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Copyright 2008, American Chemical Society
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Volume 86, Number 15
Grand Science Challenges
ONE OF THE NUMEROUS presidential
events at last week’s ACS national meeting
in New Orleans was a session titled “Energy
Research: Future Challenges & Opportunities.”
The symposium was jointly sponsored
by ACS and the American Institute of
Chemical Engineers (see page 10).
The keynote speaker at the session was
Raymond L. Orbach, undersecretary for
science at the Department of Energy. In his
talk, Orbach said there are “two questions
that loom over humanity today: How will
we supply all this needed new energy, and
how can we do so without adding dangerously
to atmospheric greenhouse gases?
“The energy and environmental challenge
confronting us in the century ahead is
truly monumental. It may be one of the biggest
challenges humanity has ever faced.
“Incremental improvements in our current
technologies will not be enough to
meet this challenge. To provide an answer
to these two great questions, we will need
transformational breakthroughs in basic
science that provide the foundation for
truly disruptive technologies that fundamentally
change the rules of the game.”
During his talk, Orbach referred to a
January 2008 DOE report, “Directing Matter
& Energy: Five Challenges for Science
and the Imagination.” The report was prepared
by the Subcommittee on Grand Challenges
for Basic Energy Sciences, which was
cochaired by Graham Fleming, a chemistry
professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, and Mark A. Ratner, a chemistry
professor at Northwestern University.
It is a remarkable document. In many
places it reads more like a physical chemistry
textbook than a DOE report. I do not
say that in a pejorative way—I found “Directing
Energy & Matter” to be one of the
more engaging and enlightening scientific
reports I’ve read in some time.
“It is frequently said that any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic,” the report begins. “Modern science
stands at the beginning of what might
seem by today’s standards to be an almost
magical leap forward in our understanding
and control of matter, energy, and information
at the molecular and atomic levels.”
The report continues: “For the future,
WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 3 APRIL 14, 2008
FROM THE EDITOR
imagine a clean, cheap, and virtually unlimited
supply of electrical power from solarenergy
systems modeled on the photosynthetic
processes utilized by green plants,
and power lines that could transmit this
electricity from the deserts of the Southwest
to the Eastern Seaboard at nearly 100%
efficiency. Imagine information and communications
systems based on light rather
than electrons that could predict when
and where hurricanes make landfall, along
with self-repairing materials that could
survive those hurricanes. Imagine synthetic
materials fully compatible and able to communicate
with biological materials. This is
speculative, to be sure, but not so very far
beyond the scope of possibilities.”
The five grand challenges laid out and
discussed in detail in the report are the
following:
■ How do we control material processes at
the level of electrons?
■ How do we design and perfect atom- and
energy-efficient synthesis of revolutionary
new forms of matter with tailored
properties?
■ How do remarkable properties of matter
emerge from complex correlations of the
atomic or electronic constituents and how
can we control these properties?
■ How can we master energy and information
on the nanoscale to create new technologies
with capabilities rivaling those of
living things?
■ How do we characterize and control matter
away—especially very far away—from
equilibrium.
Each of these challenges is discussed
in detail in the following chapters of the
report. Chapter 2, for example, on the
quantum control of electrons in atoms,
molecules, and materials, discusses the
transition from a science of understanding
how electrons behave in materials to a
new science of quantum control in which
the properties of materials are engineered
through direct manipulation of electrons.
It is a challenging and visionary report
that is well worth your time.
Thanks for reading.
Editor-in-chief
Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.