Matt Salmon (R-Arizona)
Professor of Philosophy and Biology
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ
Books/Articles Discussed:
"The
Bible According to Einstein: A Scientific Complement to the Holy Bible
for the Third Millenium," Jupiter Scientific Publishing Co., 1997.
"Unsolved
Problems in Astrophysics," Edited
by John Bahcall. Princeton University Press, 1998.
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