The ideas below were once considered wishful thinking in the past, but thanks to advances in science and technology, they have now become a reality.
In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, marking “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. And, that small step is also the beginning of a series of people’s “moonshot” ideas that gradually become reality thanks to advances in science and technology.
The idea of a moonshot is as far-fetched as the attempt to go to the moon a hundred years ago.
The concept of “moonshot ideas ” can be understood as ideas that people think are illusory, expensive, and easy to fail, but if they succeed, it will mark a big breakthrough for science and technology. of humanity (like the launch of spacecraft to the moon in the past). And in fact, if we pay attention, many great inventions or achievements in science and technology of mankind have their beginnings as such fanciful ideas.
And below, let’s take a look at ideas that were once considered very unrealistic, but have now become reality.
About 13 centuries ago, Homer (author of the Iliad and Odyssey) imagined a floating city sheltered by impregnable copper walls. Up to now, the floating city has not become a reality, but mankind has created structures that can float on water, which we can see in the Netherlands as in the image below:
Floating house in the Netherlands.
These floating houses are not afraid of flooding, because the water rises, they will also float. It is such constructions that have become the premise for the United Nations to think of the idea of a floating city, to deal with problems such as rising sea levels or increasingly limited residential land.
Space travel is no longer a fantasy.
American inventor Lee de Forest once predicted that space travel is almost impossible. In an interview with Voice of America in 1957, he once said : “Humans are inherently earthly creatures, so only the imagination of science can turn them into wanderers. space travel”.
However, less than 50 years later, the international space station ISS has become a place for astronauts to live, thereby proving that it is possible for humans to live in outer space.
In fact, self-driving cars have been the research goal of many car manufacturers since the 20s of the last century, but it is not until the last 5 years that they can gradually become a reality.
Exactly a year ago, self-driving car company Waymo put a whole fleet of self-driving taxis into operation in the state of Arizona, USA. These cars will be delivered to customers via a ride-hailing application. By May this year, after half a year of operation, Waymo’s self-driving cars had served more than 1,000 customers.
Alphabet is a technology corporation that invests a lot in moonshot projects, when they have a division to incubate utopian projects called X Development. One of the companies invested in such projects is Loon, with the idea of spreading the Internet to the countryside through hot air balloons powered by solar energy.
Today, bullet trains have become an indispensable part of Japanese people.
After World War II, Japan wanted to create a convenient transportation system that didn’t cause congestion for people between major cities – and their answer was the bullet train. In 1964, the country of the rising sun successfully built the world’s first high-speed train system, just in time for Japan to host the 1964 Summer Olympics.
This tram is capable of traveling at a speed of about 60km/h, thus cutting the travel time between Tokyo and Osaka in half. By 1976, after 12 years of operation, Japan’s high-speed train system had served a total of more than 1 billion passengers – an amazing number.
Before 1938, the US banned all forms of contraception, causing family planning research efforts in this country to completely stall. It was not until more than 10 years later, in the 1950s, that social activist Margaret Sanger was able to convince an unnamed benefactor to invest in research and manufacturing of birth control pills. By 1960, this drug was certified and licensed by the US Food and Drug Administration.
And perhaps we don’t need to say much about the huge role the contraceptive pill plays in family planning, not only in the US, but around the world.
DNA Fingerprinting is a very important technique to assist in the investigation of many criminal cases.
In 1984 , the technique of “DNA imprinting” – which helps to decode specific sequences of DNA sequences, thereby using DNA as a form of human identification – was discovered. However, at the time, the father of this technique – researcher Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester – did not believe he had invented a new technique.
This technology quickly became a vital part of helping investigators solve many difficult cases, as well as providing a very reliable method of determining the bloodline of children. .
Today, we can 3D print chocolate as well.
In 1983, inventor Chuck Hall suddenly had a hunch that UV technology could be used to turn computer designs into real-life objects. Then one night, Chuck Hall turned his hunch into reality after an experiment with an acrylic-based solution.
The above experiment is the premise to create 3D Printing technology, which today has gradually become popular when applied to many different production areas in life.
Virtual reality is a technology that many big companies invest in at the moment.
A few decades ago, virtual reality technology only appeared in fiction books, in movies like Star Trek or The Matrix. What about today? Virtual reality technology is gradually becoming more popular in the gaming industry, as well as in many other areas of life such as healthcare or education.
Even now, people are applying virtual reality technology in livestock, like the way a farm in Russia did with its dairy cows.