How far has science reached?

In this 30th Anniversary Edition, DISCOVER looks back at science over the past 30 years and looks forward to what discoveries will be made in the next 30 years. DISCOVER asked 11 leading thinkers to share their hopes for where science can take us in the next 30 years. . Thirty years ago this month, a team of Time magazine editors launched DISCOVER, a new magazine that will cover the incredible advances in science in a format and style that any curious reader will love. Here is a look at how our expectations have been disappointed, and in some cases vastly surpassed, by scientific advances.
Despite the tremendous advances in science over the past century, our understanding of nature is still far from complete. The task of science is to give reasonable natural explanations for natural phenomena. Not only is it technically proven, even philosophers claim that science is our best understanding of the world.
New scientific knowledge rarely leads to major changes in our understanding. The history of science shows that seemingly insoluble problems like this one may open up for solution later, as a result of advances in theory, instrumentation, or the discovery of new facts. The knowledge gained has led to the current understanding that the Earth is 4.55 billion years old.
By the end of the 19th century, the geologists included here had come to a consensus that the earth was about 100 million years old. By the end of the scientific revolution, it would not be an exaggeration to say that science had replaced Christianity as the center of European civilization. A new view of nature arose during the scientific revolution, replacing the Greek view that had dominated science for nearly 2,000 years.
Science policy also refers to the use of scientific knowledge and consensus to formulate public policy. Science has limits, and that limit is the form of science or the form of science.
If you define the boundary of the universe as the farthest object we could reach if we started our journey immediately, then our current limit is only 18 billion light years, which is only 6% of the volume of the universe. It is by no means a boundary in space; if we were anywhere else in space, we would still be able to detect and observe everything that surrounds us within this 46.1 billion light-year sphere centered on us. Beyond a certain distance, which I currently estimate is about 18 billion light years, even a signal traveling at the speed of light will never reach us.
The half-life of many of these elements ranges from 700 million to over 100 billion years (the half-life of one element is the time it takes for half of an element to radioactively decay into another element).
Scientific journals such as New Scientist, Science & Vie, and Scientific American cater to broader audiences and provide non-technical summaries of popular research areas, including notable breakthroughs and advances in specific research areas.