Visions 21 Space & Science

WILL WE LIVE ON MARS? WILL WE TRAVEL TO THE STARS? WILL WE TRAVEL BACK (OR FORWARD) IN TIME? WILL SOMEONE BUILD A PERPETUAL-MOTION MACHINE? WILL WE MEET E.T.? WILL A KILLER ASTEROID HIT THE EARTH? HOW WILL THE UNIVERSE END? WILL WE DISCOVER ANOTHER UNIVERSE? WILL THE MIND FIGURE OUT HOW THE BRAIN WORKS? WILL WE HAVE A FINAL THEORY OF EVERYTHING? WILL WE FIGURE OUT HOW LIFE BEGAN? WILL WE CLONE A DINOSAUR? WILL WE KEEP EVOLVING? WILL ANYONE EVER RUN A 3-MINUTE MILE? WILL WE CONTROL THE WEATHER? CAN WE SAVE CALIFORNIA? WILL WE EVER TRAVEL AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT? ...REACH ABSOLUTE ZERO? ...GET RID OF COCKROACHES? WILL THERE BE ANYTHING LEFT TO DISCOVER?

Is there anything in this universe--except perhaps the mind of a rebellious teenager--that is stranger than the bright cutting edge of science? We try to wrap our imagination around the radical ideas that modern scientists take for granted, but we're left breathless. Cosmic strings that snap like rubber bands! Parallel universes that sprout like bubbles! Wormholes! Gravity waves! Particles that vibrate not in three or four dimensions but in 10, 11 or 12!

In this, the third installment of TIME's 100 questions for the 21st century, we focus on the great unsolved riddles of space and time and human consciousness. Our journey is necessarily brief--we don't have enough fuel to travel more than 25 years or so into the future. But our guides are patient and remarkably lucid. We come back excited by how much can be foretold--about cloning, evolution, earthquakes and space travel--and humbled by how much is yet unknown.

Explore Visions of the 21st Century: Science & Space on our website at time.com/v21