Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

centuries as a gateway for trade between the East and the West, faltered as European sailors forged trade routes to the New World and the East—especially around Africa, bypassing the Middle East. And China found itself being carved up by European gunboats that ironically exploited two pivotal Chinese inventions, gunpowder and the compass.
    The answer to the question “What happened?” is clear. Science and technology happened. Science and technology are the engines of prosperity. Of course, one is free to ignore science and technology, but only at your peril. The world does not stand still because you are reading a religious text. If you do not master the latest in science and technology, then your competitors will.
    MASTERY OF THE FOUR FORCES
    But precisely how did Europe, the dark horse, suddenly sprint past China and the Muslim world after centuries of ignorance? There are both social and technological factors in this remarkable upset.
    When analyzing world history after 1500, one realizes that Europe was ripe for the next great advance, with the decline of feudalism, the rise of a merchant class, and the vibrant winds of the Renaissance. Physicists, however, view this great transition through the lens of the four fundamental forces that rule the universe. These are the fundamental forces that can explain everything around us, from machines, rockets, and bombs to the stars and the universe itself. Changing social trends may have set the stage for this transition, but it was the mastery of these forces in Europe that finally propelled it to the forefront of world powers.
    The first force is gravity, which holds us anchored to the ground, prevents the sun from exploding, and holds the solar system together. The second is the electromagnetic force, which lights up our cities, energizes our dynamos and engines, and powers our lasers and computers. The third and fourth forces are the weak and strong nuclear forces, which hold the nucleus of the atom together, light the stars in the heavens, and create the nuclear fire at the center of our sun. All four forces were unraveled in Europe.
    Each time one of these forces was understood by physicists, human history changed, and Europe was ideally suited to exploit that new knowledge. When Isaac Newton witnessed an apple fall and gazed at the moon, he asked himself a question that forever changed human history: If an apple falls, then does the moon also fall? In a brilliant stroke of insight when he was twenty-three years old, he realized that the forces that grab an apple are the same that reach out to the planets and comets in the heavens. This allowed him to apply the new mathematics he had just invented, the calculus, to plot the trajectory of the planets and moons, and for the first time to decode the motions of the heavens. In 1687, he published his masterpiece,
Principia,
arguably the most important book of science ever written, ranking among the most influential books in all human history.
    More important, Newton introduced a new way of thinking, a mechanics by which one could compute the motion of moving bodies via forces. No longer were we subject to the whims of spirits, demons, and ghosts;instead objects moved because of well-defined forces that could be measured and harnessed. This led to Newtonian mechanics, by which scientists could accurately predict the behavior of machines; this in turn paved the way for the steam engine and the locomotive. The intricate dynamics of complex steam-powered machines could be broken down systematically, bolt by bolt, lever by lever, by Newton’s laws. So Newton’s description of gravity helped to pave the way for the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
    Then in the 1800s, again in Europe, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and others harnessed the second great force, electromagnetism, which ushered in the next great revolution. When Thomas Edison built generators at the Pearl Street Station in Lower Manhattan and electrified the first street on earth, he opened the gateway to the electrification of the entire planet. Today, from outer space, we can view the earth at night, with entire continents set ablaze. Gazing at the earth from space, any alien would immediately realize that earthlings had mastered electromagnetism. We dearly appreciate our dependence on it any time there is a power blackout. In an instant, we are suddenly thrown over 100 years back into the past, without credit cards, computers, lights, elevators, TV,