Suspended animation, you say? The biggest and freakiest scientific breakthroughs of 2019 – SYFY WIRE

Sci-fi is obviously bizarre. You see phenomena like parallel universes, holograms, suspended animation, human-animal hybrids, zombification ... wait. Things that could once only exist on a movie screen have now been invented in a lab or spawned on a petri dish. If there is one thing this past year taught us, its that actual science can be weirder than science fiction.

Whether they give you Avengers: Endgame realness or Doctor Who dj vu, or make you wonder what kind of Star Trek type of future were hurtling toward, the most incredible scientific discoveries weve unearthed in 2019 should blow your mind just a little.

While we cant yet just freeze human animation for a journey to Mars, doctors have made an incredible breakthrough. Acute trauma can escalate to cardiac arrest in minutes, but Dr. Samuel Tisherman and his team have figured out how to stop death in its tracks by inducing a near-death state. The process of emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR) is a way of buying surgery time for patients suffering from potentially fatal injuries. Being that close to the brink and actually waking up is nothing short of unreal.

Sure, the holograms in Star Wars look real enough, but actual holograms go beyond special effects and into hardcore physics. The newest holograms on the scene upgrade even that technology because now, anyone who doesnt believe what they see can actually feel them. To achieve this, atiny polystyrene bead is trapped in a pocket of low air pressure, which levitates the bead.Its direction can be changed so fast that your brain will perceive those movements as visible and tangible shapes.

SYFY WIRE was there when Doubletree Hotels launched their famous cookie dough to the ISS along with an oven created especially for microgravity by Nanoracks and Zero-G Kitchen. Whats on the menu for astronauts is pretty limited, and proving that this experiment works could mean that we start seeing space burgers and pizza and just about anything that wouldnt result in a floating mess. If this works, it could mean anyone headed for the Moon or Mars wont solely exist on vacuum-packed dinners.

When a physicist who was an advisor on Avengers: Endgame says that infinite versions of you possiblyexist, there is going to be no way to unsee or unhear that. Sean Carroll believes that the universe can be in endless superpositions just like electrons used in quantum physics experiments. The only catch is that you have to believe those superpositions are real. While all these universes only exist in theory, that theory has yet to be disproved.

Just when we thought a disembodied brain like Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was impossible, scientists managed to grow organoid brains from stem cells. The eerie part is that these brains developed the same kind of spontaneous brain waves observed in premature babies. Nobody is out to create a Krang, but rather use these organoids to study autism and schizophrenia, which is already happening, and eventually Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and other diseases that attack the brain.

Regeneration might not just be for Gallifreyan time lords. Humans have been found to have regenerative ability in their cartilage, so even though we cant grow back entire limbs like an axolotl (yet), this could mean a breakthrough for restoring joint tissues and treating osteoarthritis.

Humanoid animals are no shock in sci-fi just think of the terrifying(and seductive) hybrid inSplice (above). But when Japan gave the go-ahead for experiments that will merge human and animal genes this summer, was it going too far? Human DNA will be spliced into animal embryos that will then be implanted into surrogate animal parents. Before you completely freak out, at least the reasoning behind this was that human DNA in animal organs will make it possible for more people to undergo successful organ transplants.

So maybe dinosaur de-extinction isnt happening, but cells extracted from a 28,000-year-old frozen mammoth specimen known as Yuka still did something unbelievable. The cells couldnt divide (which would have meant full zombification) but were actually able to get through some pre-division phases before they finally gave up. It was surprising the cells couldnt go further on a mummy so intact, so rule out an Ice Age version of Jurassic Park, at least for now.

Is it any surprise that the company whose search engine tookover cyberspace has now birthed the fastest computer processor ever? Googles 54-qubit Sycamore quantum processor can make ridiculously complex computations that would take the next fastest supercomputer on the planet 10,000 years to figure out. Obviously, nobodys got time for that. This artificial brain could also mean everything from lighter car batteries to lower carbon emissions, which were totally here for.

Next to everything hes blasted off into space with SpaceX (if it didn't explode first), the futuretech mogul has been advancing a system that could reverse neurological diseases and even make it possible to hook your brain up to AI someday. He also released a swarm of satellites to beam down space internet, and put out a car inspired by James Bonds Lotus Esprit submarine. Want lasers for windshield wipers? Hes working on that,too.

The thing about Musk is that hes a fearless innovator when it comes to tech that we only thought we could imagine or couldnt even imagine. You also know this is a man whos serious about building the future when he himself believes hell end up living on Mars.

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Suspended animation, you say? The biggest and freakiest scientific breakthroughs of 2019 - SYFY WIRE