Question: What is a question in your field that seems impossible to answer today, but might be solved in 50 years?

Martin McCoustra answered on 8 Apr 2026:

This kind of “foresighting” question generally doesn’t work as we can never tell where science will go over that kind of timescale. As an example in the 1940s and 1950s, physicists thought that there was nothing more to learn about the interaction of magnetic fields with atoms. They didn’t realise that 40 years later, MRI imaging would be developed. Foresighting is something that governments try to use to predict the future. It doesn’t work!