Frontiers of the future

Every day, millions of people agonize over what the future has in store for them. A handful of humans, though, are engaged in a far more worthwhile pursuit: creating the future. They're men and women at the cutting edge of technology. They're the rock stars of research, the gurus of geekdom, the czars of science - the navigators of a brave new world.
They labour away in labs, awaiting their eureka moments. And they dream: of the final conquest over all viruses, from those causing AIDS to the common cold; of matchbox-sized hard drives that are a thousand times faster, and store a million times more data than the ones at present; of wired and doped bacteria that gobble up greenhouse gases; of hearts made of customized plastic. Pure fantasy? Not really. Let's just say science is pushing the borders of reality.
TOI-Crest explores seven frontiers of the future, which broadly capture the sweep of the mind-bending change that's coming. To begin with, there's the eternal quest to protect the body from disease and delay ageing and death - and to tackle the new problems that arise out of increased longevity.
Then there's the attempt to learn all about the fount of all learning - the human brain, that small but incredibly complex organ that controls the body and is the key to human civilization.
If you thought Dan Brown was the ultimate in codes, think again. The one that really counts is the genetic code. Armed with new tools and a vast storehouse of new knowledge about DNA, RNA and cell biochemistry , scientists are confidently snipping, adding or shifting around the building blocks of genes - for a range of purposes, from fighting diseases to creating drought- and pest-resistant food crops. There are complex ethical issues involved as humans tinker with the very blueprint of life, but the potential benefits are enormous.
Then, there are three prongs of research aimed at improving and developing complex technologies for an increasingly complex world. The first, and perhaps the one with the widest potential, is nano-technology. The pace of innovation is furious, for the rewards are stupendous. The second is a field little known outside highly advanced labs, but with wide-ranging effects on everyday life - materials science, which keeps creating new materials for a variety of uses, from replacing damaged bones to storing and transmitting electricity, and where researchers are constantly racing to squeeze more and more utility out of smaller and smaller devices. The third is another field where ever-increasing results are being churned out of ever-shrinking devices. Pretty soon, chips will no longer be able to accommodate enough transistors (the switches that operate the computer) to keep pace with the sheer flood of data being unleashed by humans. The solution may lie in quantum computers, which would be far more powerful than conventional ones.
And the seventh frontier? Well, what else could it be? Space, the final frontier. If you're a Star Trek fan, you'll know exactly why the prospect of seeking out new life forms and civilisations and boldly going where no human has gone before makes grown men and women turn starry-eyed.
On the face of it, these seven frontiers appear poles apart. What could be common to studying exploding galaxies that are 6 billion light-years away, and trying to manipulate a few atoms into a hole of condensed matter? But diverse fields don't just overlap, they frequently converge. In trying to manipulate atoms, you may learn from how matter behaves at a million degrees in an exploding star. That knowledge may also be useful in snipping a few molecules from a gene that helps cause cancer. So, the most advanced labs today are highly interconnected. Not only do the teams have experts from diverse disciplines, their results may have applications in diverse fields.
What about tackling climate change? Shouldn't that be a frontier? Frankly, research on averting this disaster is more a political and economic issue. The science of alternative energy sources - solar photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, nuclear energy, even geothermal or tidal energy - is largely known. Research is going on to use microbes in curtailing emissions, and nanoparticles are also being harnessed.
But what's really needed are viable applications that can be used en masse. What's needed even more is a global consensus on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. But even as politicians place narrow national interests above the rationality of science, scientists exploring the frontiers of the future tend to transcend national boundaries - hardly surprising, given that their work encompasses life, the universe and everything in it. Leading labs resemble a mini-UN - Indians, Vietnamese and Chinese rubbing shoulders with Brazilians and Italians. It's very often a team effort, backed by global knowledge. With most scientific journals posted online, and with scientists globally connected, pretty much every new development is tracked real time and taken on board.
In some cases, the power of grid networking is unleashed, with thousands involved in solving one problem. This is especially so in research on genetics (each human cell has a DNA strand with three billion base pairs) or cosmology (there are an estimated 80 billion galaxies like our Milky Way in the universe).
Many apprentices with brilliant minds learn the ropes and spread out across the world to carry on the research. Some, like N Jayaraman of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (who won India's top scientific honour, the S S Bhatnagar Award, this year) return to their homeland. They are young and energetic, dedicated to solving some of the toughest conundrums of the cosmos. They are spurred on by modern technological tools that Einstein or Pasteur would not have dreamed of. As J Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University, who trained Jayaraman, told TOI-Crest, ���This renaissance is what I find really exciting, as also the fact that it is drawing some of the brightest young minds from all around the world to take part in the reawakening.��� Together, they're working today to give humanity a better tomorrow.