This sort of thing might have come directly from a science-fiction action story, where the hero is patched up in an unbelievably short time between epic space battles. Who says the future is always far away?
Archive of posts filed under the Science of the Future category.
“Your Personal Placebo Profile”
I’ve often wondered if there might be a way to harness the placebo effect to actually help people get better. It seems that I’m not the only one, either.
“iPhone doc will detect cancer, diabetes – boffins”
I never thought that I’d live to see a working Star Trek-esque medical tricorder, but it seems that I might… at least a poor-man’s version of one, that requires placing a sample on or in the device. Even better, the smartphones we’re toting around today might already have all the hardware needed, if I’m reading [...]
“Star Trek tractor beam to save Earth from asteroid Armageddon”
No, there’s no real Star Trek-style tractor beam (yet, anyway). What they’re discussing is parking a large spacecraft near such an asteroid and using its gravity to drag the asteroid onto a course that would miss the Earth. That assumes that we detect the threat early enough to launch such a craft, get it into [...]
“Ten 100-year predictions that came true”
Considering the poor accuracy of professional science fiction authors even in “near-future” SF, this guy‘s track record is nothing short of amazing. Too bad he can’t be around to enjoy his success, but when you’re making predictions for a century hence, that’s a bit problematic.
“Locating Change: Science and Technology Controversies”
From this article: [...] This is why one of the great contributions of science fiction is its ability to create monsters and technologies from the ether. When they show up out of nowhere, they challenge us to think more broadly and to make new connections. [...] That’s one of the things — maybe the main thing [...]
“IBM: Mind-Reading Machines Will Change Our Lives”
I have no doubt that it will — but in five years? That seems more than a little overly optimistic. I’d love to be proven wrong though. Oddly enough, this sort of thing rarely appears in science fiction, at least the SF I know of. When people in SF literature deal with computers, it’s almost [...]
“How Much Sleep Do You Actually Require (and Why)?”
I’ve always wondered about people who only sleep a few hours a day. I’ve found that I need at least seven and a half hours a day to feel rested (which usually means an afternoon nap since I can rarely stay asleep more than six hours at night). But it seems that a single brain [...]
Keeping Score of SF Author Predictions
SF authors generally make up their technologies based on the needs of the story they’re trying to tell, rather than based on reality, but the more “hard” science-oriented ones try to make their science as believable as possible too. This site seems to fit a common theme in this blog, of “track[ing] predictions and descriptions [...]
“Japan, Russia in plan for elephant to birth CLONE MAMMOTH”
This sort of thing has been talked about for decades (it was the idea that spawned the book Jurassic Park, published in 1990, after all). I look forward to seeing the results, but I have to wonder how much mammoth behavior in the wild was learned and passed down from the herd. I suspect that’s [...]