The Economist's World in 2009 isn't online so I just thought I'd pass on the precis of its one-page prognostication regarding science next year. Looking backwards, 2009 will mark the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of the publication of Origin of Species.
There will likely be the world's first totally artificial living creature. It will use a natural bacterium shell but it's genes were made and spliced in a lab. The biologist is one Craig Venter. When accused of playing God, he replied "We're not playing". Have to love the sheer elan of that.
Advances in stem-cell research should defuse the controversy since the science has advanced to the point that such cells can be manufactured without recourse to embryos.
Likewise, after repairs, the Large Hadron Collider should be up and running.
There is, of course, only one possible outcome. We will one day be dominated by a lab-born race of artificial super-beings who will be able to live forever with the help of stem-cell grown transplants and who will wield artificially-created black holes as a weapon of conquest.
They still can't be any worse than Bush.
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