Skymatters: How being predictable in science can be really exciting

Far from being dull, being predictable opens up huge avenues of exploration and the ensuing excitement of unpredictable discoveries which are only possible because they piggyback on predictability.

A cable car moves towards the San Agustin neighborhood as a supermoon rises in the sky of Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. Picture: AP Photo/Matias Delacroix

Predicting the future is a mug’s game. Who knows what 2024 will bring? Uncertainty seems to be inevitably threaded through our lives. We make new year’s resolutions in the almost certain knowledge that they will fall foul of the predictable unpredictability of living.

By contrast, predicting the future is the staple diet, or at least the objective goal, of science and the scientific method. It has led to some of the most spectacular successes which of themselves have driven the development of astronomy and space science. For example, as we enter 2024 we know how gravity works today. We know that it worked in the same way some 4.5bn years ago when the Earth was formed and even up to 13.8bn years ago when the universe was formed. We can be pretty sure that it will work identically tomorrow, and the day after …. and the day after that. Our confidence in this assertion is founded on countless experiments and observations over hundreds of years.