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In our 24/7 news cycle, it’s easy to forget that just because something isn’t front and center in the media doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. As it turns out, things are being discovered and developed all the time, it can just be a bit hard to hear about.
Someone asked “Scientists, what's a discovery that should have blown people's minds but somehow got a collective shrug from the world?” and people shared their best examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own ideas below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
We basically “cured” most people of cystic fibrosis in the last five years. It is the most miraculous medical breakthrough I can think of, comparable only to insulin treatment for diabetics or the triple cocktail for HIV patients in the 90s. In the span of five years, thousands of cystic fibrosis patients saw their projected lifespans go up to normal. The treatments don’t work on every CF mutation, but they are incredible. The Atlantic published an article last year that made me sob.
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#2
I worked on the HPV vaccine. I helped prove you can give it to children and just eliminate that entire disease. Never gotta worry about that s**t again.
Nobody gives a s**t. Half the country apparently hates us for even doing it.
Espieglerie:
The HPV vaccine is a god damn miracle. I work in public health and it’s wonderful to see study after study showing plummeting rates of cervical, anal, head and neck, etc cancers everywhere it’s been rolled out. I also did a grad school case study on the vaccine and it was cool seeing it start with, iirc, three of the worst strains of HPV and then scale up to the 9 valent.
PeepPeep the duck 8 months ago
I love that I was able to have it. It’s amazing. For me personally I was rapèd as a kid and got warts and this ensured after initial treatments, that I was able to not worry about future scares from it.
#3
I grew up in the midst of the AIDS crisis. It was twice as scary as covid and ten times as devastating. The fact that they essentially found a cure and AIDS/HIV is no longer a physical or social death sentence is overwhelming in the best way and the fact that it's rarely talked about is overwhelming in the worst way.
cpersin24:
I'm a microbiologist and every time I taught the HIV/AIDS section i was still amazed at how fast we went from knowing nothing about this disease to today where we are testing vaccines and have treatments that keep infected pregnant patients from passing HIV to their babies or keep infected people from passing it to their partners. And we can allow infected people to live out their natural life. I agree it's amazing how this went from devastating to almost a non-issue in less than two generations.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
I'm old enough to remember Jerry Falwell calling it the "Gay Plague". If hell is real, I hope Satan has a special place for that creep.
#4
Vaccines in general, the Covid vaccine was a goddamned scientific miracle.
Peter Bear 8 months ago
Hi! This comment is here to help bury an idiot anti-vaxxer comment that someone thought was a good idea to post. To whoever made that comment; the deaths and losses and financial damage from COVID are on your head, and those like you. You own a portion of that guilt for causing those deaths. Shame on you; if you had a soul, you'd be d*mned.
Bi.Felicia 8 months ago
I'm guessing that you're referring to Apatheist Accounts comment and the first thing they literally said was that they were/are very much in favour of the vaccine. They are just concerned about any potential unknown long term side-effects, that may arise from the vaccine. Which is a completely legitimate concern to have but that doesn't make them an idiot anti-vaxxer, imho.
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Key Lime 7 months ago
Meanwhile Measles is running rampant because no one wants to vaccinate their children.
Smeghead Tribble Down Under 8 months ago
I got three of the Pfizer vaccinations and after each one I had the side effects quite badly (injection site swelled to the size of a grapefuit and was red and painful, I had uncontrollable shaking chills for a few days, a temperature etc) I also got Covid, just the once, and it was the worst headache and painful coughing I've ever had. I dread to think what I would have been like without the vaccine. It was absolutely fantastic how quickly it was developed, and yes, a scientific miracle.
Lowrider 56 7 months ago
I got 2 covid vaccine shots and still got covid. Granted, it wasn't as bad as it could've been.
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B-b-bird 7 months ago
Me and my spouse were among first in the country to vaccinate against Covid. Yes there was a lot of drama and speculations regarding possible side effects. We married after, had child, both of us and our child never contracted the disease in any form. We are healthy and fine
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 8 months ago
Perhaps. But the short-term effects of not taking it included death, so... there's that.
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#5
This at the time it was extremely significant.
The eradication of Smallpox, one of humanity’s deadliest diseases. Nowadays it’s shrouded in a bunch of anti-vax b******t, should it ever come back there is no way we’d be able to eradicate it.
Similarly, in 2011, we eliminated Rhinderpest, a common infectious disease among cattle. To date, these two diseases are the only diseases in history to be eradicated worldwide and are no longer a threat to life.
I wish to also remind you that the *global* effort to eradicate one of the deadliest diseases in cattle cost $5 billion USD. Smallpox eradication was $300 million in 1967, accounting for inflation that’s about $2.8 billion USD.
A collective $7.8 billion to globally eradicate some of the deadliest diseases on planet earth.
#6
Don't know if it's been mentioned, but if you grew up in the 70s you heard a LOT about stomach ulcers k**ling people...it was blamed on stress, but one scientist figured out it was a bacteria and tested it on himself.
That guy needs a statue.
#7
I’m not sure shrug is the right word but mRNA vaccines are a miracle.
GoofinOffAtWork:
Yes they really frickin are.
I'm just an average guy, not a scientist or dr, but this technology, just wow. A huge game changer.
Regrettably, half of society thinks vaccines are bad.
Heavy heavy sigh.
#8
My girlfriend has hashimoto and her thyroid is basically non-existent anymore. She only has to take one small pill in the morning to live a normal life instead of being dead by now. Millions of people in this world take one small pill each day and are able to live with a disease that would have been deadly back in the day.
Edit: I just wanted to clarify that there is no cure for Hashimoto and my partner is simply taking Levothyroxine to compensate for the thyroid. I am very sorry if I gave some people false hopes with my original comment.
#9
Honestly, mapping the human genome was assumed to be impossible for decades until it was done in a few short years without the fanfare it deserved. An absolutely mind-blowing accomplishment.
Pabu85:
I’m alive because of genetic testing we were only able to do because of that discovery. I’m thankful every day.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
I remember back in the 90s they were saying it could take as long as 50 years. Scientists did it in half that thanks to computer technology, robotics and the fact that Polymerase Chain Reaction is an amazingly powerful tool for many other thing.
#10
I read recently where South Koreas scientists found a way to revert a colon cancer cell to an almost normal cell which would eliminate the need for chemo. Early stages but wow, why aren’t we all over the moon and helping research?
Becky Samuel 8 months ago
Because things that can be done in a petri dish are rarely transferable to real life models, and there are a thousand and one different lines of cancer research showing promising results. Even if this research leads to a place where it results in a cure, it will be many years down the line before it can be rolled out.
#11
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Historically stem cell research used cells derived from embryonic sources. That raises tons of ethical debates. In addition, I believe it can cause issues with the body rejecting cells if they come from someone other than the transplant recipient.
Scientists then discovered that you could take ordinary skin cells from a person and expose the cells to certain transcription factors which effectively reprogram them into stem cells. From there the cells can be differentiated into specific cell types like cardiac cells, neurons, etc. An example usage would be to take a Parkinson’s patient who has lost 95% of the cells of the neuronal pathway involved in motor activity and other things, harvest their skin cells, convert them to stems cells, differentiate them into neurons and transplant them into the brain thereby recovering some of the deficits. It’s unbelievably fascinating stuff and blew my mind when I first learned about it. I don’t think they’ve even scratched the surface of its potential. Especially when you combine it with CRISPR to modify the genetics so you can potentially cure/treat all sorts of diseases.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
But for some reason we still have to hear "pro-life" conservatives complain about embryonic stem cells like they're real people. I'm taking the side of the people who are doing real science that keeps real people alive.
#12
Cereal fortification in the 1990s. It has saved so many babies from spinal deformities. It is my favorite study + outcome.
Vanessa Steis 8 months ago
Cereal fortification is the process of adding vitamins and minerals to cereal that aren't naturally present. The goal is to help people get enough nutrients and prevent deficiencies.
#13
Not as crazy as other ones, but… as a type 1 diabetic I find it crazy that they can just make insulin hahaha. You’re telling me my organs can’t but somebody in a lab can just find the formula? Hahahaha.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
In the old days they used to get it from cows and pigs but now they use GM bacteria or yeast so not only is it cheap and available, it's also vegan!
#14
"Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty" (2012) by economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.
Basically, these two men proved a causational relation between a country having well-funded institutions and country wealth. As in: they proved that strong and fair institutions CAUSE nation wealth. As in: having good institutions is the best indicator of future wealth (on national level).
While their book has been quite successful and their research won the 2024 nobel prize of economics, politics worldwide remain unchanged. Their research, which should singlehandedly disprove economical libertarianism and destroy the idea of preferring a "small government", has done little to stop the resurgence of these policies in recent times.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
Watching the economic collapse of the USA live right now because our president refuses to listen to experts. If they made a movie about these guys, one of them would definitely be played by Jeff Goldblum because he's the goto for a scientist who is completely right but nobody listens to him.
#15
I'm no scientist but I feel like the micro plastics in all our testicles and beyond the brain barrier was a shockingly non reaction.
Brittania Kelli 8 months ago
I'm convinced that we will find links to the plastics in us and our environments and things like PCOS, and all the inflammatory response conditions people are suffering from like Fibromyalgia. Also the rise of cancers in young adults (including myself, I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma when I was 20 and now have Fibromyalgia, Osteoarthritis, PCOS and more.)
#16
The doctors in London who proved cholera was bacteria in water- it wasn't the result of odours or bad smells as it were. Just by mapping where the cases were in relation to which street water pumps. Populace angry with them as one of the wells had the 'nicest' water.
Removed the pump handles. Cases went down then disappeared.
Until then cholera and many diseases ('malaria- mal means bad so bad air) thought to be the cause of air borne smells. Of course a few like TB are droplet carried.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
A man named Jon Snow, no not that one, redesigned the entire London sewer system to prevent it from happening again.
#17
The DAA pills that essentially cured Hepatitis C 90% of the time. Lots of d***s treat the disease, but few ever cure.
Dragon mama 8 months ago
I wish this was higher. What a revolutionary cure. It's not just a.ddicts that get HepC. It is common in many geriatric patients and spreads around care facilities like crazy. Many *romantic* folks there.
#18
Not a scientist but it blows my mind we casually walk around with devices that can show us where we are within a few feet anywhere on earth. And how to get to anywhere else. GPS, led screens, lithium batteries and CPUs. Sometimes it’s the combination that creates something mind blowing.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
We've come a long way from the AM radio with 8-track in my first car.
#19
The invention of the blue LED. That s**t changed absolutely everything in electronics. The Blue LED allowed us the final piece needed to produce true "white" light. Paved the way for everything with a screen.
Scott Rackley 8 months ago
Veritasium has a good video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M
#20
Cancer immunotherapy.
D***s like opdivo and keytruda have changed the game in cancer treatment. They are barely ten years old and most people don't know about them.
#21
I'm not a scientist, but I saw where scientists in Japan have found a way to grow teeth, which would eliminate the need for implants. In the not to distant future, you might see adults walking around with baby teeth.
#22
In the last couple of years they discovered an algae that had non-lethally absorbed a bacteria that produced nitrogen. It’s the birth of a whole new form of metabolism. The sprouting of a new trunk on the tree of life.
There are only 3 other known cases of an event like this in the history of life. And yet I barely heard anything about it.
The Japanese plastic eating bacteria got more coverage, but still not nearly enough.
#23
Published in late 2024 was a study showing that silicates played a catalytic role in the formation of amino-acids and proto-cells, taking a huge step in validating abiogenesis as the origin of life.
Basically, they redid the Miller-Urey experiment (which already showed simple organic compounds could emerge from inorganic compounds in conditions similar to early Earth), with a difference : in order to avoid external interferences, they coated the container with teflon and put it in a dark room.
What happened was...nothing. No reaction occured, no new compound were formed, contrary to the original experiment. Since the container in the original experiment was glass, they decided to add a few silicate pellets in their container and redo the experiment.
The results were even better than expected :
- they obtained fully formed amino-acids, not just simple organic compounds.
- among these amino-acids were the five that make up DNA and RNA.
- fully closed phospholipid chains, aka empty proto-cells, were observed.
#24
GLP-1s. It's nothing short of revolutionary. Not only does it stabilize blood sugar in diabetics, and promotes weightloss for obese people who have no luck with other treatments. It also curbs addictions to alcohol, smoking, even shopping. It has been shown to be protective for cardiovascular health, used for kidney failure. It's a treatment for certain liver diseases. And that's just what we have confirmed so far. In my book GLP-1s are right up there with penicillin and pasteurization.
Emma London 8 months ago
I never thought that there would be a working weight loss medicine on the market in my lifetime, when ten years ago it truly was science fiction. The trajectory from "that's interesting" to "wait, it really works?", it's approved in my country" and "my doctor can subscribe it for me" took something like two years!
#25
# The fact that bacteria can communicate — and have their own "language."
**→** ***Quorum sensing***
Scientists discovered that bacteria aren't just single-celled loners they actually communicate with chemical signals, vote on decisions, and act collectively when they reach a "quorum" (like, "Okay, now there's enough of us, let's release the toxins / form a biofilm / light up like in bioluminescence").
It's like social media for microbes. Literal **group chats** for germs. And it’s been happening on Earth way before humans even existed.
And we just… shrugged?
This has massive implications from understanding infections to rethinking antibiotics to designing new bioengineered systems. It’s like realizing ants build cities… but on a *molecular* scale.
#26
It seems relevant to this thread to inform everyone that in 1994, the invention of the year went to the widget in a can of Guinness that help carbonate a Guinness only when you opened it.
Second place was The Internet.
Sometimes the world doesn’t care because they don’t really understand.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
God I remember that! I was working at the highschool I was still attending building computer labs and laying ethernet cable as quick as I could back then. A lot of people think it was nonsense but Al Gore really did a lot to secure funding for the "Information Superhighway" as they were calling it back then. He saw the potential. Also no he never said "I invented the internet". Not even once. I'll link to the Snopes article about it below if you're interested.
#27
Back in 2016, when the results of the CTE brain analysis on former football players went up in JAMA and showed just how extensive and common these injuries are, it should have caused an uproar. And people were aware of it, to be sure, but it seems like most have chosen to just ignore it and assume it's someone else's problem, along with hollow justifications like "they knew what they were getting into" and "they get compensated well enough for that risk.".
Marie Clear 8 months ago
Little kids still encouraged by parents to participate in tackle football. I like football, and I love rugby, but I can't watch contact games with the same innocence anymore.
#28
CRISPR-Cas9 is actual Jurassic Park s**t.
People who were born blind have had their sight regained due to genetic tinkering made possible by this biological tech.
Mosquitos can be eliminated, practically eradicating Malaria by editing the genes, which are then passed on to offspring, making them sterile.
Food can be, and has been, made more nutritious, as in the case of Golden Rice, producing more Vitamin A in impoverished countries.
It’s Gattaca in the flesh, and people just shrugged
Edit: A lot of people are asking "Why do I still have mosquitos? or Why hasn't this happened yet??" and I can say that this technology is still extremely nascent.
It's a massive achievement of humanity and another foothold in our ability to shape nature, but it is still inaccurate. Targeting specific genes in different species, let alone our own, is time-consuming and requires many trials to get right.
Targeting multiple genes, at the same time, is exponentially more difficult. Remember that genes are just DNA sequences at random events on the entire chain. And each sequence is rarely actually next to each other on the chain.
Some of you have also mentioned that we don't fully understand the effect this would have on not only one species but all those others that interact with whichever we were trying to alter.
In short.. It's incredibly high-tech, and with incredible technology comes incredible questions and incredible consequences that need to be considered before fully deploying.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago (edited)
I'll bet Elon Musk can't wait to spawn his first GMO offspring. He's already using s*x selection to make more boys than girls. Dude is the epitome of creepy villain from a B movie.
#29
30 years ago, Japan developed a replacement for Saran Wrap or shrink wrap that was actually more durable and biodegradable. It failed test markers in America because 1) it was made out of shrimp shells 2) it had a pink hue 3) false belief that shellfish allergies would cause people to become sick 4) the packaging had shrimp 🦐 yes with the heads.
#30
Prion disease.
People don't really understand it and so they shrug it off to the point that I have seen people giving away deer meat that was chronic wasting disease positive and someone picked that meat up to consume. Then, I was banned from the group for freaking out about it.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
Mad Cow Disease was a prion disease. Prions are super weird. They aren't even alive. They're just malformed proteins. They kind of ride the cusp between life and nonlife. Sort of like Joe Rogan fans. I kid but IMO they are not alive. The prions not the Rogan fans.
#31
PCR technology turned genetics into a productive science in a way that very few people realize.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
PCR enabled the Human Genome Project and has proven itself useful in thousands of other ways.
#32
GS 441524. A medication developed for an extremely funky cat disease called FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis).
This awful mutation of feline coronavirus has a 100% fatality rate if left untreated, and the medication I stated above was first synthesized in 2018 by Gilead Sciences, an HIV medication company in Raleigh NC. This medication took it from a 100% death rate to a 95%+ survival rate basically instantly. Other countries legalized it long before the US did (which is strange since it was synthesized here but you know the FDA) and it is wild how it instantly attacks and eliminates symptoms of FIP.
Our cat had Neurological FIP, with her symptoms being extreme lethargy, dehydration, complete loss of appetite and thirst, loss of balance, and a fever. Most of her symptoms were completely gone in about a week. The fever broke after the first dose. Please if you've got cats, inform yourself about this awful disease. Most cats that pass away from it nowadays only do so because it is incredibly difficult to diagnose without an MRI or spinal tap, and if you don't get them on the medicine very quickly they don't make it long.
BTW I'm no scientist but I've completely educated myself on the world of this disease since having to treat it with our cat.
#33
The digital camera which was invented by an engineer in Kodak. Kodak wanted to keep things traditional and brushed off his invention.
#34
Lazer eye surgery.
invisibo:
I had a PRK procedure done a couple years ago. Being able to function without glasses has been life changing. Before surgery, I couldn’t see the ‘E’ everyone is supposed to be able to see. However, I can still recall the smell of my eyeball flesh being burned away :/
#35
AlphaFold 2 has a very real chance of being the most transformative tool in the history of the biological sciences. It's open source and free to download, which means that any bio lab in the *world* can get ahold of it, and because it's open source it's easy to adapt to specific situations, even more than a CCNN normally is, which is a *lot.* The research currently being done with AlphaFold's help will shape the entire human experience for decades, at least, and it's comparatively *brand new.*
But a lot of people are yelling at the top of their lungs about AI in the abstract, in both directions, and actual developments get drowned out by the vitriol. It feels surreal to know that we may have hit on something comparable, in terms of influence on human society, to the invention of the clay-fired brick, and no one seems to notice.
#36
Not a scientist but a student here- central pattern generators. Neuroscientists figured out that our spine can generate rhythmic movement patterns (such as walking) without brain involvement. This is currently being explored for treatment options for spinal cord injury. A local researcher with a lab dedicated to this came to my neuroscience class last semester and did a guest lecture on it. He thinks we’re within 20 years of people paralyzed from SCI being able to walk again with an electric implant. I think about this at least once a week and have never heard this mentioned by non-neuroscience people.
#37
The sewing machine.
Yes, there were good looms, but man, if the sewing machine was in the age of social media, it would be the next best thing.
#38
Eastern bloc nations, Georgia in particular, have been using bacteriophages to battle bacteria infections for many decades while the west focused on developing antibiotics. You can get bacteriophage treatment in the US when they've tried everything else and you've somehow managed to survive it. Seems the d**g companies have a hard time figuring out how to make money on the treatment so it gets pushed to the very thin edge margin of medicine.
Update:
Bacteriophages are used as a matter of course in genetic research; I've specified and used them myself. This is not that.
Historically the technique is to find a naturally occurring (mutated) phage that will attack the specific bacteria in question. In the US, the overriding concern has been the potential of shiga-toxin, or similar, producing genes present in the phage. This latter is wrong headed two ways in my experience which makes the assertion suspect to me. Though I haven't seen anything conclusive, the decades of research prior haven't shown this to be an issue. Regardless, it's an almost trivial test with today's technology.
A fun question: Guess where you usually look for a suitable phage?
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
I studied Shiga when I was in college. It's a really nasty way to die. Your red blood cells fall apart and your kidneys fail. You die in a puddle of your own blood that came out of your a**s.
#39
Jet packs. We spent 200 years fantasising about them as an idea, and now that they exist in working form and you can buy them online, it's barely registered.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
Flight time is still an issue unless you have one of those ones that used a massive pump a hose and water as the propellent. In that case range is the issue.
#40
The fact that long ago there were several different species of humans who lived at the same time.
Marie Clear 8 months ago
Now they think the various species didn't exactly go extinct, they believe we might have absorbed them through interbreeding and the homo sapiens eventually outnumbered everyone else simply because we had a stronger reproductive urge and an affinity for larger social groups than the neanderthals, for example. Obviously, the neanderthals are the most studied of the homo branch, with the most scientific data available, so that might not be the case for the likes of denisovans, but that's the newest theory I've heard from paleoanthropologists.
#41
Μy husband has a rare autoimmune. He should be dead. He just takes a pill a day. The rare deceases dont take much publicity but they change and save peoples life. Shout out to everyone involved.
#43
Laurence R. Doyle’s discovery that dolphins, similar to humans, have a structured language with syntactical complexity.
#44
The Protein Folding Problem has been largely solved.
We can take a string of amino acids and predict the structure with a high degree of accuracy in minutes. This used to take years.
The knowledge gained from this will change medicine and evolution in ways that we cannot yet comprehend.
#45
The discovery of the memory engram, and artificially manipulating memories within the brain.
This guy at Boston University was able to not only identify the exact groups of neurons that correspond to an individual memory in the brain, but he was also able to manipulate those memories to delete or artificially create new ones. Really the most sci-fi thing I’ve heard about in real life. Check out Dr. Steve Ramirez’s Ted talk on YouTube, he’s a very down to earth guy and explains the entire subject fantastically.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago (edited)
So Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind is just around the corner. I wonder if I can get my ex deleted? Between the abuse and later, the stalking, I really don't want to remember anything about her.
#46
1. The discovery of gravitational waves. Which should open a whole new way to see the universe, including events before the ionization event in the early universe.
2. Ai tools that can efficiently determine the structure of proteins, which was proceeding very slowly before this discovery.
#47
140 year old DNA evidence may have identified the identity of Jack the Ripper.
From a February 15th article on the New York Post:
“English historian and author Russell Edwards said DNA found on a shawl recovered from the scene of one of the k**ler’s vicious slayings was tested, revealing the butcher who terrorized Victorian London’s East End in the late 1800s was a 23-year-old Polish immigrant named Aaron Kosminski — who died in a mental institution in 1919.
“When we matched the DNA from the blood on the shawl with a direct female descendant of the victim, it was the singular most amazing moment of my life at the time,” Edwards told “Today” in Australia. ”
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago (edited)
So he wasn't some sort of Moriarty genus, and he was just a crazy random dude. Makes the most sense to me. Most serial killers are mentally ill and not very smart.
#48
The first picture of a black hole. It was a big news story but I don't think the general public got how cool that is.
Here’s the image.
Marie Clear 8 months ago
While I'm at the nerdy end of the general public, I remember it AND I was excited!
#49
That we are star dust. Literally.
#50
I feel like the James Webb telescope hype came and went very quickly. I was very hype keeping up with how intricate and difficult it was to design, launch and deploy that marvel orbiting the sun. If something were to go wrong, very small chance we could fix it. The Hubble’s problems we could fix because it was in Earth’s low orbit and astronauts could get in there and fix it. S**t, while we’re at it, add Hubble to that list. And the Space Shuttle missions.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
I miss the Space Shuttles! So cool! We could not have built the ISS without it. Nothing else had the payload capacity. Starship theoretically will but it also has a bad habit of going kaboom instead of going to space.
#51
Not a scientist, but quantum entanglement is pretty f*****g cool. Most people have no idea what it is, though. Hell, I barely understand it, just have a gist.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago (edited)
I just wish the physicists would stop putting kitty cats in boxes with nerve gas to test it. Think of the poor kitties! D**n you Schrodinger!
#52
How to land humans on the moon. Incredible technology, but no one was interested in developing it further. There is still some talk of it, and that technology would still exist, but nothing has been done.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
For now at least, there's nothing there. Someone needs to discover oil on the Moon and then we'll be all over it. That sounds silly but the Moon could be a source of Helium 3 for nuclear reactors so it's not out of the realm of possibility.
#53
I also found the discovery of exoplanets so fascinating bc we are still discovering them as we speak. I read that early philosophers were speculating exoplanets existed, and now we have confirmation with technology. I just find it so fascinating. It makes me think of all the things we speculate on now that future technology and humans will discover when we are far gone.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
That was a big one for me. The first exoplanet system was the detection of not one but three planets orbiting a neutron star. That was the early 90s. Now they're finding new planets every day.
#54
It's less a specific technology and more a broad sense, but we've progressed more in the last 5 years than we did in the 200,000 years it took us to get here. We've had fusion reactions! Quantum computers! AI (while I dislike the art aspect) has revolutionized how we interact with information.
Basically, I'm so excited to see what technology will look like in the next 10-50-100 years i can barely contain my excitement! We've progressed Bit information so much that in the next few years we will need to discover a whole new way of processing information, because we've perfected it already!!!!!
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago
Actually nuclear fusion is pretty old technology. Castle Bravo was 1954. It's just hard to run a car on nuclear bombs.
#55
Still a lot more to do here but we recently discovered a potential explanation for how environmental and metabolic factors influence the expression of certain genes in our DNA: amyloid proteins.
This is remarkable because it partially redeems long-debunked genetic theorists like Lamarck, Lysenko and Ivan Michurin who thought environmental factors were the primary drivers of heritability, and believed DNA was over-sold in this regard.
Problem was that once we better understood DNA, we slightly over-corrected and dismissed environmental/metabolic influence in favour of DNA-exclusive thinking, but that has always failed to fully explain a few things. Recentish studies have shown things like heritability in alcoholism, which was poorly explained by DNA but IS explained by DNA methylation and amyloid proteins which can essentially cause certain genes within your DNA to express more strongly, or less strongly, or even switch off entirely.
Basically it turned out the truth was, and always has been, a mix of both. Dismissing the primacy of DNA was foolish for the Lamarckist/Michurinist faction of scientists, but mainstream researchers also made a huge blunder in dismissing the opposing school of thought for so long as well.
#56
The fax modem. It was invented in 1843 or so, but sat around for 120 years because everyone just sort of shrugged and didn't really know what to do with it until the Internet was invented. Most people think of it as being heavily in use in the 1970s and 1980s and whatever, but no-- it's a 19th century invention that got a collective shrug from the cowboys of its day.
Marie Clear 8 months ago
Nope, well before the internet. It was popular in the 1960s. In 1966 Xerox came up with a machine that could connect to any phone, and it took off. But yeah, faxes were around WAY before that. In 1860 a fax was sent from Paris to Lyon. In 1924 a machine from AT&T was used to send photos long distance for newspapers to use. In 1955, the first radio fax was sent across thousands of miles. But from the 1960s to today, the main improvement in fax technology was the price of a machine coming down so low that eventually anyone could own one.
#57
There is a promising new treatment device for tinnitus (developed by u Michigan) that is waiting for FDA approval, really can’t wait.
#58
That in 2022, we achieved net positive fusion energy, or Q=1. More recently we've gotten Q=2.3.
We did it on 1970 laser technology. Our modern stuff just needs to be technically proven in this high power setup. Just need to make the cheap industrial high power lasers and array towards a reaction chamber. We could have real fusion power plants in the next five to ten years.
Marie Clear 8 months ago
There are already commercial plants under construction. Also, on a related note, there are a lot of commercial fusion engineers crossing fingers and toes.
#59
The solid state transistor, what was once the size of a light bulb is now in nanometers and there are billions of them in a single PC processor smaller than a postage stamp.
#60
Claude Shannon and information theory. It took a while to grab hold and for the technology to catch up, but computers, cell phones, streaming, www, etc. would have been significantly delayed for not his work.
#61
As a geologist, the discovery of mantle blobs and the latest theory that they may be debris from whatever early planetary collision that formed moon is f*****g wild.
#62
Next generation sequencing! This is how we are able to sequence people’s genomes in a few days for a few thousand dollars, while the original human genome project spent about $1 billion to sequence the first human genome. It’s what’s making medicine possible.
Marie Clear 8 months ago
I was involved in college in editing papers about the Human Genome Project in the 1980s (proposals for funding the computer infrastructure and tools), before the project even started. Original timeline to finish was 15 years, but they worried it would take much longer. They completed it 2 years ahead of schedule. Thank you computers! I think the current record for sequencing a complete human genome is just over 5 hours, though commercially it can take weeks to turn around.
#63
An oldie but a goodie: stellar spectroscopy.
Because of quantum mechanics, when light passes close to an atom, sometimes the electrons in change orbital they either emit or absorb photons. On a galactic scale, if you've got lots of atoms that can add up to A LOT of light.
But electron orbitals have a specific energy depending on the element and only photons of *exactly that energy* can be absorbed. And photon energy is determined by wavelength. And we know the elements' characteristic wavelengths *very well*.
So that adds up to a lot of extra or a lot of missing photons that travel ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE UNIVERSE to our telescopes.
So we essentially know what elements are in stars and the intervening media from hundreds of light years away, on the largest scale known to man because of the interaction of the smallest scale known to man.
#65
Photons behave differently when they're being observed by a human or instrument vs. when they're not being observed.
Marie Clear 8 months ago
I think it's not the "observing" but the additional light that must be added to the equation that allows them to be observed. Same with particles in Schrodinger's cat experiments (quantum superposition was proven in the last decade of so, but "observed" means introducing environmental interference, such as the particle hitting something larger, or adding light to the environment). So a photon of light, which transitions between acting like a wave and a particle, changes its behavior when there is environmental interference. And measuring, or "observing," inevitably causes environmental interference.
#66
Not a scientist, but the Theory of Inflation, how all matter and energy in the universe was created in the blink of an eye. Small variations at the largest scales are connected to quantum fluctuations at the smallest scales before the expansion. Basically the bang of the Big Bang, and yet nobody seems
To get how fundamental this is.
#67
Dating based around yyyy/mm/dd instead of mm/dd/yyyy
Does anyone have any idea how much of a time save it is when your inputting any data files into a computer? Just one click, and you have a neat, chronological list of all files bunched together with similar topics, but folks in The States get so mad whenever you put the year first instead of the month.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 8 months ago (edited)
We implemented a modified version this at my work this year. Year first followed by Julian Date. Yeah, I'm an American.
#68
My mind went off in another direction.
Judging by all of the hype, we were supposed to be blown away by the invention of the century that would change all of human kind…come to find out it wasn’t all humankind, just mall security…
Segway. No one cared.
#69
We are on the cusp of Nuclear Fusion as an energy source, and it seems to just get swept under the rug.
Nils Skirnir 8 months ago
We have been on the cusp for 30 years. Still have no sustainable fusion
What do you think ?
Lady Eowyn 8 months ago
Fascinating. I spent way too much time here as I kept stopping to google various items.
Lene 7 months ago
I read an article two years ago that stated that Danish scientists have found that keeping your nose and feet warm reduces the risk of getting the cold a great deal. And I tested it on myself because it was a fun experiment and it actually helps a lot! For two Winters now, it seems that everybody around me had the cold again and again and I just stayed clear of 90% of them. And when I did get the cold it was just in mini-versions. I think more ppl should try this to stay clear of colds because it really does no harm to stay warm (lol. I made a rhyme) and if you can ALSO avoid having the cold during the Winter that's just a super-win imo. So folks and fellow-pandas: keep your nose and feet warm in the Winter and avoid getting the cold -even if everybody around you has it. -sincerely, a mother of 3 kids aged 3-7.
Melvin Lafleur 8 months ago
I put off cataract surgery for 4 years because I'm hyper squeamish. Now after having the surgeries I'm kicking myself for waiting so long. We truly live in the age of miracles
Smeghead Tribble Down Under 8 months ago
For me in my lifetime: Dolly the sheep, the Hubble space telescope. the internet.
Lady Eowyn 8 months ago
Fascinating. I spent way too much time here as I kept stopping to google various items.
Lene 7 months ago
I read an article two years ago that stated that Danish scientists have found that keeping your nose and feet warm reduces the risk of getting the cold a great deal. And I tested it on myself because it was a fun experiment and it actually helps a lot! For two Winters now, it seems that everybody around me had the cold again and again and I just stayed clear of 90% of them. And when I did get the cold it was just in mini-versions. I think more ppl should try this to stay clear of colds because it really does no harm to stay warm (lol. I made a rhyme) and if you can ALSO avoid having the cold during the Winter that's just a super-win imo. So folks and fellow-pandas: keep your nose and feet warm in the Winter and avoid getting the cold -even if everybody around you has it. -sincerely, a mother of 3 kids aged 3-7.
Melvin Lafleur 8 months ago
I put off cataract surgery for 4 years because I'm hyper squeamish. Now after having the surgeries I'm kicking myself for waiting so long. We truly live in the age of miracles
Smeghead Tribble Down Under 8 months ago
For me in my lifetime: Dolly the sheep, the Hubble space telescope. the internet.
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