Do I ever wonder why science fiction isn't real? No. I also don't wonder why we don't battle Orcs, have a female president, or fight Pokemon for experience points. Just because somebody can imagine it doesn't make it possible (otherwise, I'd be Spider-Man right now). And even if something is possible, somebody has to figure out how to make these things work.

Look at sci-fi a couple of decades ago. A lot of the things they imagined we'd have a thousand years from now have already become a reality or have become obsolete. Look at video games and how fast they've advanced (graphics, motion controls), look at smart phones and how you can watch a movie instantly or download an app. Look at the internet and nuclear energy. I don't know what you were expecting but if you took somebody from the 1800's and dropped them in Time Square, they'd think the were in the middle of Blade Runner.

All of those Science Fiction movies may have predicted robots and videophones and all of that stuff.... but somehow completely missed the possibility of things like the Internet and how much it is a part of everyone'ss lives now.

A thread like this is not funny when the last ten years their were so many advancements on so many fronts. Just bought a new phone today and I am amazed what it all can do....Ten years ago I would feel awesome if I could play snake on it....now it does almost everything.

Which isn't an actual scientific theory, FTR.

We've advanced far too quickly in my opinion - I don't believe that humans were designed to handle such rapid advancement.

@OP

You know your thread title has nothing to do with this thread right? Not to mention that the thread title doesn't make sense by itself either.

Seriously, this type of thing pisses me off.

-10 pts to you

Give it time. Computers are oly 50 years old, and look how incorporated they are into life now. Internet to the masses is only about 15 years old, and everyone has now.

Just over a century ago, flight was thought to be impossible, we had no tv, no microwaves, and phones were limited to the rich.

Technology is growing exponentially, and were only at the start of the exponential growth. I think in the next 30-50 years, the world will be so drastically different. Read up on something called a singularity. It's the steepest point on the S-curve (exponential growth and decay curve common for new forms of technology) where the rate of technological development will be double in only hours (it's 1.5 years now). When that happens, we will literally wake up and all out stuff will be out dated.

Also space colonization is going to happen. I'm retireing on the moon.

I agree, humanity isn't defined by technology. Humanity is how people treat each other.

I think humanity as a whole has improved in the last 200 years. Yes there are still slaves, hunger, and violence, but it's not directly shown in front of us, so the lucky few who live in developed countries get to live a really easy life.

Now we gotta help the rest of the world we so badly messed up.

A lot of questions possed here would answer themselfs if one realizes how the reality looks and behaves.

Lets start with poll choices:

1: Light Speed Travel: Never going to happen. It also doesnt matter that subatomic particles can do it sometimes. We are not subatomic particles and our physics are different. Also the consequences of reaching light speed make lightspeed useless for us. First you need to know that you need infinite energy to speed up 1 ATOM to lightspeed. All mass in the observable universe transformed flawlessly into pure acceleration energy would not be enough to speed up 1 Atom to Lightspeed. That means even if you used all stars and planets that exist as fuel for your rocket you wouldnt reach lightspeed. Lightspeed travel also is useless at full lightspeed you have infinite mass! you would become a blackhole and be everywhere at once. After using up all mass that existed and will exist you yourself would become the universe and infinite. Reaching Lightspeed is impossible for everything bigger then an atom. And even if we discover new things this will never change. Lightspeed is a barrier. Only chance for humans is to find a way around it. And all options are if at all useless for a primitive species like us.
Gods could eventually harvest somehow negative matter (not antimatter) if it even exists. And create a wormhole that would need JUPITERMASSES of negative matter to make a hole big enough to send something through. We never even detected this particel. What humans can achieve is flying with relativistic speeds= flying with a significant percentage of lightspeed. 1% Lightspeed is achievable so is 10%-20% Those are realistic numbers for the next centuries. If Fusion would work like everyone hoped in the last 60 years we could reach 50%.

We are reaching physical and practical barriers when it comes to space. Humans are not good for space travel outside of the solar system. It takes houndreds thousends MILLIONs of years to get somewhere. And where should we go ? Our neighbour star is 4 Lightyears away practically a one way ticket even if we achieve 10%-20% Lightspeed and are able to achieve the same speed at alpha centaury to slow down. And dont be fooled 10%-20% Lightspeed needes a lot of stuff not invented yet . But aslong as we dont know if there are planets around alpha centaury why should we go there at all ? To the Exoplanets then ?

Those planets are far dar away we would need centuries at 10%-20% Lightspeed to arrive somewhere even 50% or even 95% (which is totally out of reach) we would still need houndreds or thousends or houndreds of thousends of years to travel through the galaxy. Almost Lightspeed is superslow to travel around in a human lifetime. But ofcourse subjectively you would feel the time different but then there is nothing to come back to.

The step for useful interstellar Space travel is BIGGER then the step between 2011 and the time humans discovered fire. The step to Lightspeed is infinetly big.

Flying cars: I am not talking about Plane/Helicopter car hybrids. The things from Back to the future and Fifth Element.

A car like this needs to constantly work against gravity and would need a nuclear reactor as power source. Also it would be as loud as a jet. And flying to close over people/cars would most certainly damage or kill them. The only semi realistic chance is if we would discover anti gravity. A force like this never was observed. Maybe a gravity shielding or tempering with the Higgs particle could help but none of these things were discovered and its very unlikely we as humans can manipulate natures forces PRACTICALLY to achieve the desired effects. Also a technology for flying cars would also make space travel a real option. Meaning if we have Flying Cars we have also Death Stars and a galactic Federation. Another case of breaking physical laws like gods.

Discover habitable planets will happen in our lifetime (if they arent a cosmic oddity)
If they exist they will be far far away. Actually everything is FAR away:

We have far far away = possible to reach in a human lifetime with superadvanced technologies that are not
discovered yet.

Then there is really far away: Not reachable in the lifetime of a human life time even with superadvanced technologies.
Seriously far away: Needs a lot generations of humans to reach with superadvanced technologies
And than we have: Another Species will arrive because of evolution.

Visiting a HABITABLE exoplanet is unthinkable at the moment even if we take extreme advancements in technology into consideration. But this is still the most likely option from the first three.

Curing deadly diseases. Now we have something that is possible and realistic

Robots thinking for themselfs: We have that already in a very limited fashion. Robots thinking like humans are complex and we still have a lot discoveries and learning to do to make a humanoid robot. In our lifetime we will witness simulated intelligence and native intelligence of cats and dogs (eventually if we dont hit a wall somewhere).

A real thinking robot would be a new species and merge with the human race. We would fall in love with robots marry them change parts of our bodys to robot parts and the reality would be turned upside down. Everything would change but I guess long before there are intelligent robots we would become cyborgs since this is easier to achieve. First its going to start with curing diseases new legs limbs eyes chips in brains (everything already common) But once the robotic parts become better then the original. People will start to modify themselfs to be smarter faster stronger later people would want to see Infrared and ultraviolet who knows maybe reality is prettier if you percieve the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Like the Hubble Pictures which consist mostly out of invisible Photons. Also ut will come so slow nobody will notice it and everyone that grew up with it wont even question it.

Finding Alien Life: To many unknown factors. Maybe bacteria in our solar system. Aliens like in TV maybe someday. But they have to overcome the same shit we do when it comes to interstellar Travel. A good guess is they wouldnt be biological more a robot like beeing. Since the problems to overcome for biological beeings to travel space are way bigger then simply get rid of your biological parts its way easier and nobody in his right mind is going to construct a huge bridge over a river to carry a mountain over. If its easier to leave the mountain on one side and just swim over the river.

Teleportation: Impossible as humans. That would mean to tear a hole in space itself and make another one somewhere else. Same thing as Wormhole would require a lot of undiscovered things and god like abilities to pull it of. If you refer to Beaming aka taking a thing apart sending the Informations with Lightspeed to some place and rebuilding it also unthinkable. First your body contains so much data put on harddrives CDs or whatever the line of datastorage devices would be lightyears long. The bandwith to send your information from one place to another would beat anything thinkable. Also it would only duplicate you unless the scanning process killed you.

A lot of the things in the list are impossible and yes even if we find out new stuff about physics there will be no magic beams that totally screw over reality.

Its is simpler to create a matrix that contains our universe and to manipulate the matrix into allowing a flying skateboard then to create one.

You might think that we are not advancing because the stuff ghats been solkd to you on TV is impossible ( and yes we do know enough to say that) relieing on weird particled that may exist or not. Hoping to be able to manipulate them to do our biding and is not smart imo. Yes 100s of years ago people said doing this and that is impossible BUT we have a way better picture of how reality works then back then. And there are fundamental rules which we found that cant be broken by humans. Maybe gods that can manipulate stars and blackholes and push them around as they wish can do stuff like teleportation.

But its more likely that we create our own reality and do what we wish there then here. Also a matrix created by humans is just as real as the real life. And Humans are afterall nature. Maybe thats the fundamental plan life forms creating their own universes which then create other lifeforms which then also create other universes. Maybe our reality is another matrix by lifeforms that also were born into a matrix. Reality is relative in every way.

Humanity is faster progressing then ever before. You just look the wrong way. The really important stuff that happens right now is in medicine robotics and information technology. This will change everything in a drastic way more then a flying car ever could.

You rarely notice how rapidly something is advancing when it is happening, you usually notice when something draws attention to how far things have come ... Using a videogame example, when I was my nephews age the unbelievable graphics I was drooling over was:



The incremental nature of how everything change misleads us into believing it isn't happening rapidly