[Edge Question 01] • Know This · Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments

**Today's most visionary thinkers reveal the cutting-edge scientific ideas and breakthroughs you *must* understand.**

Scientific developments radically change and enlighten our understanding of the world -- whether it's advances in technology and medical research or the latest revelations of neuroscience, psychology, physics, economics, anthropology, climatology, or genetics. And yet amid the flood of information today, it's often difficult to recognize the truly revolutionary ideas that will have lasting impact. In the spirit of identifying the most significant new theories and discoveries, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website" -- *The Guardian* ), asked 198 of the finest minds *What do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news? What makes it important?*

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of *Guns, Germs, and Steel* **Jared Diamond ** ** on the best way to understand complex problems * author of* Seven Brief Lessons on Physics* **Carlo Rovelli** on the mystery of black holes * Harvard psychologist **Steven Pinker** on the quantification of human progress * TED Talks curator **Chris J. Anderson** on the growth of the global brain * Harvard cosmologist **Lisa Randall** on the true measure of breakthrough discoveries * Nobel Prize-winning physicist **Frank Wilczek** on why the twenty-first century will be shaped by our mastery of the laws of matter * philosopher **Rebecca Newberger Goldstein** on the underestimation of female genius * music legend **Peter Gabriel** on tearing down the barriers between imagination and reality * Princeton physicist **Freeman Dyson** on the surprising ability of small (and cheap) upstarts to compete with billion-dollar projects. Plus Nobel laureate **John C. Mather** , Sun Microsystems cofounder **Bill Joy** , *Wired* founding editor **Kevin Kelly** , psychologist **Alison Gopnik** , *Genome* author **Matt Ridley** , Harvard geneticist **George Church** , *Why Does the World Exist?* author **Jim Holt** , anthropologist **Helen Fisher** , and more.