In my Openness book, I argue against those who see a future of inevitable stagnation. One argument for inevitable stagnation says that entrepreneurs build their innovations on science and we have run out of new knowledge to learn in science.
But whenever we keep our eyes open and observe more closely, or in new areas, we see what we cannot yet explain. The passages quoted below give another example. So we still have a lot to learn in science.
(Of course I also point out in the book that much entrepreneurial innovation is not tied to current advances in science–and is done by entrepreneurs who do not know, or who do not hold in high esteem, the current conclusions of mainstream scientists.)
(p. A14) On Dec. 24 [2024], NASA’s Parker Solar Probe swooped closer than it ever had before to the sun, just a few million miles above its blazing hot surface.
The team behind the mission waited nervously, trusting that the probe would survive the encounter. Then, a few minutes shy of midnight on Thursday [Dec. 2?, 2024], Parker phoned home.
. . .
. . ., there was some fear that the probe might not survive this time. Parker’s heat shield is designed so that the front of the vehicle can withstand facing the blistering heat of the sun’s outer atmosphere, which reaches millions of degrees, while the back, which contains the probe’s sensitive instruments, sits at a comfortable 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Literally one side is at a temperature that is unfathomable,” Joseph Westlake, the director of heliophysics at NASA, said. “And the back of it is a hot, sunny day.”
. . .
Parker’s data will . . . help scientists understand how the sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona, can be hundreds of times hotter than the solar surface below it.
“It’s like if you were standing next to a bonfire and you took a couple of steps back, and all of a sudden it got hotter,” Dr. Westlake said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
For the full story see:
(Note: ellipses, bracketed year, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated Dec. 30, 2024, and has the title “After Days of Silence, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Phones Home.”)
My book mentioned in my initial comments is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.