A recent survey showed that over sixty percent of British adults expect the impossible from science.

Well, we are seeing some fantastic things these days.  Forty years after the invention of the laser, we're carrying around compact disc players.  Twenty-five years after the advent of fibre optics, we're making speedy connections on the internet.

One of the most exciting developments in physics today is the field of atomic optics.  The optics you learned at school involved mirrors and lenses to manipulate light.  Atomic optics switches things around, and uses laser light to manipulate atoms.

Physicists can now cool atoms down close to the lowest temperature that is theoretically possible - about a million times colder than interstellar space.  Under these conditions, atoms exhibit strange behaviour.  Rather than acting as particles, they behave as waves with wave lengths as long as that of visible light.  This means that scientists can do things with atoms that we normally do with light.

As the techniques of atomic optics are perfected, atomic holography may well make it possible to make real three dimensional replicas of objects, so that we'll be able to copy objects, not just pictures on paper.  So perhaps these survey results are not far off the mark, and we will see some seemingly impossible things come from science.

So next time you read science fiction, keep an open mind, some of those fantasies may soon become facts.

MOVING BEYOND MATTER
by Debbie Hughes

Have you ever considered that what was impossible years ago - or even yesterday - has now become a possibility?  One scientist at an American university recently commented that the really brilliant scientists acknowledge that the more they study the field of science, the more they recognize how little they really know. 

Now, miracles are one of those categories of the, so-called, impossible.  Perhaps we can describe what happened but not why it occurred or how it happened.  

Science tends to consider miracles as events just now unexplainable.  But one day they fully expect to be able to understand them.  Even if we were able to dissect a miracle and understand the mechanics, there are still other loose ends to tie up.

The miracles in the Bible bring a variety of responses from readers today.  Some think that mass hysteria prevailed.  Or hypnotism.  Perhaps these ancient peoples were suffering from psychosomatic ailments which were alleviated by a powerful figure such as Jesus.  However, it is difficult to explain away the numbers and kinds of miracles performed - healing of lifelong disease, control over the weather, resurrection from the dead.

It is true that we see and accept what we are already predisposed to believe.  However, when the evidence is investigated, we may find ourselves convinced in unexpected ways.  Former Chicago Tribune legal editor, Lee Strobel, a confirmed atheist who set out to discredit the legend of Jesus, found himself confronted with surprising evidence to the contrary.  In his book "The Case for Christ", he concludes: