Welcome to 2020: Predictions for the new year that almost certainly won't happen

Predicting the future has long captivated scientists and scholars. But when it comes to forecasting what 2020 was supposed to look like, few got it right. We don’t all live in steel houses, like Thomas Edison predicted back in 1911. The world population is 7.7 billion, not 8 billion, as the International Food Policy Institute predicted. And astronauts are still years away from landing on Mars, despite a 2020 prediction by the National Research Council. With plenty of excitement in store ov