Generation ships and aging.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There's also a significant difference between doing experiments where the right answer is known, and doing experiments where you're genuinely trying to find out something new. And the amount of "new" that can be explored by a community of even a million is negligible compared with what will have already been explored by a community of between one and ten billion.

Yes, with 2 caveats.

The first is that genius is unpredictable. Experimental science would be difficult on a genship, theoretical, mathematical work, on the other hand, could be done. If a genius happened to appear among the population of the genship, he could certain do groundbreaking work. But testing his work might need to wait until generations after arrival.

The other caveat is that there is a chance (probability unquantifiable) that the very location of the genship might enable them to make observations or discover phenomena not obvious to planet-bound or star-bound observers.