future
Exploring the future of science today, while looking back on the achievements from yesterday. Science fiction is science future.
Real Bionic Man
The rumor began in 1972. That's when Martin Caidin's science fiction novel Cyborg was published. The rumor intensified when ABC turned Cyborg into the popular television program Six Million Dollar Man. The hero of the TV series, Steve Austin, is an astronaut whose body was almost destroyed in a rocket-sled accident. But by using bits of plastic, titanium, sophisticated electronics, and a nuclear power pack, medical scientists put him back together again. Moreover, not only was old Steve restored to peak condition, he was given superhuman capabilities. He could leap over buildings, hear conversations half a mile away, see with zoom lens accuracy, and resist physical assaults that would fell a water buffalo. It all added up to good fun on the tube.
By Futurism Staff8 years ago in Futurism
Is Life on Mars Possible?
Is it any coincidence that The Martian came to the big screen the same week that NASA discovered water on Mars? Many people believe that this it's too suspicious to be a coincidence. The Martian, released on October 2, 2015, depicts Matt Damon as astronaut ark Watney, who is suspected to be dead after a dangerous storm hits Mars. After being left behind by his crew mates, it is discovered that he had in fact, survived the storm. Left to survive the desolate environment and somehow send a message to Earth that he has survived, Watney faces the challenge of staying alive on an uninhabitable planet. The discovery of water on Mars seems like it could have been created as a publicity stunt to promote the movie. However, the discovery has caused scientists to relish the possibilities of what life on that planet would be like, and to ask "is life on Mars possible?"
By Futurism Staff8 years ago in Futurism
Artificial Intelligence Endangers Mankind?
“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” chief executive of Tesla and Space X Elon Musk eerily warned listeners at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium in October of 2014. “In all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it's like, yeah he's sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.” Some people believe artificial intelligence is evil and will end the human race while others believe they will only enhance our well-being. The thought of an evil robot stampeding through a mound of human skulls are deeply ingrained by way of modern pop culture and movies like James Cameron's iconic Terminator. These outrageous, though plausible, thoughts make the idea of artificial intelligence less attractive when giving a helping hand to everything in your everyday life.
By George Gott8 years ago in Futurism
Space Exploration Developments by 2050, A Fictional Vision
By 2050, the concept of exploring Mars will have been the impetus that drove the world to tackle space exploration. Here, society is filled with goals of establishing permanent habitats on the Moon and Mars, and developing the resources of these and other planetary bodies. The concerted efforts to meet the challenges of space exploration might well bring about a multitude of exploratory developments. By 2050, how will our outer-world function?
By S.H. Jucha8 years ago in Futurism
Can We Live on Venus?
Floating cities on Venus; it sounds like something Hugo Gernsback would have published in the pulp era of science fiction, but colonizing the second planet from the sun may not be as impossible as is widely believed. Despite Dantean-like surface conditions with temperatures that can melt lead, and atmospheric pressure equal to being under 3,000 feet of water, there remains a plausible place humanity might be able to exist—not on the surface but in the atmosphere above.
By Chris Lites8 years ago in Futurism
The Watcher
From the dome of his mile-long tower, peeking above the cracked earth of a former schoolyard, Dalen studied a wall of sulfuric storm clouds overshadowing the husks of Chicago’s skyline. One level below, a window wrapped around the tower’s shaft overlooked the hidden city, laid out like the layers of an onion. Were the city lifted to the surface, it would look like a giant toy top. The carved streets and homes lay open like a labyrinth, lit by cauldrons of engineered glowworms hanging from the cavern ceiling.
By Sequoia Nagamatsu8 years ago in Futurism
Darkening Day
Remember when The Curtain went up? The only viable solution, extreme as it was, to save humanity from Earth's rapidly hyper-toxifying, invisibly over-saturating air. A superstructure, ten miles up, of floating chemical filters, each a sort of box-shaped balloon, converting noxious chemicals into safer ones. Billions of them, linked together into an edgeless shell spanning the entire globe.
By Breyen Katz8 years ago in Futurism
China's Environmental Cooperation
Ask a Westerner what most surprised them about their trip to China. If they were not staying in a five-star hotel in a major city on the dime of a major Chinese corporation, most likely you are going to get your ear bent with stories of people spitting on the floor of, not just a public streetcar, but their own bloody offices!...and also of pollution that makes L.A.’s ring-around-the-collar skyline circa the smoggy eighties look like a Rocky Mountain High by contrast. The brute summary is that this place is colossally productive, and also colossally filthy—and unashamed of it.
By Matthew Wilder8 years ago in Futurism
Elon Musk's Self-Driving Tesla Car
In 2012, there were 33,561 deaths from motor vehicle accidents. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, announced in 2015 that Tesla cars would handle 90 percent of driving within five years. This plan included all Tesla vehicles being equipped with an autopilot system. Musk compared Tesla's autopilot to the autopilot in airplanes, where people still manually control the vehicle in risky situations.
By James Porterson8 years ago in Futurism
Beginnings of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has been the goal of humankind since the dawn of the computer age. As each year passes, we depend on computers more and more. This over-dependence leads us to create an abundance of machines capable of computing. The only end goal in this scenario is the actual replacement of human intervention. Artificial intelligence is not just a simple notion of what we would like to have. It has become part of who are and our eventual progress into the next technological age.
By George Gott9 years ago in Futurism