PREFACE
xiii
wide communications network, glass skyscrapers, gas-powered automobiles, and high-speed elevated trains.
Not surprisingly, Verne could make such stunningly accurate predictions because he was immersed in the world of science, picking the
brains of scientists around him. A deep appreciation for the fundamentals of science allowed him to make such startling predictions.
Sadly, some of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century took
the opposite position and declared any number of technologies to be
hopelessly impossible. Lord Kelvin, perhaps the most prominent
physicist of the Victorian era (he is buried next to Isaac Newton in
Westminster Abbey), declared that "heavier than air" devices such as
the airplane were impossible. He thought X-rays were a hoax and that
radio had no future. Lord Rutherford, who discovered the nucleus of
the atom, dismissed the possibility of building an atomic bomb, comparing it to "moonshine." Chemists of the nineteenth century declared
the search for the philosopher's stone, a fabled substance that can turn
lead into gold, a scientific dead end. Nineteenth-century chemistry was
based on the fundamental immutability of the elements, like lead. Yet
with today's atom smashers, we can, in principle, turn lead atoms into
gold. Think how fantastic today's televisions, computers, and Internet
would have seemed at the turn of the twentieth century.
More recently, black holes were once considered to be science fiction. Einstein himself wrote a paper in 1939 that "proved" that black
holes could never form. Yet today the Hubble Space Telescope and the
Chandra X-ray telescope have revealed thousands of black holes in
space.
The reason that these technologies were deemed "impossibilities" is
that the basic laws of physics and science were not known in the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. Given the huge gaps in
the understanding of science at the time, especially at the atomic level,
it's no wonder such advances were considered impossible.
xiii
wide communications network, glass skyscrapers, gas-powered automobiles, and high-speed elevated trains.
Not surprisingly, Verne could make such stunningly accurate predictions because he was immersed in the world of science, picking the
brains of scientists around him. A deep appreciation for the fundamentals of science allowed him to make such startling predictions.
Sadly, some of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century took
the opposite position and declared any number of technologies to be
hopelessly impossible. Lord Kelvin, perhaps the most prominent
physicist of the Victorian era (he is buried next to Isaac Newton in
Westminster Abbey), declared that "heavier than air" devices such as
the airplane were impossible. He thought X-rays were a hoax and that
radio had no future. Lord Rutherford, who discovered the nucleus of
the atom, dismissed the possibility of building an atomic bomb, comparing it to "moonshine." Chemists of the nineteenth century declared
the search for the philosopher's stone, a fabled substance that can turn
lead into gold, a scientific dead end. Nineteenth-century chemistry was
based on the fundamental immutability of the elements, like lead. Yet
with today's atom smashers, we can, in principle, turn lead atoms into
gold. Think how fantastic today's televisions, computers, and Internet
would have seemed at the turn of the twentieth century.
More recently, black holes were once considered to be science fiction. Einstein himself wrote a paper in 1939 that "proved" that black
holes could never form. Yet today the Hubble Space Telescope and the
Chandra X-ray telescope have revealed thousands of black holes in
space.
The reason that these technologies were deemed "impossibilities" is
that the basic laws of physics and science were not known in the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. Given the huge gaps in
the understanding of science at the time, especially at the atomic level,
it's no wonder such advances were considered impossible.