The 25 most powerful ideas of the 21st century (so far), picked by the world’s top thinkers – BBC Science Focus Magazine

A NASA engineer checks six flight-ready segments of the JWST’s primary mirror, a third of the final total. Photo credit: NASA/JPL.

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The 25 most powerful ideas of the 21st century (so far), picked by the world’s top thinkers

We asked the world’s foremost minds to highlight some of the game-changing scientific breakthroughs shaping our world since the year 2000

As the 21st century gathers pace, it’s clear we’re living through a golden age of scientific discovery. From rewiring our understanding of the Universe to reshaping the tools of everyday life, breakthroughs once thought impossible are now shaping the world around us.

To reflect on the progress so far, we asked some of the world’s leading thinkers to spotlight the groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs that have transformed our world since the turn of the millennium.

1. Dream engineering

Photo credit: Getty

Until the turn of the last century, psychologists often argued that dreaming was a meaningless experience best confined to the fringes of science. But the 21st century has witnessed a surge of scientific interest in our nocturnal adventures and produced a steady stream of articles exploring the psychology of dreaming.

Some of this work has explored how dreaming can help people process negative emotions and prepare them for challenging events in the real world. Another strand of research has explored the link between dreams and creativity, and has shown that our dreaming minds often come up with new and innovative solutions to pressing problems.

There’s also work that has looked at the social side of dreaming, with psychologists arguing that discussing a dream with others is an effective way of forming and maintaining caring relationships.

Other scientists have taken a different approach and developed techniques that allow them to communicate with people experiencing a lucid dream.

Finally, there’s dream engineering, wherein researchers use smells, sounds and suggestions to manipulate our dreaming minds.

For years, trying to convince scientists to take dreams seriously was a nightmare. Now the tide has turned and we’re starting to uncover the many ways in which dreaming makes a vital contribution to our waking lives.

By Prof Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire; Author of Magic Your Mind Happy

2. A new type of stem cell

Fluorescence light micrograph image of neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells – Image credit: Science Photo Library.

Before 2006, if researchers wanted to work with human embryonic stem cells, they had to work with human embryos. This was ethically charged territory – the embryos were leftovers from fertility treatments and were destroyed in the process.

Then Prof Shinya Yamanaka from Kyoto University devised a way to make embryonic stem cells without using embryos.

By adding a handful of genes into cultured skin cells and nurturing them with certain nutrients, adult cells could be reprogrammed to become ‘induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.’

‘Pluripotent’ means that these lab-made stem cells can turn – or ‘differentiate’ – into many other types of cells, including heart cells and neurons.

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