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“What Scientific Breakthrough Are We Closer To Than Most People Realize?” (29 Answers)
Article created by: Viktorija Ošikaitė
Science is awesome. It helps cure diseases, prolong our lifespans, and improve our quality of life. Just recently, surgeons in the U.S. transplanted a pig kidney into a man. Last year, scientists finally successfully sequenced the Y chromosome, which could potentially help solve numerous health issues, including infertility in men.
Perhaps inspired by how fast science is moving, one person decided to enquire about other discoveries that humanity might be able to celebrate soon. “What scientific breakthrough are we closer to than most people realize?” they asked. So, if you’re in need of some positivity in your life and want to see what the human mind is capable of, check out what these people shared below!
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#1
Vaccines for herpes and Lyme's Disease are in deep (successful) clinical trials and should be available to the public very soon.
Binky Melnik 9 months ago (edited)
I had no idea! I’ve somehow managed to get to 65 without having contracted herpes (that has got to be some kinda miracle!) and these days look at people with suspicion and think “Is it worth risking herpes *now*?” I’d be so very grateful if it comes out in time for me to have some fun again! I had no clue these were being worked on. Of course, the stupid will refuse them and neither disease is likely to killl those fools, so people will still be spreading it. At least the stupid will keep it to themselves. Am delighted about the Lyme news as well! My mom had it four times (she lived in Old Lyme), and each time was worse than the previous. I’m sorry she missed it, but so glad for everyone else!
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#2
Insanely effective cancer treatments.
Cell therapy is absolutely crazy, and it's available for a fair few diseases
#3
I have a lot of family that works in different pharma companies. We were recently discussing that there is a very promising treatment for Alzheimers in the works that could stop the progression of the disease and maybe reverse some of the brain damage. It's still in testing phase and wouldn't be on the market for years but it's something that would be awesome to be able to use.
#4
A cure for HIV seems to be on the horizon, some scientists managed to "cut" it out of cells using CRISPR last year.
Binky Melnik 9 months ago
😳 Oh, how I remember the abject terror surrounding s*x, and sooo many friends and celebrities dying gruesome, excruciating deaths, often shunned by their “loved” ones (i.e., family) 😰.. I hate that it’s taken so long, but am delighted it can potentially be a thing of the past soon!
#5
A cure for symptomatic rabies! Using monoclonal antibodies, scientists were able to alter the immune response in rats CNS significantly into infection. This is awesome because before this treatment, once you showed symptoms you were essentially dead. Rabies is also a lot more common in Asia and Africa, with roughly 56k cases a year.
Binky Melnik 9 months ago (edited)
In reading these, I’m struck by how American media concentrates on war, terror, crime, racism, and All the Bad Things; I gave up watching the news when I saw the umpteenth story about a parent tossing his baby off the roof of his apartment building to prevent the wife from being able to love it. If the news were filled with uplifting things, I think our lives would be beautiful. Of course, our heads would be in the sand about the bad things, but life would be so very different if we weren’t soaking daily in man’s inhumanity to man. (It’d be even better if the perpetrators of the inhumanity simply got a real-life ban hammer right on their skulls stopping that 🐎💩 immediately; sigh. A girl can dream.) I could barely be happier about all these bits about vaccines and cures! The people finding these things are the closest things we have to saints! Thank cow for curiosity! 👍🏻
#6
Earthquake warning system up to 2 hours.
Permanent GPS antennas are located all over the world and more densely at fault zones. About a year ago geologists found that if they stacked all historical GPS data proximal to large earthquakes, they saw there is a very small acceleration of the surface about two hours before the actual earthquake.
We are literally only missing the technology to make even more precise GPS measures, so we can do this in real time on singular regions. It is proven that this is an actual thing that happens and we can literally warn of earthquakes with a significant time span.
> And the land movement is so subtle that only by lumping all the data together did the precursor stand out, Bletery says. “If you just remove one or two quakes, you still see it,” he says. “But if you remove half, it’s hard to see.”
This is not a solution or has saved any lives, but it is an absolutely staggering discovery that will have an insane focus in the upcoming years.
https://www.science.org/content/article/warning-signs-detected-hours-ahead-big-earthquakes
#8
Large scale water desalinization
It may seem trivial to most people, but access to fresh water and water purification are the largest problems on the planet. Desalinization has been extremely expensive for years and never has the investment needed to break the scalability barrier.
Well, our friends in the Middle East claim to have made some huge accomplishments over the last few years thanks to graphene and access to abundant power. Their new plants should be coming online next year.
Not having to worry about access to clean water would mean massive jumps in agriculture, industrialization and population
Binky Melnik 9 months ago (edited)
Not having to worry about access to clean water also means ginormous leaps in population, no? I’m thinking that people who are currently dying from thirst and hunger suddenly won’t be, and they’ll be able to procreate in ways heretofore impossible (well, since the water/food problems became dire, I mean). I worry the resulting population burst will lead to … thirst and hunger for them. 😞 It’s *such* a tough nut to crack, but this entire article is giving me hope that very smart people are addressing all thisand will solve these things! 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
#9
Targeted cures for neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS etc). I’m currently doing my PhD in a new style of vaccine for AD and the advancements that have been made in the last few years are incredible. Immunotherapies really are the next major step aside from gene editing.
Edit to clarify wording: as several replies to this comment have stated, “cure” is a strong word. There has been a big shift in recent years towards a more preventative approach in treatment research, rather than reactive treatments. Unfortunately with neurodegenerative diseases, by the time you’re seeing the symptoms, it may be too late to effectively treat the condition (as is the case with AD and Parkinson’s, I won’t comment too much on MS as it is admittedly a bit out of my field, though the general principles are similar in terms of *my* research). So rather than “curing” the condition after it has already manifested and presented symptoms, we (and other researchers) are hoping to develop treatments that don’t necessarily halt disease progression, but work to prevent it from occurring in the first place. Sorry for any confusion, hope this clarifies things.
Binky Melnik 9 months ago
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this’ll happen too late to save me, but am absolutely tickled Bink that it’ll save others! Brain diseases are especially terrifying, taking away who someone is and replacing him/her with someone who’s terrified, angry, and doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror. Watching my mom and my aunt go through it, seeing them unable to swallow because they don’t know how and their food going down the wrong pipe has shown me what I’m likely in for some day, and sometimes, I can’t tell what’s worse: the symptoms of those diseases or living daily with the abject terror that that’s likely my future. If we can find a solution so people need not live this way, I’d think it’s the most incredible, wonderful news in my lifetime!
#10
Psychedelics as a treatment for mental illness. We are going to improve our ability to actually help people instead of offering them meds and crossing our fingers.
Binky Melnik 9 months ago
… Or giving us electroconvulsive therapy (formerly known as “shock treatment”) and crossing their fingers, and inadvertently damaging our short- and long-term memory leading to anterograde and retrograde amnesia. While it’s extremely effective, I’m not sure I’d have gone through it had I understood the memory problems beforehand, as it was only mentioned offhandedly, and presented only as a potential (and mild!) side effect. Had anyone told me that every. single. episode of “Law & Order” would be 100% wiped out, that is need to rewatch every single one, and do it several times because by the time we arrived at who’d done it, I couldn’t remember what he’d done. “L&O” is simply one example among many, *many*, MANY other things I had to struggle with in the immediate aftermath and am still struggling to this day twenty years later, but now with menopause and age added into this delightful 🧠 mix.
#11
Understanding how hormones and mental illness are linked, especially in women who previously were diagnosed with mental illness but who had endocrine disorders. And to add, menopause! In response to the Lancet's awful claim of "over medicalization" scores of researchers the world over have doubled down to learn more!
#12
Artificial wombs. Already have “bio bag” wombs used on premature sheep and pigs. Soon to go to human trial for premature babies in the USA. Probs eventually will be able to support a Fetus earlier and earlier in gestation over time. Cool stuff 😎
#13
Brain-computer interface.
I worked on one 10 years ago. It barely worked, but you could see the potential.
However, a few weeks ago someone played a 6 hour Civilization 6 session using only their brain.
#14
Genetic editing. I think we'll soon see news of "experimental gene therapy" treatments for cancer, diabetes and, perhaps, Alzhemiers. CRSPR-9 and all. The next logical step would be designer babies.
#15
quantum computing, it can solve complex problems in seconds that would take conventional computers millennia
#17
Susan Shore's auricle device is capable of treating tinnitus (reducing volume by up to 75% after 12 weeks of treatment) and is approved for FDA
#18
The breakthrough happened ~ cleaning the oceans of garbage. Now it needs to be more than a ship or two.
#19
A technological leap forward in battery storage capacity, cheaper and lighter weight. This will have the biggest impact on everyday life.
#20
Believe it or not, communicating with animals by translating brain waves into human language. Apparently AI research is on the verge of doing so.
#21
Semaglutide (ozempic, wegovy) in pill form at a greatly reduced price. Wegovy also has been proven to reduce cardiovascular disease in particular and make recurring cardiac events less likely for patients who've already experienced a cardiac event. Some independent pharmacies are already creating semaglutide pills.
#22
Not a single comment or answer about women’s menstrual cycles. We suffer so much with PCOS and endometriosis and other undiagnosed issues. So disillusioning
#23
Geothermal energy. People have figured out how to reuse all the drilling technology developed for fracking to dig geothermal wells [almost anywhere.]
Geothermal has the benefits of nuclear — reliable baseband power — without the downsides. The footprint is smaller, and unlike nuclear power, you can turn it on and off pretty quickly which is important for filling the gaps in green energy when the sun doesn't shine or the wind stops blowing. The US government [just cleared out almost all the red tape] for digging geothermal wells on public land too, basically it is now as easy to dig a geothermal well as it is to dig an oil well. They are even looking at using geothermal wells [like batteries] by pumping water into them and pressurizing them. So when there is an excess of solar or wind electricity, it can be stored in the geothermal wells.
#24
To not be able to trust any digital images, videos, or audio you see anywhere. Politics are going to go straight into a dumpster fire among countless other scandals, relationships, and virtually everything.
Get ready.
#25
Last week we had a major breakthrough.. the creation of goldene . A single atom thick layer of gold (like the carbon / graphite variant created a few years back). But this one can reverlutionise the electronics industry
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01118-0
#26
Just a few days ago quantum data was stored and transmitted for the first time, so that’s pretty exciting!
#27
With the ~~LIGO~~ JWST space telescope, we are learning far more about our universe that the Hubble's visible-light telescope could not capture. It is not like what we thought in enormous ways. These changes will matter.
I expect a lot more cancer vaccines coming out. If cancer numbers are reduced, the need for therapies are reduced, too.
#28
Solid State Batteries - should be a TKO against combustion engines withthe charge time and manufacturing capabilities unlocked
#29
This is rather an engineering issue, but a lot of scientists are working on this as well; RGB microLED displays. We can currently build fairly efficient blue and green microLEDs from indium gallium nitride, but the red ones are missing. Red LEDs have been available for much longer than their blue counterparts, but we currently cannot make them small enough for a high-ppi display. Many researchers and companies are trying to get the red ones working with several different approaches, and I believe we will see the first commercial applications, starting from smart watches, smartphones and AR/VR goggles within the next five years.
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