Some of you, dear readers, can easily live to 150 years old, even retain brains and elastic forms. Sounds good, right? Wait a minute, soon you will find out that your granddaughter is doing a summer internship on the moon, and her son can upload his mind into a computer and cheat death.
. I present to you a list of these incredible achievements that may become the property of the masses in the near future.
It cuts out part of the DNA in specific sectors that need to be edited (deleted, modified or built in new ones). The other molecule is an enzyme that acts like a GPS. She directs the Cas9 scissors to the right points in the DNA where editing takes place.
CRISPR is basically designed to block or replace broken genes in order to cure this or that disease. The changes do not apply to the children of patients – that is, the risks are eliminated, and no one interferes with the genome.
And there is already a result – it was possible to restore a person’s sight. One of the patients literally a month after the treatment again began to see colors for the first time in many years (accidentally noticed a red car passing by).
During the experiments, injections were used for the first time. Typically, researchers remove diseased cells from a patient’s body, edit them in the lab, and reinject them.
It is already possible to edit the genome of the embryo so that the child is born beautiful, with an ideal body and a brilliant brain. And to live longer.
The only thing that does not allow us to cross the line yet is decency and international agreements. However, sooner or later someone will break the rules – to everyone’s happiness or horror.
Neural ink makes telepathy a reality
In early 2021, researchers at Neural ink implanted 1,024 ultrathin electrodes into the brain of a monkey called Pager.
After that, Pager played a simple video game over and over again while scientists calibrated Neural ink’s algorithms. After a while (and after several banana smoothies), the system was able to decipher the monkey’s intentions, and he began to play the game telepathically.
“It’s not magic,” one of the company’s representatives said in the video. “Neural ink works by recording and decoding electrical impulses from the brain.”
With paralysis, neither the joystick nor the mouse can be manipulated, so the calibration will be carried out using mental exercises – for example, imagining the movement of the hands.
And after that, Neural ink plans to connect people to artificial intelligence so that they can upload their consciousness to a computer.
To implement these projects will require enormous computing power. So far, this is a problem, but we are getting closer and closer to solving it thanks to quantum theory. By the way, about her…
In essence, it is an analysis of numerous options to find the best possible solution: which securities to invest in, which drug combination works best, or how to build electric cars cheaper.
Sounds still too abstract?
Let’s say you want to seat ten people at the dinner table so that the evening goes as smoothly as possible for everyone. We have over three million combinations to choose from. Yes, a classic computer can help you find the optimal solution. But in larger situations, such calculations will take months, since a conventional computer will go through all the possible combinations in turn.
For example, an ordinary computer will struggle with some combinatorial calculation for a week. And with the new IBM quantum computer, the same operation will take only a second. Yes, one second instead of a week.
“We hope that with the help of Eagle, users will be able to explore uncharted computing spaces,” – said in IBM.
The main goal was to scale quantum computers into “paradigm-changing systems that can solve some of the most pressing global problems.”
Injectable chips are gaining popularity
In May 2021, a research team from Columbia Engineering published a report on the smallest chip ever developed to date. Impressively, it works as a standalone system – no wires or accessories.
This chip was developed as a medical device for collecting biological information about a particular part of the body (where it is implanted, it collects there).
“We wanted to see how tiny a working chip could be made,” the developers said. “This device could be a breakthrough in the development of wireless miniature medical implants for sensory information collection for medical purposes. As a result, it may be licensed for use in humans.”
I repeat: this device is not yet suitable for use on humans. Relax, they are not and will not be in First of all, they plan to test them on patients with neurological diseases, as well as on astronauts, since both require constant monitoring.
Multifunctional rocket Starship for flights in orbit
Reusable rockets are a kind of Holy Grail in the field of space exploration. They reduce the cost of launching into space hundreds of times, and besides, they reduce the amount of future scrap metal in orbit.
The Starship rocket climbed almost 10,000 meters, performed several maneuvers, and landed gracefully in the same place it took off from.
