Contemporary
Relatively recent fringe sciences include:
- Aubrey de Grey, featured in a 2006 60 Minutes special report, is working on advanced studies in human longevity, dubbed "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS). Many mainstream scientists believe that his research, especially de Grey's view on the importance of nuclear (epi)mutations and his purported timeline for antiaging therapeutics, constitutes "fringe science".
- De Grey Technology Review controversy: In an article released in a 2006 issue of the magazine Technology Review (part of a larger series), it was written that "SENS De Grey's hypothesis is highly speculative. Many of its proposals have not been reproduced, nor could they be reproduced with today's scientific knowledge and technology. Echoing Myhrvold, we might charitably say that de Grey's proposals exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly in vain) for independent verification. SENS does not compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists; but neither is it demonstrably wrong".
- A nuclear fusion reaction called cold fusion occurring near room temperature and pressure was reported by chemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in March 1989. Numerous research efforts at the time were unable to replicate these results. Subsequently, a number of scientists with a variety of credentials have worked on the problem or participated in international conferences on cold fusion. In 2004, the United States Department of Energy decided to take another look at cold fusion to determine whether their policies towards the subject should be altered because of new experimental evidence, and commissioned a panel on cold fusion.
- The theory of abiogenic petroleum origin holds that natural petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits, perhaps dating to the formation of the Earth. The ubiquity of hydrocarbons in the solar system is taken as evidence that there may be a great deal more petroleum on Earth than commonly thought, and that petroleum may originate from carbon-bearing fluids which migrate upward from the mantle. Abiogenic hypotheses saw a revival in the last half of the twentieth century by Russian and Ukrainian scientists, and more interest has been generated in the West after the publication by Thomas Gold in 1999 of The Deep Hot Biosphere. Gold's version of the hypothesis is partly based on the existence of a biosphere composed of thermophile bacteria in the Earth's crust, which may explain the existence of certain biomarkers in extracted petroleum.
Read more about this topic: Fringe Physics, Examples
Famous quotes containing the word contemporary:
“The many faces of intimacy: the Victorians could experience it through correspondence, but not through cohabitation; contemporary men and women can experience it through fornication, but not through friendship.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)