Arthur Compton on the future
by Slava on Mar.25, 2011, under 6 future congeries
Arthur Compton was another famous physicist from the US, who received his Noble Prize in 1927 for the discovery of the effect of light particles scattering in the mater named after him. As a man working with the matters electronic, he envisaged eventual harnessing of the atomic power, and an inevitable penetration of all sort of electronic gadgets, impacting various sides of our lives. As a result, ‘the whole Earth will be one great neighborhood’ (a harbinger of the McLuhan’s Global Village). Again, he naively assumed that we will soon figure out all the physical problems, and focus on cosmology. He foresaw the raise of China (but didn’t think that for many decades Japan will be the second largest economy, not Germany).
