Since 1900, the number of published scientific articles has doubled about every 10 to 15 years; since 1980, about 8% to 9% annually. This acceleration reflects the immense and ever-growing scope of research across countless topics, from the farthest reaches of the cosmos to the intricacies of life on Earth and human nature.
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You know it’s not science when the title needs to say “experts” were involved.
“Experts” apparently thought that essentially nothing major was left to discover, and this is not new – There’s an anecdote (https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-essentially-everything-in-theoretical-physics-had-already-been-dis) that concerns Max Planck and his advisor Philipp von Jolly who, in 1874, told the young Planck that it was probably not a great idea to study theoretical physics, since there was not much left to do. With the power of hindsight this is of course extremely ironic since Von Jolly was addressing the man who would personally (though reluctantly) play a large role in the quantum revolution of physics in the early 20th century.
It appears that the source of this anecdote is Max Planck himself. In a 1924 lecture, he told the story as follows:
“When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly…he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science…Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.”
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TLDR:
Since 1900, the number of published scientific articles has doubled about every 10 to 15 years; since 1980, about 8% to 9% annually. This acceleration reflects the immense and ever-growing scope of research across countless topics, from the farthest reaches of the cosmos to the intricacies of life on Earth and human nature.
You know it’s not science when the title needs to say “experts” were involved.
“Experts” apparently thought that essentially nothing major was left to discover, and this is not new – There’s an anecdote (https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-essentially-everything-in-theoretical-physics-had-already-been-dis) that concerns Max Planck and his advisor Philipp von Jolly who, in 1874, told the young Planck that it was probably not a great idea to study theoretical physics, since there was not much left to do. With the power of hindsight this is of course extremely ironic since Von Jolly was addressing the man who would personally (though reluctantly) play a large role in the quantum revolution of physics in the early 20th century.
It appears that the source of this anecdote is Max Planck himself. In a 1924 lecture, he told the story as follows:
“When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly…he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science…Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.”
I’ve been hearing yearly of [the death of Moore’s Law](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mooreslaw.asp) for over 20 years, but discoveries keep pushing it along.