5 Biggest Assumptions That Went Bust

Middle East dictators will remain strong
After all, oil continues to be important in the global scheme of things. This, coupled with the revival of authoritarianism in Russia, suggested that people were willing to trade a bit of political freedom for economic good.

Busted
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled to Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt lost power and faced criminal charges, and the flashiest of them all ­— Muammar Gaddafi — was killed by National Transitional Council forces. Other countries saw smaller changes. Algeria lifted emergency; Sudan’s Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir said his rule would end in 2015 and Syria released some political prisoners and lifted emergency.


Google will thrash Facebook

When Google Plus launched everyone seemed to be talking about Circles. Cartoons on Facebook walls showed anthropomorphic icons of Google knocking down Facebook; tech columns seemed incapable of talking about anything else.

Busted
Now, they seem to be incapable of anything but carrying obits for Google Plus.




Osama bin Laden is hiding in caves
Image: Faisal Mahmood/ Reuters
It was an assumption reinforced by cartoons, speeches, images on television and perhaps even the fact that Saddam Hussein was pulled out of a hole by US forces.

Busted
It turned out that he was living in an outsized mansion less than a mile from Pakistan Military Academy at Bilal.


Euro will replace dollar eventually
Image: Ralph Orlowski? Reuters
Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan had famously said, “It is absolutely conceivable that the Euro will replace the US dollar as reserve currency.”

Busted
The Euro got hit by the Eurozone debt crisis. Now, there are calls for a redesign of Eurozone.


Nothing can travel faster than light
Image: Corbis
As speed approaches 186,282 miles per second — the speed of light — the relativistic mass of an object would be infinite, Einstein’s theory of relativity argued. It was more than an assumption.

Busted
In September, physicists at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy found that neutrinos, subatomic particles, travelled faster than light. An experiment repeated two months later yielded similar results.