"Science gives human beings a new power, but the new power requires careful thought about how to use it," said 90-year-old Noble Laureate Charles H. Townes.
"Science produces news things which are hard to predict. But I would say one important thing is going to change. We will be able to control human life much more," said Townes in an interview with Xinhua on Wednesday.
Townes was invited to the capital city of northeast China's Jilin Province to give a lecture at the ongoing 20th congress of International Commission for Optics.
He said that medicine is improving, and people are living longer. Human beings can now even change themselves genetically. "So it may be a great change in the future that we can change humankind."
The forerunner of the laser beam warned that since human beings can control their own inheritance. They must be very careful to make good choices.
"It is an ethical and moral question of what kind of people we should produce," said Professor Townes in a serious manner.
He told the Chinese audience that the discovery of unknown matter in the universe is very important. A Nobel Prize probably will be given for such a discovery in the future.
He hoped that young Chinese scientists would try to explore and find out new things.” Exploration in science frequently produces quite unexpected things. These unexpected things can be called scientific breakthroughs."
Townes won the Nobel Prize in 1964 and played an important role in America's Apollo program. He hoped that new breakthroughs would-be made in his field in finding smaller and smaller things with light, and more and more concentrated power from lasers.
He said that when he was dedicated to researching lasers, most distinguished scientists in the world thought that lasers would not work. "Several famous scientists even wanted to stop me from working on it. But suddenly laser worked, and that was a breakthrough," said Townes.
(Xinhua News Agency August 25, 2005)
