[stomachmonkey]

There are those who can't see beyond the knowledge that they currently posses on any given subject matter. They think that because science and research has not produced the answer yet then there is no possibility that it ever will.

“The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote…. Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”
Albert. A. Michelson, German-born American physicist, 1894.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895

“It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.”
Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895

“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now; All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
Lord Kelvin, speaking to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1900.

“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.”
Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923


“That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.”
Scientific American, January 2, 1909

“The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.”
Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time

“Transmission of documents via telephone wires is possible in principle, but the apparatus required is so expensive that it will never become a practical proposition.”
Dennis Gabor, British physicist and author of Inventing the Future, 1962

“Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, but it will never work.”
Cambridge Aeronautics Professor, when shown Frank Whittle’s plan for the jet engine, before 1930.

“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
Albert Einstein, 1932