Here’s the strange but not so distant future that’s coming to us!
7 - Real X-Men Yup, that’s right, you heard us.
Thanks to scientists, we could become like a few of your favorite X-Men in the future.
Now, when we say we could become mutants, we don’t mean we’re going to turn into
angry Wolverines, although that would be pretty cool and useful in certain situations.
What I’m specifically talking about is telekinesis, which is the ability to move things with our
mind.
Pretty crazy, right?
Well, it’s actually really not.
Scientists at the Minnesota College of Science and Engineering have come up with a noninvasive
technique known as electroencephalography which manipulates brainwaves, which in turn,
allowed its students to control the motion of a helicopter.
Let THAT sink in for a minute.
Standing in front of the helicopter these crazy kids were able to manipulate its movements,
simply by IMAGINING that they were moving their hands, either to the left or to the
right.
How exactly did the kids do that?!
It apparently takes a lot of work just to manipulate our brains in that way.
The subjects underwent a training period of approximately three months and had to undergo
a series of tests to get them used to the nuances of mental manipulation.
However, having said that, if this actually works past the current subjects, the potential
is enormous.
The scientists are hoping to expand this technology for people that suffer from paralysis or neurodegeneration.
6 - Bionic Man With an estimated 285 million people worldwide
with eye problems that render them with partial or total blindness, the new Argus II sounds
like a dream.
It works by using a camera built into sunglasses and then wirelessly transmitting whatever
the image is into implants, or microchips, which are implanted in people’s retinas.
It provides information at such a fast rate that the optic nerve is then able to recognize
movement, basically any light and shapes in front of them, but only in black and white.
Though it’s been available in Europe for the past few years, the FDA only approved
it in 2016 so we’ve got a while before it’s readily available to the public.
But beyond healing blindness, imagine the other possibilities it could lead to, for
example, who’s to say that we won’t be able to record what we see in front of us?
Or give our military super eyesight with information not even at their fingertips, but right in
front of their eye?
Or, for all you gamers out there, the chance to play in pretty much the closest it could
get to a real-life video game?
It’d be like augmented reality, but on steroids.
Well, with all these advances, scientists will possibly be able to eventually bypass
the eye and just send images directly to our brain, and like that, we will be able to zoom-in
and zoom out farther than our mere human eyes can currently do.
Furthermore, if these new implants can detect the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which
apparently they can, or will be able to soon, then who’s to say that we won’t be able
to gain infrared vision or heat-sensing capabilities?
Basically, it’s a whole new meaning to spyware and we’re just getting started.
Elon Musk wants to do that too.
His company called Neuralink plans on developing implants, which will be put in our brains
so that we can survive a Terminator-type apocalypse.
By creating these implants, and by linking our brains to computers, he’s hoping that
we’ll continue to outsmart computers instead of becoming literal slaves to the machine.
Okay, okay, before we get too carried away, Musk hasn’t actually commented on whether
this is why he created Neuralink or not.
We’re just using our imagination here!
What we do know is that doctors have already used implants to try and treat conditions,
such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.
Musk wants to take it a step further and actually use artificial intelligence so that we can
push our brains’ limits to a whole new level.
5 - Fat burning Fat Recently scientists at Johns Hopkins University
discovered that they could transform bad fat cells into good ones and when we say good
ones, we mean ones that burn calories and keep us skinny.
By knocking down the expression of a protein in rat brains known to stimulate eating, Johns
Hopkins researchers say they not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight, but
also transformed their fat into a type that burns off more energy.
This ability to turn 'bad fat' into 'good fat' that burns calories instead of storing
them could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic in the US.
More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight, and more than one-third
are obese, according to government estimates.
The Johns Hopkins study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, looks at two types
of fat made by the body: white and brown adipose tissue.
White fat is the typical fat that ends up around your stomach and other troublesome
places, and is the storehouse for the extra calories we eat.
White fat cells have a single large droplet of lipid, one of fat's building blocks, such
as cholesterol and triglycerides.
Cells in brown fat, considered a "good fat" for its energy-burning qualities, contain
many little droplets of lipid, each with its own power source, which enables heat generation.
Babies have ample stores of brown fat at birth as a defense against the cold, but it mostly
disappears, as adults have very little of this calorie-burning tissue.
Crazy, right?
Aight, we’re gonna have to slow our roll again.
Just because the researchers successfully managed to genetically reprogram the Pinky
and the Brain’s…..well, brains, it doesn’t mean they’re able to do it for us right
now.
They were able to reduce the rats’ calorie intake and weight, and also managed to transform
some of the bad white fat into brown fat, which is the best type of fat that burns extra
calories away.
It’s gonna be a long time before it’s going to be available to humans.
4 - Space living Does living in space actually sound appealing?
We guess being weightless would be a novelty for awhile, but c’mon, working out would
be super tough!
Anyways, it’s just been announced that a new skyscraper is set to be suspended from
an orbiting asteroid above the Earth.
One New York architecture firm is planning on building a skyscraper in space.
50,000 kilometers, to be exact, above the Earth.
Awesome view of Earth, and we bet at that point it’s not going to matter whether you’re
afraid of heights or not because that’s way, way up.
The tower, which will be named Analemma Tower, will move in a figure eight between the northern
and southern hemispheres daily so its residents can see and visit major cities, such as New
York or Dubai on a daily basis.
Just to give you a reference, satellites in low Earth orbits are normally military reconnaissance
satellites that are 160 km above the Earth.
These satellites orbit the earth very quickly, one complete orbit normally taking 90 minutes.
How this building is able to do figure 8s is beyond us, but we’ll let them other guys
figure it out.
The massive building will also be set up in very specific sections, each with a specific
purpose and design.
The section will be split, for example, into sleeping quarters, dining, worship, and entertainment.
It’ll also be solar powered and water will be collected from cloud condensation and rain
water, which in turn will be purified for use.
You know what, sign us up!
This is from the team that’s also pitching proposals for a Mars House and a cloud city
and look how those are going?
Not so good at the moment.
But you know what, if we had to bet on it, this will certainly be a reality in the future.
Things are still in the planning phases to say the least.
And by planning we mean the plans don’t actually reveal how people would enter or
exit the building, although one illustration showed people parachuting from the tower to
the ground.
Yeah it looks like they need a little more time to think this one through.
Even the director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, Carlo Ratti, calls it a “fun” project,
but of course noted that that the logistics would be a nightmare.
Basically, it’s a great dream but one that’s not quite there yet.
But hey, we gotta dream big right?
3 - Mars Colonization We’re journeying back to space.
Elon Musk and NASA think they’ve found the ideal landing site for their Mars Mission
sometime in the 2020s.
The researchers have now narrowed down four potential landing spots on Mar’s northern
hemisphere.
Now, what makes an ideal landing location?
Well, according to the researchers, they want to be close enough to ice so they can examine
Mars’ potential water source while also having access to lots of solar power.
The area also needs to be flat and easy for the capsule to move around so rocky terrain
is a no go.
I guess the rover isn’t much of a hiker.
Apparently we can get a capsule to Mars, but it can’t move over some rocks… we’d
call it lazy but, let’s face it, it’s doing enough work for us and our potential
new home on Mars so we can’t complain.
Because let’s get real, if they really find a dream landing site for this mission, then
that means we’re getting closer to building a colony on Mars and how cool would it be
if you could have a home on Mars?
Instead of going to the Jersey Shore for the weekend, you could just hop on over to Mars…
well, that’s what Elon Musk is hoping anyway because, as of now, he’s hoping to create
a self-sustaining colony on our neighboring planet within the next one hundred years.
2 - 500 lb Bodybuilders Over the past century, bodybuilders keep getting
bigger and bigger.
At his peak, Arnold Schwarzenegger was two hundred and thirty five pounds of pure muscle
— and he was still smaller than “The Rock”, who stands in at a crazy two hundred and sixty
pounds, and although he’s not bodybuilder ripped, he’s still less than 10% bodyfat!
Retired bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman started training in 1989 and was around two hundred
and fifteen pounds but by the early 2000s, he was competing at two hundred and ninety-seven
pounds.
Basically he gained eighty-two pounds of pure muscle in less than fifteen years.
Okay, let’s admit, he didn’t do that “au naturale”.
Here’s bodybuilder Craig Golias, who went through an entire TWO hundred pound transformation!
And this is just with what’s available right now.
Craig golias at one point weighed as much as 370 lbs.
That can’t be healthy.
So what’s next?
Well, with all these statistics showing us that these guys are getting larger and larger
each year, when are we going to see 500 pound bodybuilders?
Well, it certainly looks like we’ll get to that point one day.
Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy is a rare genetic condition characterized by reduced
body fat and increased skeletal muscle size.
Affected individuals have up to twice the usual amount of muscle mass in their bodies.
They also tend to have increased muscle strength.
Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy is not known to cause many medical problems, and
affected individuals are intellectually normal.
The prevalence of this condition is unknown.
Mutations in the MSTN gene is what causes this condition.
Hold up, can we actually intentionally get this condition?!
The MSTN gene provides instructions for making a protein called myostatin, which is active
in skeletal muscles used for movement.
This protein normally restrains muscle growth, ensuring that muscles don’t grow too large.
Mutations that reduce the production of functional myostatin lead to an overgrowth of muscle
tissue.
Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy has a pattern of inheritance known as incomplete
autosomal dominance.
People with a mutation in both copies of the MSTN gene in each cell have significantly
increased muscle mass and strength.
People with a mutation in one copy of the MSTN gene in each cell also have increased
muscle bulk, but to a lesser degree.
Researchers at Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health in China have edited the genome
of beagles to create double the amount of muscle.
Could humans be not too far from the future?
As steroids get better and better, we’re seeing bigger and bigger bodybuilders.
At what point will the human body say no mas and not be able to keep all the extra muscle?!
We’ll find out one day!
1 - Resurrections He’s ALIVE!
This one looks at how we may all become Dr Frankenstein’s monsters in the future, thanks
to new science and technology.
Was Frankenstein a forewarning for what was actually to come?Do you think we could actually
bring people back to life?
And more importantly, do you actually want to?
Well, before we get into that deep existential question, let’s be clear, we’re getting
closer than you think.
In 2015 researchers proved for the first time ever that cryogenically-suspended worms, that
means frozen worms for anyone that didn’t get that, retained certain memories after
being defrosted.
So what does that mean for us?
Well, if all goes to plan, it means that WE could hypothetically come back to life after
death.
All scientists have to do is freeze our bodies in liquid nitrogen and then basically wake
us up later.
Memories, personality, etc…
All of it remains.
However, in human tissue each freeze-thaw process causes significant damage.
Understanding and minimizing this damage is one of the aims of cryobiology.
At the cellular level, these damages are still poorly understood, but can be controlled.
Each innovation in the field relies on two aspects: improving preservation during freezing
and advancing recovery after thawing.
During freezing, damage can be avoided by carefully modulating temperatures and by relying
on various types of cryoprotectants.
One of the main objectives is to inhibit ice formation, which can destroy cells and tissues
by displacing and rupturing them.
For that reason, a smooth transition to a “glassy stage”, or vitrification by rapid
cooling, rather than “freezing”, is the aim.
Obviously this achievement is still far from happening, and there are still way too many
obstacles to overcome that probably deserves its own video.
However, it’s definitely not as far-fetched as we think.
Theoretically, with this technology, coupled with advancement in stem cell therapy, most
likely means that one day certain people will have the option to live forever?!
Watch this next video to find out how she stole 4 million dollars and got away with
it!