To get a preview of the unsettling truths science will be uncovering in this new century, then, it makes sense to look at young researchers in the most creative phase of their careers, when formal education is complete but eminence still hovers indistinctly in the future. Scientific insiders already know who the edgiest young thinkers are, and now you can meet some of them as well: a biologist looking in scalding-hot springs for clues to the origin of life; an astrophysicist searching for evidence of the "antigravity" force that Einstein once dismissed; a neuroscientist studying how the brain, despite what all the textbooks said, can grow new cells. The impact of their work may not be fully appreciated for decades, if not longer. But then you could have said the same about an obscure patent clerk and his crackpot theory of relativity almost exactly a century ago.
