19 Fascinating Scientific Breakthroughs That Prove the Future is Now

Although we live in an age of doom and gloom, you don't have to be pessimistic.

Published 5 months ago in Wow

Modern science progresses at an exponential rate, and we are much closer to many life-changing breakthroughs than you might think.

Cures to cancer, clean energy, and complete maps of the night sky are right around the corner. Although we live in an age of doom and gloom, you don't have to be pessimistic about the future. Here are 20 recent scientific breakthroughs to give you hope.

1
The new Euclid telescope is actively taking pictures of space and piecing them together to make a map of our night sky, it just finished the first set.

2
They discovered a new antibiotic that kills MRSA.

3
Cabozantinib (Cabometyx) is a chemotherapy drug that may be a new treatment option for patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). The FDA accepted a supplemental new drug application (sNDA) for Cabozantinib in August 2024, with a target action date of April 3, 2025. The drug is intended to treat adults with well or moderately differentiated pancreatic or extra-pancreatic NETs that are locally advanced, unresectable, or metastatic.
4
We may have basically found a treatment for late stage rabies. It has been working pretty well in lab tests with rats.

5
In March, NASA and India are planning to launch NISAR, a next-generation Earth-observing satellite. The idea of using a satellite to photograph the earth and observe changing landscapes isn't anything new, but most take photos in the visible and infrared wavelengths. NISAR will instead use radar, which can penetrate through tree canopies, snow, and other similar materials to give us far more information about the underlying layers.
6
We have found a possible treatment for age-related mental diseases such as Alzheimer's by basically reactivating certain healing factors in the brains of rats, and scientists are pretty confident that this should work on humans too. The era of people living to 120-130 is closer than you think, especially when you look at the fact that especially in healthier countries like Japan, there are record high numbers of people living to be over 100.
7
In late 2023, we saw the first-ever approval of CRISPR-based medicine: Casgevy, a cure for sickle cell disease (SCD) and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT).

8
Vaccines for herpes and Lyme's Disease are in deep (successful) clinical trials and should be available to the public very soon.
9
Multiple drugs are in, or going into human trials to regrow teeth.
10
Earthquake warning system for 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.

11
Curing addiction with a diet drug (GLP-1’s). There have been lifelong alcoholics, drug addicts, people with eating disorders, gamblers, etc who’ve lost all desire for these things while on Ozempic, Wegovy, and semaglutide. They’re conducting studies already.
12
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.
13
mRNA based cancer treatment. Within a decade it will render chemo and radiation obsolete.

14
In a handful of highly specific cases, people have actually been fully cured of AIDS.
15
Growing transplantable organs.
16
Early diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson's. I've been following a story for a few years now of a woman who could smell Parkinson's and is now working with researchers to turn her weird unique ability into an early screening test.

17
Synthetic Biology. Imagine living comfortably to 100, 200 years old. Things might get weird very soon.
18
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.
19
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.