Imagine you are in 5th century. How would you feel if you see a helicopter coming, then three men jump out of it (of course with parachutes), landed down safely, use their binoculars, take some photos, and shoots people who were freaked out and tried to kill them. People will exactly think they are some kind of people with super powers. But actually all those miracles happened within the frame of technology. So, when the technology evolves bit more, we would certainly see another set of super powers in our day to day life.

Now, let’s look at the possibilities.

Telekinesis

This is definitely the coolest super power ever (but not the most powerful). It would be damn cool to move things without touching them. But as far as I see, something like this wouldn’t come in the near future. Only technology that works like telekinesis is magnets, and that itself is not a technology. We don’t really control magnets. One day, if we (as in super power fans) are lucky enough, scientist will find a way to control the magnetic fields. If you can control the magnetic fields, then you would be like Magneto, not a telekinesis like Sylar. But, that’s the way to go: one step at a time.

Invisibility


Hello, meet Mr. Invisible. Damn.. Where is he? He was just there. Invisibility is not a strange concept for science. If we focus on how we see things, that’s the reflection of the light. So, if we can make the light to pass through us then, that’s the way. Well, it’s easy to say, but can we do it? Yes, in fact, some researches in Duke University have already done that to certain extent.

However, If you are a stargate fan, then you must have seen two types of cloaking devices, one is the goa’uld/azgaurd cloaking devices for ships, cloaking devices in ancient puddle jumpers. Those are optical cloaking devices, which means the real objects are there but the light is passing through it. This is what researches in Duke University have developed. So, when you are driving, if you suddenly hear a bump, then you should probably get and check whether you hit a invisible car or man. The next type is Sodan cloaking devices. Those devices takes the objects to another dimension. That’s kind of cooler than the normal optical cloaking, but it seems like it’s not going to happen in about next few hundred years. So far, we are no where near exploring a new dimension. It will probably stay in science fiction for another long time.

Regeneration

Wolverine in X-Men, Clair in Heroes, the super power they have is their accelerated healing rate. As soon as they get injured, their bodies regenerate. So, how does the science can help us to turn into a regenerating creature? According to Dr. Alan Russell, we all have regenerating ability within ourselves. We just have to learn to speak to body. For example, if we loose our finger tip within age of 1-2, then it will grow back, but we loose that ability when we get older. So, it’s just a matter of emitting the correct signals to the body. Fortunately, there are some medicines, which can emit those signals. We just have to put that gel into our wound. Those medicines only contains natural signal, nothing else. And amazingly those medicines work for diabetics patients also.

Invincibility


Super man, how much you shoot, how much you hit, it doesn’t even scratch him. Unfortunately science can’t do much about that. There is no sign of super azgaurd/ancient shields. But if you are a south Asian / have been south Asia, you have probably seen people do some freaking stuff without getting hurt like walk on fire, etc. Even some magicians do that, but these people don’t do that using tricks. Those are called as the miracles of the god, but actually what’s going on is a result of extreme excitation. Those people somehow manage to make them invincible. But unfortunately scientists only criticize them. They don’t really have a mental/physical way of going to that stage. However, Dr. Kovoor had some theories on those.

To summarize, if someone shoots you in the near future, you definitely going to get hurt.

Flying


First superman inspired us with flying. Then, Nathan Petrelli came along with a weird funny flying ability. But have you ever though, before both of them, birds inspired us by flying, and as a result we are doing that right now. Helicopters, Air Planes, etc. However, there are several ways of flying. The first is by manipulating air. That’s the current technology we are using to fly helicopters, planes, etc. However, rockets uses Newton’s third law, and speaking of rockets, we have personal jetpacks, specially in GTA(a game). Those are kind of cooler than helicopters, but for some reason those didn’t get really succeeded.

Considering the limitation of flying using above methods, the best way to do that would be manipulate the gravity. I guess that’s what superman do?? Scientist have already created some anti-gravity rooms, but that technology cannot be directly applied in the field, not so soon.

There is something else is going on in the world : Flying cars. However, those are not the science fiction flying cars which uses anti-gravity technology. Those can be explained as the next generation of helicopters. Anyway, with the evolvement of flying cars and may be little bit more of the anti-gravity technology we’ll able fly smoothly soon.(Not to mention that we are already flying with some heavy machines)

Super Hearing/Seeing


How would you feel if you can read a board which is several kilometers away. That’s actually very easy : use a binocular. There are very powerful binoculars. Some of those are using infrared so you can see in the night, and which can be also defined as a heat vision.

Have you heard about the ultra sensitive microphones? Yes, there are microphones which allow you to hear anything. And you can transmit those around the world using radio signals and may be satellites.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 3:35 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.