The aphorism “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” may have (apparently) been the coinage of one Bernard Baruch, a stock trader and later adviser to Woodrow Wilson and FDR. It’s such a favourite amongst computer geeks I’d assumed that it was coined by one, as it neatly pigeonholes the tendency of people to assume that the tools and skills which they themselves possess are the best ways to tackle the problem at hand.
Given that, it’s surprising to see the US’s National Academy of Engineering has identified as its 14 Grand Challenges For Engineering for the (still-new, I suppose) century. While there’s certainly some worthy challenges amongst them, whether many of them are primarily, or even in large part, the domain of engineers seems kind of doubtful.
The rather motley list of challenges are:
- Make solar energy economical
- Provide energy from fusion
- Develop carbon sequestration methods
- Manage the nitrogen cycle
- Provide access to clean water
- Restore and improve urban infrastructure
- Advance health informatics
- Engineer better medicines
- Reverse-engineer the brain
- Prevent nuclear terror
- Secure cyberspace
- Enhance virtual reality
- Advance personalized learning
- Engineer the tools of scientific discovery
As previously stated, there’s not an unworthy one amongst them, though you’d have to wonder whether “enhancing virtual reality” is really such a high priority compared to solving the world’s clean energy and water woes. But lots of the other challenges seem to be only incidentally related to engineering.
Take “preventing nuclear terror”. New technology isn’t likely to help much with that; it’s largely a matter of political engagement to ensure weapons-usable material (and that doesn’t include fresh or spent power reactor fuel, which requires a lot of technically complex further processing to make into a weapon) is properly guarded, using existing technologies, and discouraging the production and stockpiling of any more of the stuff.
Or, to take another example, “reverse-engineering” the brain – in a nutshell, understanding how the brain works so we can build something that works similarly. This strikes me as conflating the role of engineering with science. We do not currently have a theory that properly relates the low-level physical functioning of the brain into high-level behaviors that are the domain of psychologists. Certainly not a theory that would allow engineers to in any way systematically replicate what the brain does. Perhaps, in time, such theories will be developed – or perhaps not. But surely developing that theory is the province of scientists, not engineers, who take the theoretical tools of science to build useful things.
There are all sorts of other points to be made about these lists – perhaps those with some more knowledge of philosophy might like to weigh in on the rather modernist bent of the whole endeavour. But, for mine, it’s a rather disappointing effort, both in its scattergun nature and its lack of consideration of the possibilities – and limits – of engineering to tackle the world’s future challenges.
Hat tip Slashdot.
All worthwhile ambitions.
But they miss the first step: Engineering MANAGERS to manage technical issues and outcomes (apart from places like Bell, Thomas Watson and MIT)
(For a brilliant example, see the highly respected Mitre’s papers, particularly this and read between the lines, particularly the abstract and table 2)
Sorry Robert your link is to nothing. Might wanna check on it. What is reverse engineering the brain btw?
Create a time machine that works. Apparently time travel is possible according to theoreticfal physics.Or to put it in a more practical way – create wormholes. Though that might be science, not engineering.
Nice post.
I think the link needs to be edited; there is a rogue ”
Hopefully this works.
Sorry about the borken link, now fixed.
“Reverse-engineering” is the process of taking something apart to figure out how it works, to build something that does similar things – not necessarily a straight copy, but something based on the same principles. In this context, it means understanding how human brains work, so we can build artificial ones.
Its astonishing — particularly given the Star Trek fanboy nature of so many engineers — that there’s nothing there about space flight, or indeed aeronautics of any variety.
If ‘developing a faster-than-light drive’ might seem a little over-ambitious at this stage, how about: continuing to explore our solar system; a moon base; a manned trip to Mars; probes to the nearest stars (which you’d think was doable by the end of the century, even at sub-light velocity); sub-orbital trans-continental flight (Sydney to London in 45 minutes); cheap and reliable systems to put satellites in orbit; and, last but not least, continuing to develop the world’s best fighter aircraft to ensure Western dominance of the global battlespace!
If I were a US aeronautical engineer, I would be writing a sharply-worded email right now to the National Academy.
… summed up as a one-liner in the format of the 14 points above, how about, “Intensify the use and exploration of space.”
15. Add inches to your penis.
16. Meet gorgeous women.
17. Find cheaper homeloans.
18. Make money at home.
19. Improve LP’s spam filters.
Nabs: perhaps you can explain how tasks 16, 17, and 18 are best approached as an engineering problem?
That would be a very saucy description, RM. I’m not sure I want to hear it.
My engineering challenges for the 21st century, if “nuclear terror” counts as an engineering problem:
20. Establish a universally acceptable mechanism by which populations can vote to elect and dismiss their governments, taking into account multiethnic and tribalised states (ie. Rwanda, former Yugoslavia), states with extreme wealth disparities (ie. India, China), populations without democratic political traditions (ie. China), and populations with low levels of literacy. Such a mechanism should ideally be blind to political economics, ie. not normalise any particular version of capitalism, social democracy, regionalism or nationalism.
21. Where’s my fucking flying car already?
#21. Wise-cracking robot butlers.
Policy Magazine had an article in their Spring ‘06 edition about this sort of thing — being a CIS vehicle they naturally weren’t in favour of centrally-planned research.
The most interesting stats showed that highly targeted research funding actually tends in the long run to work against the goal, becuase it deters basic research. Whereas the same dollars spent in training and basic, undirected research had a much better effect.
Hence the title — that science is a self-organising field and doesn’t respond well to political winner-picking. Carl Sagan made the same point in The Demon-Haunted World.
s/becuase/because
The article was called “The Spontaneous Order of Science”.
Jacques, that’s an interesting point, and I certainly agree that an excessive focus on applied research is counterproductive.
But let’s be clear – and this is something I was getting at in my original post – engineering and science are not the same thing, though the boundaries are blurry (something I’m very aware of in my own work, which is somewhere at the intersection of mathematics, science and engineering). And that’s one of the problems I have with these “engineering” grand challenges; some of them are clearly still the domain of scientists, rather than engineers. Engineering efforts can be useful – and that’s what some of the renewable energy projects currently underway are. But if there’s still theoretical breakthroughs required, it’s more science, in my book.
In any case, the idea of a century-long centrally-directed search for solutions to these particular problems is clearly silly, and, to be fair, I don’t think that’s what they were proposing.
Establish a universally acceptable mechanism by which populations can vote to elect and dismiss their governments, taking into account multiethnic and tribalised states (ie. Rwanda, former Yugoslavia), states with extreme wealth disparities (ie. India, China), populations without democratic political traditions (ie. China), and populations with low levels of literacy. Such a mechanism should ideally be blind to political economics, ie. not normalise any particular version of capitalism, social democracy, regionalism or nationalism.
If one thinks of this as an engineering problem (rather than a political one) – why not try paper and pencil? It works for the AEC, and it works for me.
It’s also better than the overengineered alternatives (punch cards, OCR, Diebold, etc.)
Don’t know anything about this National Academy thingy, but this all sounds a lot like standard-issue politically-required sweet and gooey stuff. Make ‘better medicines,’ eh? Ya think? The only true “engineering” feat in this list is that they somehow managed to avoid being forced to mention the word “Africa” in at least six out of fourteen wishes.
That being said, Robert, I think you’re approaching this a little too narrowly. I’m not even close to being an engineer, (although I know a few), and off the top of my head I can think of at least three unusual ways in which “prevent nuclear terror” can be viewed as an engineering problem. (No, don’t ask me to list them.)
For instance, you say:
“in a nutshell, understanding how the brain works so we can build something that works similarly”
Well, what about… out of the nutshell? There’s other things you could do with that information, you know. or,
“you’d have to wonder whether “enhancing virtual realityâ€? is really such a high priority compared to solving the world’s clean energy and water woes.”
I’d say that if we can’t successfully solve the clean energy and water problems, then it’s worth spending some time on making virtual reality as comfortable as we possibly can, because it’s the only reality we’ll have left!
Well, gotta go. We just finished shooting down an orbiting satellite using a missile that wasn’t designed for that purpose; now we have to go discuss the whole issue with the deep-sea intelligent beings whom we haven’t told you about yet.
(actually, btw, good on the Aussies, who I’m told have just discovered all sorts of incredibly crazy-looking beasties living at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean! Awsesome job! You guys are gonna prove H.P. Lovecraft right, yet!)
Just think of the benefits if they could crack all of them:
1. Make solar energy economical = so sunlight would become free!
2. Provide energy from fusion = because fusion currently doesn’t!
3. Develop carbon sequestration methods = so we could bury our garbage!
4. Manage the nitrogen cycle = so that trees would grow!
5. Provide access to clean water = so that Coke could be available everywhere!
6. Restore and improve urban infrastructure = so everywhere could be Fed square!
7. Advance health informatics = so insurers could disallow you more easily!
8. Engineer better medicines = a cure for baldness!
9. Reverse-engineer the brain = so they could get this damn song out of my head!
10. Prevent nuclear terror = thus leaving only biological, chemical and conventional terror!
11. Secure cyberspace = But, but, I’ve already got my netfilter from the government!
12. Enhance virtual reality = So that we could spend more time online!
13. Advance personalized learning = so that we could have, like, a website, right, where people like, *add* what they know about stuff to, right, what other people know about stuff. It’d be so wicked, we could call it, like, the wicked-pedia or something!
14. Engineer the tools of scientific discovery = x-ray goggles!
Yay the future!
What the hell have the engineers ever done for us?
If that’s the future, where’s my jetpack? eh? eh?
FXH: aside from sanitation, roads….
Sure. Which makes a lot of these silly as “engineering” challenges — fusion for instance is still arguably a scientific challenge.
Anyway, most of the list is aimed at getting Congress to cough up more dough, hence “terrssts” and “energy independence” et al.
My priority material engineering project would be extracting work out of gravitational forces (without having to climb hills first!). Zero-point energy or some such. You would have to figure out a proper quantum theory of gravity first, of course. Easier said than done.
My priority metabolic engineering project would be constructing working tissue and organs through molectular and cellular engineering to effect bodily immortality. Obviously genetic recombination and cytotic regeneration are promising.
My priority mental engineering project would be the development of a conscious computer, that had both identity and the core ontology of the human mind: cognitivity, volitivity and affectivity. A globally netorked electronic mind would exh\press intellectual boot-strapping powers. Given that the human mind appears to derive its special ontological status from tapping into its own quantum substrate it appears that a quantum computer would do the trick.
So we need to engineer free energy, immortality and omniscience. That will do me for starters.
Robert – I’m with you on this I think. A lot of these challenges are science and not engineering. Expressing them as “engineering” is to not understand the fundamental problems that lie at the core of some of these challenges.
There’s no doubt that some of these challenges are important and have important ramifications but I doubt that they will be solved by engineering per se. For instance the “engineering tools for scientific discovery” they go on a bit about quantum computing which is still very much in the domain of fundamental science.
Here’s my engineering grand challenge: ICI.
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/02/22/its-time-for-intersolar-space/
Mercurius ~
2. Provide energy from fusion = because fusion currently doesn’t!
Look I don’t want to get all pedantic, Merc-boy, but it does. There’s this dirty big fusion reactor, where the hot gases (plasma) are held in by gravity [no need for complicated and expensive magnetic fields, artificial vacuums; no need to replace the walls every few years coz they got irradiated and damaged].
This reactor is known to non-engineers as “The Sun”. Your home orbits it. I dare say you’ve seen it. It provided pretty much all the energy we currently dig up in coal mines or squirt around as oil. It also helps out by replenishing the water for hydro power. It dries my washed clothes. Helps the winds blow. Its energy gets the old food webs started. Cool eh?
Why would you want to build a mini-Sun when you could just use the existing one?
Now a bridge or a road or a dam or an airship or a BBQ or a yacht, I can see why they might be useful…
JC @ 13 and 14. CP Snow made a convincing argument for directed research in Science and Government, tho it was also an attack on pre concieved notions directing your research and effort. Mind you i think that he was biased as he felt that had a small hand in pointing out the direction that the Brit Govt ought to be looking and focussing it’s reserach.
In general Robert you have to wonder who the US’s National Academy of Engineering thinks is going to do all this work as all the engieers that i know have hightailed it to the mining industy and the Persian Gulf to build playgrounds.
finally, wheres my house that grows from a lozange?
Robert.
Nothing on your list about keeping all current ’systems’ going which perhaps superficially is my idea of what ‘engineers’ do… maintain the system. And your ‘hammer’ analogy reminds me of when covering Pacific maritime issues some 20 years ago and having a wise old Ausaid pro tell me when I mentioned that Australian patrol craft given as aid gifts were beached, tied up, under repair..
that if you couldn’t fix it with just a hammer then it wasn’t worth giving as aid.
I’d be happy if someone could fix the alternator on the Subi… not to mention the pfftin! noise when changing gear.
Ambigulous: because it might be cheaper to make your own rather than use the existing one, which is inconveniently located 150 billion kilometers away, whose energy density is thus, um, less than optimal, and thanks to the rotation of the planet we are largely stuck on (for the immediate future anyway, Jacques) is not available for 50% of the time.
Of course, it might turn out that overcoming these problems is easier than the problem of creating your own. But, even if on Earth solar power is the go, fusion will still have some uses in the very long term, particularly off Earth. So it’s certainly worth the pittance (in relative terms) we’re spending on it, as of course solar energy R&D is.
Bernice: go to the wreckers and see if you can pick up a second-hand alternator on the cheap.
You haven’t mentioned making a hot tap that provides hot water as soon as turned on. Without having some kind of power-chewing reserve tank just behind the wall (you can tell I’ve pondered this one, can’t you?)
Helen, ask and thou shalt receive. this gadget is pretty close to what you’re looking for.
Ambigulous: time to re-calibrate your irony detectors…
Most auto electricians keep recons and will wack one in cheaply.
Does it crunch or grind?
Liam
* wish 21 I think that this comes pretty close http://www.cartercopters.com/
and google “cafe foundation” to see how much other activity is under way.
* Bush will be annoyed that his space plans don’t rate a mention as an engineering challenge.
* Bernice, I suggest that both of your problems can be fixed by tightening the fan belt.
* Robert, I think that your comment about water is on the money, and highlights this list as likely coming from the insulated atmosphere of some New York club room.
* Frankly, I see no difference between science and engineering when engineering is applied to new problems. Innovation, research and experimentation are all the same process. Engineering might be seen as science applied, and that would certainly be true if you are talking about building a cantilevered span (no mysteries there), but todays engineering involves mixing a plethora of technologies and in that soup of possibilities boundaries are blurred or non existent.
heln – you want what I want – Looooong showers with lots of volume – well here it is
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1893706.htm
http://www.quenchshowers.com
Nope, they all look like engineering challenges to me! Of course they *can* be dealt with in other ways, but they are engineering challenges as well — eg in order to make solar power economical, we need a better conversion efficiency, lightweight batteries and less expensive/polluting manufacturing methods. Economic intervention with subsidies, by contrast, is a short-term strategy to improve uptake.
11 (=censorship) seem the most dubious of the lot to me, and it sounds rather unlikely to the software engineers I know except for places with limited in-lines, like Iran and China.
Chookie: you seem not to be drawing the distinction between engineering and science – in essence, scientists develop and test theories, engineers use them to build stuff.
I’ll grant that the dividing line is very blurry sometimes, and scientists do engineering and engineers do science on a fairly regular basis. Furthermore, the Academy of Engineering has a point about some of the work being done by “medical science” could benefit from the realization that it’s really engineering, and thus could use engineering disciplines.
But the point is that challenges like “reverse-engineering the brain” and “building a fusion power plant” imply we know the principles behind them, it’s just a matter of figuring how to screw the components together on an industrial scale. That is very far from the truth.
I had an idea for something like Helen’s instant hot tap. Not actually instant, but doesn’t result in litres of cold water wasted while you’re waiting for the hot.
Just put a little thermal switch after the tap and before the spout which drains cold water off to a tank for your garden, then clicks into its proper place when the temp gets up.
FXH,
When I was living in my 2M square trailer beside the boat I was building in the 70’s I had a recirculating shower that worked quite well. Only it wasn’t very healthy and suffered from soap accumulation. So, thankyou for the link to Quench Showers. This looks fantastic. I think that you made a sale.
Looks like the aspiring Brunels amongst us have their work cut out for them.
Better get cracking, people.
It’s the (big) batteries, stupid. Two particular urgent needs come to mind: load levelling of off-peak power generation and automotive.
With regard to the latter, already, great many sensible people are making their own electric vehicles for everyday use. You simply take an old donor car, rip out the stinky petrol engine, exhaust and transmission and install an electric motor and batteries.
Gav’s YouTube series of how-to videos from NZ shows how easy it is: just put in “Gav’s EV Conversion 1″ (and 2, 3, 4, 5, etc) into YouTube index to see for yourself; it’s a complete and detailed guide how to build your own electric car from scratch.
If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, in the States, for example, there are many small firms that will take your old Karman Ghia VW, or a Porsche 914, or a small ute – these are the perfect donor vehicles because of the space for batteries – and for a paltry $8,000 you can get a professional installation of a brand new electric motive power unit. Out go the stinky exhaust, transmission, radiator, in goes an electric motor and controller unit plus batteries. See
http://www.electroauto.com/
I ma sure myriads of firms will spring up here as well, if they have not already.
Running an electric car is much cheaper than running it on petrol or diesel. Especially if you run your recharge cable off the hot-water offpeak system that costs 5.1c per kilowatt hour (compared to 20c per KWh peak daytime tariff). The average battery capacity is about 26 KWh. Fill your “tank” for $5.10.
But the lack of truly suitable batteries remains. At the moment, golf-cart batteries wired in series are commonly used. Such an electric car is limited to about 80km between charges. A reasonable range would be somewhere around 250-300km. This is the most immediate engineering challenge.
The Vanadium Redox battery has gone missing in action after showing great promise in automotive applications. Considering the advances in batteries for laptops in just 10 years, surely an improvement on the lead-acid battery that was invented in 1859 is way overdue.
For more on this fascinating topic see a discussion on LP here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/05/21/conservation-where-is-the-all-electric-car/
Easier just to buy laptop batteries, actually. That’s the approach Tesla Motors were taking before starting to emit vapour.
RM wrote:
“Chookie: you seem not to be drawing the distinction between engineering and science – in essence, scientists develop and test theories, engineers use them to build stuff.”
I do know that; plainly I did not argue it successfully with the solar power example.
“But the point is that challenges like “reverse-engineering the brainâ€? and “building a fusion power plantâ€? imply we know the principles behind them, it’s just a matter of figuring how to screw the components together on an industrial scale. That is very far from the truth.”
I thought we were a bit further ahead than that with fusion?
Now I’ve read the original doc, I agree that the reverse-engineering the brain one might also have been suggested after a convivial lunch. Nonetheless, if it is to be done, sensitive investigative tools will be required first, and they will be provided by ‘ginger-beers’.
It is wrong to assume that engineering only deals with equivalents of bolting things together on an industrial scale. It also covers the building of tools and equipment and refinement of old techniques as well as creation of new ones. Hence my view that all the items on the list are engineering challenges — though they are often scientific and political ones as well. Note also that engineers are very good at ignoring other dimensions of such problems.
How about getting the animal muscle tissue we eat from cloning vats/tanks rather than from factory farming, so that there’s no animal cruelty issue?
The science of cloning only certain tissues has been done several times on several continents now. So what is needed is mostly an engineering solution to the problem of providing a large-scale environment where cloned muscles can grow efficiently to ultimately become a reliable food supply.
Such technology would be of great assistance for Jacques’ ICI too.
Ignoring complications is what makes engineering scale up to more complex tasks. The more you can abstract away or leave out the more you can achieve.
tigtog;
I’ve often thought vat food would be a big step forwards. Another plus would be reducing the footprint of meat — less methane from cow farts, less grain required for feedstock etc. Still a lot of science to do though I think.
Apropos the Star Trek fanboy jibe … what’s happened to the sexy figure-hugging jumpsuits that everyone in the future was supposed to wear? Perhaps the ultimate engineering challenge is making these jumpsuits “sexy” in nonzero gravity environments …
How about getting rid of 10 things we don’t need? Cluster bombs newks….
Thank you re my alternator. Its the regulator init that’s gawwwn bad. Battery is not therefore being charged as it ought. & yes the wrecker alternator will be express posting its way tomorrow morn. Apparently subis dislike rewound alternators. replace all & not some seems to be the rule. No clues on the ppfftin!! noise? You’d be a step ahead of my mechanic….
tigtog: agreed about the utility of such a development.
However, there’s a hilariously disturbing Arthur C. Clarke short story about a world where such a development occurs. Let’s just say that it involves what should, by its very nature, be the perfect food for humanity…
Robert;
The story you are thinking of is The Food of the Gods. It’s a most excellent example of the form.
Yes, I remember the story. A nice illustration of irrational taboos.
“How about getting the animal muscle tissue we eat from cloning vats/tanks rather than from factory farming, so that there’s no animal cruelty issue?”
You mean my dream of an eye fillet wedding cake may yet come true?
Fusion power is well into the engineering realm now and working prototype commercial reactors are being planned to be built.
There are 3 projects planned:
(1) ITER
(2) International Fusion Material Irradiation Facility
(3) DEMO
ITER (see its website or wiki for a summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER) is a prototype fusion ractor, basically an alpha test to work the engineering issues out for practical operations.
The Materials project is to develop materials (and handling) for fusion reactors.
DEMO will be a full working prototype fusion reactor that will be a template for commerical reactors.
These projects will overlap (e.g. DEMO will start before ITER finishes) to create concurrent development.
Some comments: “On November 21, 2006, the seven participants formally agreed to fund the project.[1] The program is anticipated to last for 30 years — 10 for construction, and 20 of operation — and cost approximately €10 billion (US$14.6 billion), which would make it one of the most expensive modern technoscientific megaprojects. It will be based in Cadarache, France. It is technically ready to start construction and the first plasma operation is expected in 2016.
ITER will be designed to produce approximately 500 MW of fusion power sustained for up to 400 seconds (compared to JET’s peak of 16 MW for less than a second) by the fusion of about 0.5 g of deuterium/tritium mixture in its approximately 840 m3 reactor chamber. Although ITER is expected to produce net power in the form of heat, the generated heat will not be used to generate any electricity (DEMO will).”
Construction will start this year.
Though if you want a challenge and want to be richer than Bill Gates (heck you could hire him as your butler) then go out to the shed and invent a super-battery.
The best batteries we have can store about 150 watt hours per kilogram, petrol has around 13,000 wh/kg.
So all you need is a battery about 100 times better than anything existing (and will be recharable, and deliver high current at a constant voltage, and…). But in one hit you have, voila, electric cars, no unsightly power lines, solar (et, al) becoming useful when it is at night (or the winds are low, etc)…..
Just make sure your patent is watertight though.
apologies Mercurius [34]
Oldskeptic: maybe DEMO will be more on the “engineering” side of the ledger. I’d call ITER and IFMIF “applied science experiments” – though their construction will clearly be cutting-edge engineering in themselves.
I’m not criticising engineering, by the way – I think it’s science’s essential twin and sometimes doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Chookie has an excellent point about its scope and importance.
Down & Out, I like the pencil and paper solution too, but it has one major engineering problem: it scales very badly when you apply it to large populations or non-urbanised populations. Printing costs go up, distribution gets more and more complex, and counting takes longer and longer. That’s the main reason the USA (with 288 million citizens and counting) has largely gone electronic/mechanical.
“Wise-cracking robot butlers.” heh
Robert Says:
You’ve made a fundamental error here, Robert.
Engineering and science aren’t twins or complements or anything vaguely resembling that. They’re the same thing.
What’s the difference between physics and chemistry? Physicists might argue that all science is physics, and in a sense they’d be correct. Chemistry is a subset of
physics, but it’s not possible to argue that chemists aren’t physicists. Chemists are specialist phyicists.
Engineers are specialist physicists also.
It’s not that long ago that physicists were lumped in with philosophers.
Do you imagine that there’s something called “applied science” that’s different to something like “pure science”?
Engineering is to science what cooking is to cuisine?
Well, sure, as long as we recognise that “cuisine” means “kitchen”.
Robert, ITER is more like an engineering prototype. There is no issue that it won’t deliver fusion, just how to tune it to get the maxiumum fusion burn time and Q factor. I expect they will creep up to 400 sec burn times and later exceed that considerably.
IFMIF is the sister project, working hand in hand with ITER to delevelop the best materials and (just as important) handling processes.
Essentially they are developing and trialing all the practical issues that are needed to be overcome to produce a commercial reactor.
An analogy of this would be (say) Rollys Royce’s test engine setup. Where they try out different materials, fan designs, etc, on test bed engines under simulated operational conditions. Running them and testing their performance, reliability, et al, dropping things that don’t work and incorporating those that do into future engine designs.
Cutting edge plasma, matrial, etc, applied science and engineering sure. But an experiment in the classic sense, no more than RR or any comparible very high tech development processes.
Engineering also encompasses a good deal of economics, operations research, and management methodology. Characterising it as a sub-branch of physics misses out a huge fraction of what engineers do.
SJ
Chemistry may formally be a sub-set of physics, since it deals with atoms and molecules, but it a sub-set so rich that it has broken through the boundaries suggested by the term ’sub-set’.
I’ll try to be polite. The physicists have an exact science they call quantum physics. When you start learning about this science, it becomes apparent that it has enormous difficulty with Helium [He]. It goes OK on Hydrogen, H (one proton, one electron). Has trouble with Helium (one nucleus, 2 electrons): it’s the old “3 body problem”. Just as with 3 bodies and gravitation {think Sun, Earth, Moon} the calculations get difficult….. It’s not just that Quantum ideas are bizarre.
OK, so this exact theory is well and good but can only deal with two of about a hundred elements.
No wonder chemists have developed their own methods, experiments, classifications, theories, descriptions. I mean, a {H, He} world is OK inside the Sun, but on Earth……..
Similarly for Engineering: it’s applied physics, applied maths, but SO MUCH more in addition.
15. Teleporting
16. Advance Technology to live underneath the ocean
17. Technology to preserve the human brain expertise
18. Live eternally
19. Program mind to do only positive things
20. Technology to read precisely human mind thoughts
@67: “20. Technology to read precisely human mind thoughts”
Well that will be the end of diplomacy and diplomatic careers, then, won’t it?
Isn’t diplomacy the art of lying through your teeth, politely (so as not to cause offense)?
Good grief! Everyone may as well start telling the bald truth, then?
Elise, I remember hearing about some research that found that American male college students lie once every 10 minutes, with females not far behind.
Of course if everyone told the truth about what they were thinking unfiltered then most marriages would fail and the murder rate would skyrocket. Clearly there is evolutionary advantage in lying