Tech miracles: Seven impossible things to think about before breakfast
Summary
- From travelling faster than light and living forever to speaking via telepathy and deploying dark energy for human progress, there are plenty of technologies being explored for us to wrap our heads around.
A century ago, pocket-sized supercomputers, self-driving cars and video calls were pure science fiction. Sequencing a genome in hours or chatting across continents in real-time seemed laughable. Yet, here we are—generating AI memes while checkout machines silently scan our grocery choices.
The year 2025 has seen the world tackle an unexpected climate villain (cow burps) via methane-reducing supplements. Cattle release methane as they digest food, contributing a large portion of these emissions globally. Which begs the question: What seemingly impossible technologies might shape the future? Let’s discuss some now-unthinkable ideas that could do just that.
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Faster-than-light travel: This could transform us into an interstellar species, reducing trips to Alpha Centauri from millennia to years—or even hours. But Einstein’s Theory of Relativity states that nothing with mass can exceed the speed of light without infinite energy, making this speed practically impossible to achieve.
However, Nasa’s Eagleworks Lab has explored Alcubierre’s warp drive, which theoretically contracts space ahead of a craft and expands it behind. Meanwhile, quantum teleportation experiments have transferred information over 100km via entanglement, though this does not violate relativity or enable physical travel faster than light.
A time-travel machine: Who wouldn’t want to fix past mistakes? Time travel could prevent disasters, stop wars and make anyone a stock market genius. But it comes with serious consequences. The ‘grandfather paradox’ is a classic mind-bender—if you go back in time and prevent your own existence, who exactly stepped into the time machine in the first place?
Atomic clocks aboard satellites experience measurable time differences due to relativity, proving that time dilation is real. Scientists have also created tiny laboratory-scale closed time-like curves in quantum experiments, which suggests that time travel—at least in microscopic contexts—might not be impossible.
Dyson sphere: Imagine a megastructure around the Sun—the ultimate power plant providing limitless energy for humanity. No more fossil fuels, no more energy crises. Just uninterrupted solar power. Scientists have designed solar satellites capable of wirelessly beaming energy back to Earth.
Meanwhile, China’s planned space-based solar farm could be the world’s first step towards harnessing energy directly from space. These advancements could pave the way for an eventual Dyson Swarm, a collection of small solar structures gathering a star’s energy, and propel humanity to a Type II Civilization on the Kardashev Scale.
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Biological immortality: This sounds great until you realize you have to go to work for eternity. We’ve already extended the lifespan of mice using gene editing and reversed some ageing effects in human cells. CRISPR is actively tackling age-related diseases and companies like Altos Labs (funded by Jeff Bezos) are exploring cellular reprogramming. Though true immortality remains distant, significantly longer and healthier lives seem increasingly achievable.
Controlled wormholes: Forget long-haul flights. Wormholes would let you step through one door and emerge somewhere across the universe, as if you were the Adjustment Bureau (think of the film by that name). While Nasa’s Eagleworks lab has investigated concepts related to advanced space travel, there is no specific evidence that it has modelled stable wormholes. Traversable wormholes hinge on the theoretical existence of exotic negative energy, which has yet to be discovered or understood.
Brain-to-brain communication: Neural interfaces could revolutionize communication. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are already helping paralyzed patients control devices with their minds. Neuralink has begun human trials and researchers have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication among rodents. While it’s at a primitive stage right now, future advances could lead to instant knowledge transfers and telepathic interactions, raising profound ethical and privacy concerns.
Dark matter and energy put to use: Dark matter makes up most of the universe’s mass, yet we can’t see or interact with it directly. Dark energy, which drives cosmic expansion, is even more mysterious. Experiments like CRESST and the Large Hadron Collider are working to detect dark matter. If we ever learn how to manipulate these forces, it could lead to breakthroughs in propulsion, energy production and fundamental physics—though it remains beyond our reach for now.
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Any one of these technologies could fundamentally reshape human civilization. The coming decades will determine whether we become an interstellar species or a cautionary tale for others.
We must weigh incredible opportunities against existential risks. Which of these technologies would you most want to see realized? And which gives you the most significant cause for pause? The answers may reveal as much about human nature as our technological future.
The author is a technology advisor and podcast host.
