H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, inspired a team of actual scientists to create transparent skin cells.
In 2020, researchers described in a Nature Communications report their ability to take a protein from the opalescent inshore squid and make almost completely see-through human liver cells.
One researcher who created a robot designed for abdominal surgery told Inverse he was loosely inspired by the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage.
The 1941 short story Reason by modern sci-fi pioneer Isaac Asimov described humans generating solar power from space — an idea researchers are taking a serious interest in today.
As climate change worsens, organizations like the European Space Administration are looking to fund projects that will design solar power stations for space that will beam energy down to Earth.
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The idea of generating solar energy from space is widely attributed to scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovky in the 1920s — showing how the influence of sci-fi and real science feed each other.
Captain Kirk’s communicator from the original 1966 Star Trek sure looks a lot like a cell phone. But which came first?
He’s quoted as saying that he took inspiration from Star Trek, but later clarified that he had been thinking about mobile phones before the show even debuted.
It’s a classic case of science and fantasy wandering the same paths.
Though the invention of headphones dates back to the early 1900s, we didn’t see the explosion of in-ear listening devices and Bluetooth until almost 100 years later.
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And earbuds weren’t the only invention that Bradbury predicted — his work also foreshadowed flat-screen TVs and even the “digital wall” of social media.
And as daunting challenges such as climate change threaten metropolitan areas, researchers are eyeing futuristic ideas, such as floating cities, to sculpt how we live in the future.