There has always been one inexorable force for the human spirit: curiosity. We haven’t stopped asking “what if?” and “why?” from the day that humans first gazed up at the stars, to today, as we begin 3D printing organs with which to challenge an Almighty Creator. What makes the present age genuinely unique is not just that we are raising these questions but that we now have tools, which our grandparents could barely conceive of, to help us find the answers.
Today, in every part of our planet, new technologies are enabling us to reach heights we never knew existed. Artificial intelligence is helping scholars restore ancient languages that have been lost to time. Engineers are constructing quantum computers that can solve problems in seconds that would take our best traditional computers thousands of years. Scientists are deploying the technique to cure diseases once thought incurable. Each discovery is almost never the answer to just one question; instead, it raises hundreds more.
This isn’t science fiction. Today these technologies are at work, transforming our understanding of ourselves and our planet and the universe beyond. They are helping us to find new species in the very depths of our oceans, identify planets that could have life orbiting stars dozens of light-years away and even look in on the human brain itself to learn how consciousness happens. Never has the pace been faster, and never have new possibilities seemed so limitless.
Let’s take a look at seven new technologies that are making leaps in human understanding and redefining what we even thought was possible.
AI and ML: The Finders of Patterns
Picture having a research assistant who never dozes, reads millions of documents in minutes and never forgets or makes mistakes — spotting patterns and processes that beats anything humans can manage with our own unaided brains, especially after not sleeping for a couple of days. That’s more or less what artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have turned into for contemporary genomics researchers.
How It Works in Discovery
In some ways machine learning systems are just like you — they learn from examples, such as seeing lots of different dogs. But these systems can process information at scales that would be impossible for people. Show them thousands of medical images, and they learn to recognize diseases. Give them a load of astronomical data, and they’ll discover new planets. Feed them protein structures, and they forecast how a molecule will fold.
Real Breakthroughs Happening Now
In 2024, AI systems assisted archaeologists in translating the Herculaneum scrolls — ancient Roman texts that had been buried by Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years previously. These rolled-up scrolls were too delicate to open, but AI processed X-ray scans to read the text on the scrolls without handling them at all. What did they discover? Lost works of philosophy stashed away for thousands of years.
Marine biologists are using AI to recognize and track individual whales by their unique marks, leading them to learn about migration habits and work to protect endangered whale species. In one project, AI scrutinized years of whale songs and found that these ocean giants may have regional “dialects,” so to speak — different populations all around the world effectively speaking variations of the same language.
The Numbers Tell the Story
| Discovery Field | AI Contribution | Time Saved |
|---|---|---|
| Drug Discovery | Screening millions of compounds | 90% faster than traditional method |
| Astronomy | Identifying exoplanets in telescope data | Can process 10,000x more data than human teams |
| Medical Diagnosis | Detecting early-stage cancers | 94% accuracy rate on some cancers |
| Archaeological Site Detection | Finding hidden ruins using satellite imagery | 500+ new sites in Egypt alone |
Why This Matters
AI doesn’t take the place of human curiosity — it supercharges it. A researcher might have an intuitive sense of a link between two things but proving that intuition could require years of combing through data. AI can chip away at that groundwork in hours, freeing scientists to do the scientific creative thinking that only humans can do: asking the next question, designing the next experiment and figuring out what in the heck they just discovered.
CRISPR in Action, Gene by Gene
What you need to know about the gene-editing technique.
In every living thing on Earth, instructions are inscribed in the chemical language of DNA. Random mutations and evolution were the only forces that could change that code for billions of years. CRISPR changed everything. It afforded us the power to rewrite the code of life itself with a precision we had never before had.
Breaking Down the Basics
Imagine CRISPR as a pair of molecular scissors and a form of GPS system. They can program it to search for a particular spot in an organism’s DNA — even if that DNA is made up of billions of letters, and cut or delete genetic information at that precise location. It stands for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats,” but never mind the name, notice what it can do.
Discoveries Beyond Medicine
Though CRISPR is best known for its medical promise (and indeed, it’s already being used to treat genetic diseases in humans), its effect on discovery goes much deeper.
Biologists resurrected traits from extinct animals in living species using CRISPR to figure out how evolution worked. They have edited genes for mosquitoes, making them resistant to the parasites that cause malaria, potentially saving millions of lives. Agricultural scientists have engineered crops that can survive drought and resist disease without the need for traditional genetic modification.
Most intriguing of all, Harvard scientists are using CRISPR to make a “molecular recorder” inside the human cell. They’ve essentially transformed bacteria into living data storage devices that can record conditions in the environment over time. This might help shed light on processes occurring inside living tissue in disease or healing in ways that we simply could not do previously.
The Discovery Pipeline
One of CRISPR’s most robust applications in discovery is to make “knockout” organisms — animals or plants in which scientists have shut off particular genes to see what happens. It’s as if you were to take one part out of a machine in order to see what it does. Through this method, researchers have:
- Found genes that decide how much sleep we require
- Discovered genetic switches that decide whether plants flower
- DNA sequences that exist in some people which make them resistant to HIV
- Revealed genes that influence how our brains create memories
Ethical Territory
To whom much is given, from him much will be required. CRISPR questions how much we should edit life. When scientists announced in 2018 that they had edited human embryos, they set off a global debate. Most countries have stringent regulations on gene editing in humans now, but the science that makes it possible continues to progress quickly. The issue isn’t whether we can make these changes — it’s whether we should, and on what terms.
Quantum Computing: Solving the Unsolvable
Ordinary computers — the kind that this text was written on, for example — deal in bits made from 0 or 1, on or off. They are fast, but they solve problems one at a time. Quantum computers operate in fundamentally different ways — and those differences are opening entirely new realms of discovery.
The Quantum Difference
Quantum computers employ qubits, or quantum bits, which can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously thanks to a strange property of physics called superposition. What’s even stranger is that qubits can become “entangled,” where the state of one instantaneously influences the others regardless how far apart they are. This enables a quantum computer to consider multiple solutions at the same time, instead of plugging them in one by one.
Where Quantum Meets Discovery
Quantum computing’s promise for discovery relates to simulation. Even nature itself is ruled by the strange physics of quantum mechanics — the behavior of atoms and molecules are dictated by the rules of that phenomena. Classical computers have a hard time simulating quantum systems because you’d need exponentially more classical bits for every quantum bit that you want to simulate. These systems can be natively modeled by quantum computers, which operate according to the very laws of nature.
Current Breakthroughs
IBM is employing its quantum computers in the search for new materials to use in batteries. Conventional computer modeling of the way atoms behave in battery materials would have taken centuries. Quantum computers are accomplishing this in days, possibly opening up the possibility of batteries that charge faster, last longer and hold more energy.
Quantum algorithms are being employed by climate scientists to more fully depict just how molecules that make up our atmosphere interact. These enhanced models could bring us unprecedented insight into climate change, and enable us to find better ways to fight it.
Quantum computers are also being used to simulate how drugs interact with proteins in the human body, as part of drug discovery. One quantum simulation led to the discovery of a promising new antibiotic in weeks — a process that, traditionally done, might have taken years.
Reality Check
Quantum computers aren’t about to replace your laptop. They are very specialized tools, optimized for certain kinds of problems. They have to be operated at colder than outer space, and are liable to mistakes. But the technology is making rapid progress, and some of the world’s biggest tech companies as well as government are pouring billions into quantum research. In a decade’s time, quantum computing may be applied in fields that range from cryptography to materials science.
Advanced Telescopes and Space Technology: Eyes on the Cosmos
We are in the new golden age of astronomy. Our telescopes can see the light from galaxies that formed when the universe was just a few hundred million years old. We are finding planets orbiting around other stars almost every day. And we’re doing it with technology that’s barely even comparable to the instruments of 20 years before.
The Revolution of the James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which was deployed into orbit in 2021, views the universe with infrared light, so it can peer through cosmic dust clouds that obscure visible light. Its mirror is more than 21 feet across — the width of a tennis court — and it’s working at a distance of nearly one million miles from Earth.
JWST has already had to rewrite astronomy textbooks. It showed galaxies that had formed far earlier than theories suggested they should. It found complex organic molecules in atmospheres of far-off planets — the kind of building blocks necessary for life as we understand it. It took pictures of star formation occurring inside densely packed nebulae, in spaces where previous telescopes had seen only darkness.
Planet Hunting Gets Personal
Prior to 1992, we knew exactly zero about planets beyond our solar system. We are now over 5,600 planets beyond our solar system in data that we have confirmed, with thousands more candidates waiting for confirmation. This discovery boom was driven by new technologies:
The transit method looks for tiny dips in the brightness of a star as a planet passes directly in front of it. NASA’s TESS satellite watches hundreds of thousands of stars at once to catch these subtle adjustments.
Direct imaging, once considered impossible, currently relies through “coronagraphs” that block the overpowering light of a star so that telescopes may take pictures of the planets around it directly.
Spectroscopy studies the light that passes through a planet’s atmosphere, allowing for determination of its chemical composition. We have spotted water vapor, methane and carbon dioxide on distant worlds — and are getting close to detecting the chemical signs of life.
What We’re Learning
| Discovery | Findings | Implications |
|---|---|---|
| Early Universe | Galaxies formed 200 million years after Big Bang | Universe evolved faster than expected |
| Exoplanet Diversity | Planets that don’t resemble anything in our solar system | Solar system formation theories are incomplete |
| Star Chemistry | Not all star populations have the same compositions | Can read galaxy evolution through stellar chemistry |
| Black Holes | First black hole image taken in 2019 | Confirmed Einstein’s predictions made in 1915 |
The Next Generation
The Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in Chile, will have a mirror 128 feet across — so large that it needs to consist of 798 separate mirrors. It will have the power to directly image Earth-size planets around nearby stars and may be able to see oxygen in their atmospheres, a strong suggestion of life.
Next decade’s space-based gravitational wave detectors will pick up ripples in the fabric of spacetime from events billions of light-years away, providing us with a whole new way to observe the cosmos.
Synthetic Biology: Constructing Life From Scratch
Whereas CRISPR tweaks existing genetic code, synthetic biology goes a step further — it designs and builds new biological systems that do not exist in nature. Scientists are effectively becoming life’s programmers, splicing and dicing DNA as though it is so much code.
Engineering Living Systems
Biological engineers have developed bacteria that contains completely synthetic DNA, made of different chemical “letters,” from natural DNA. They have constructed minimalist cells with small genomes (the least amount of genetic information required for life), helping to address the existential question: What’s the bare minimum needed for something to be alive?
Discovery Through Creation
Constructing artificial organisms from scratch tells us how natural life operates. It’s as if you learned about car engines by building one yourself, rather than simply reading about them. For each synthetic biology project we learn new principles that tell us how living systems work.
Researchers synthesized yeast chromosomes, replacing bits of natural yeast DNA with designed sequences. The yeast still lived and functioned as usual, but the process demonstrated to scientists which genetic elements were indispensable and which could be altered or deleted. These lessons have now been taken to bear on understanding more complex organisms, potentially including humans.
Real-World Applications Drive Discovery
Scientists have created glowing microorganisms that can sense environmental toxins when they light up in response to certain chemicals. These living sensors are being integrated into the monitoring of water quality and helping to detect pollution in ways that otherwise would be impossible.
Artificial cells have been engineered to churn out medications, fuels and other materials. But building such organisms requires a sophisticated understanding of metabolism, gene regulation and cellular processes, knowledge that adds to our basic understanding of biology.
The Artificial Cell Challenge
Creating an entirely artificial cell made from nonliving chemicals is one of the most ambitious objectives in synthetic biology. No one has done so yet, but these attempts are teaching us amazing amounts about how life might have arisen on Earth. Each unsuccessful effort removes some potential and helps us untangle what must have happened to allow life to begin billions of years ago.
This work also has real-life implications. The knowledge how to create life from scratch might help us recognize it on other planets even if that life was radically different from Earth life. It might also stand guard against how life might begin in various cosmic settings.
Deep-Sea and Deep-Earth Exploration: The Last Frontier on Earth
We say that space is the final frontier, but there’s a giant unexplored area right below our feet. The number of humans to have walked on the moon is greater than those who have descended to the deepest depths beneath any standing water, anywhere in the world. The ground below our feet is mysterious to the tune of thousands of miles down. New technologies are just now enabling us to probe these clandestine worlds.
Submarines That Think
Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) such as AUV and ROV changed the way to explore ocean. Robotic submarines like these can dive deeper than any human could survive, remain below the surface for months and create detailed maps of huge swaths of the seafloor.
The newest models make decisions on the fly using artificial intelligence. They spot interesting features and investigate them on their own, sample surface materials when they find odd chemicals changing the environment or even chase ocean creatures to monitor their behavior—all without real-time human control.
What We’re Finding Down There
Researchers discovered more than 100 previously unknown marine species during deep-sea expeditions in just 2024. But the individual species are only scratching the surface. They have discovered whole ecosystems thriving around hydrothermal vents in complete darkness, living off chemical energy instead of sunlight. These findings are rewriting biology textbooks and hinting how life might thrive on ocean worlds such as Jupiter’s moon Europa.
In addition to that, deep-sea mapping instruments have revealed huge underwater mountains and ancient riverbeds dating back to the days when sea levels were lower, as well as evidence of giant asteroid impacts that changed the Earth’s destiny.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
We can’t exactly journey to Earth’s core, but new seismic imaging technology allows us to see inside our planet with amazing clarity. With thousands of sensors throughout the world, networks detect earthquakes and advanced computers generate 3D maps of Earth’s interior from this data.
New findings from this technology are:
- Discovering that the earth’s inner core may be spinning at a different rate than its surface
- Charting enormous “blobs” of unexplained material near where the core meets the mantle that may be vestiges of ancient planets that crashed into Earth
- Learning that there might be water trapped in rock hundreds of miles below the Earth’s surface — possibly more water than in all the oceans on the planet combined
The Technology Behind It
| Name | What it Does | Big Discoveries |
|---|---|---|
| Multibeam Sonar | Maps ocean floor in great detail | 20,000+ unknown underwater volcanoes |
| DNA Sampling | Detects creatures without using eyes | IDs species by their genes in water |
| Deep-Sea Cameras | Films bioluminescent life | 90% of deep-sea life makes its own light |
| Seismic Tomography | Makes 3D images of Earth’s guts | Revealed ancient tectonic plates on Earth’s mantle |
Why Deep Matters
Not only are these findings interesting, but they’re also critical to understanding our planet. It controls climate, generates most of Earth’s oxygen and could even harbor resources that we have yet to fathom. Knowing Earth’s inner structure can help us predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, find mineral resources, and learn more about how our planet was born and grew into the way it is today.
Brain-Computer Interfaces: Mapping the Mind
The human brain is the most complex object we know of in the universe. It has about 86 billion neurons, and each neuron in the brain is connected to thousands of others, forming networks that create thoughts, feelings and everything we experience. Unraveling its design has been described as the last frontier of biology.
Reading the Brain’s Code
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are machines that read brain activity and translate it into commands or data. Early iterations assisted paralyzed people in using robotic arms with thought alone. But the newest generation is doing something even more profound: helping us map how the brain really works.
The latest BCIs can now monitor activity of thousands of individual neurons at once. Researchers can observe as memories are forged, view which parts of the brain light up during different thoughts and track how information flows through neurons networks.
Decoding Thoughts Into Words
In revolutionary 2023 research, researchers employed AI together with brain imaging to visually reproduce what individuals were imagining without their speaking. The subjects viewed videos or imagined experiences while researchers recorded their brain activity. The AI system was trained to predict which mental images went with which brain patterns, and then could generate descriptions of never-before-seen mental images based solely on the activity it saw in people’s brains.
This technology isn’t science fiction mind reading — it’s noisy, requires training on the individual and works best with visual imagery. But it does demonstrate that our thoughts leave physical signatures that can be detected and interpreted. To learn more about the latest developments in brain-computer interface technology, visit the National Institutes of Health neurotechnology research page.
Mapping the Connectome
The “connectome” is a detailed, complete map of all the neural connections in a brain. Simple animals with small numbers of neurons are yielding up their entire connectomes: the wiring diagrams for roundworms (302 neurons) and fruit fly larvae (3,000 neurons) have been mapped. The human connectome, replete with trillions of connections, is almost entirely uncharted — although the pace of progress is quickening.
Every new connectome map will, in turn, uncover general principles of brain organization applicable across species. For example, the brain has been found to organize information in “small world networks” — shapes that manage local processing and far-range communication effectively. But this fact has implications for everything from treating brain injuries to building better artificial intelligence.
Discovery Applications
This is how the technology is aiding researchers in learning:
- How anesthesia works (we still don’t completely know)
- What actually goes on in the brain when we dream and sleep
- How disparate parts of the brain cooperate to produce consciousness
- Why some people are more creative or better at math
- Where it goes wrong in neurological diseases
The Consciousness Question
One of the deepest questions that BCIs may be able to help address is what consciousness is. By pinpointing precisely which brain activities correspond to conscious experience — and which don’t — scientists are finding the physical signature of consciousness.
Scientists have discovered that they are doing so in a coordinated way, using complex patterns of communication among many centers rather than a single “Cartesian Theater,” where the central “self” would believe all sensory experiences to be presented. BCIs are uncovering the “signature” of conscious processing — a well-defined pattern of brain activity that is present when people perceive something, but not when people process it without awareness.
The Bigger Picture: How These Various Technologies Work Together
The true wizardry comes when these join in concert. AI mines brain-imaging data to discover intelligence. Quantum computers design experiments for CRISPR gene editing that could revolutionize medicine. Where space telescopes discover exoplanets, synthetic biology tells us what sorts of signs of life to look for on those distant worlds. Extremophile organisms found in the deep ocean also serve as models for life in space.
This interconnection accelerates discovery exponentially. All breakthroughs make tools for the next breakthrough. Every time you answer a question it opens up ten more questions to ask.
The Numbers Behind the Revolution
Consider the pace of change:
- Scientific papers published each year: More than 3 million (twice as many as two decades ago)
- New species found each year: 18,000+ average
- Number of exoplanets discovered: 5,600+ in the last 30 years
- Cost of sequencing the human genome: $100 million in 2001, under $200 today
- Large Hadron Collider data produced per second: 1 petabyte (1 million gigabytes)
It’s not only that we’re finding more, but we’re also finding faster, seeing deeper and understanding better than at any time in our past.
Challenges and Responsibilities
And with these powerful technologies come serious questions. Gene editing has also sparked fears that it could be used to create designer babies and lead to the genetic modification of the human species. The risk of AI bias creeping into scientific research is real. Mental privacy is a concern with brain-computer interfaces. Quantum computers could potentially break all of today’s encryption, posing a risk to digital security everywhere.
As we acquire the power to engineer life, control vast amounts of information and see deeper into once-hidden realms, we also need wisdom to guide these powers so that they are used ethically. The scientific community, policy makers and society at large are grappling with these questions today as they seek to maximize benefits and minimize risks.
What Comes Next
We find ourselves at a singular point in human history. The instruments we have at our disposal today would have appeared magical to researchers just one generation ago. And we’re only getting started.
We could find proof of life off Earth in the next decade. We could fix genetic diseases that have loomed over humanity for eons. Quantum computers could tackle climate modeling problems to help us save our planet. AI systems could assist us in decoding the languages spoken by other animals, and finally enable us to know what other species are thinking – as opposed to just hoping we do.
The teenagers who are reading this story today will help develop technologies that have not been invented, fixing problems we do not yet know. They’ll build on these seven technologies and climb even higher.
Every solution we find brings new questions. Each technology we invent uncovers new mysteries to explore. It’s hard to imagine a human conviction more central to the human experience than this: Humans are curious, globe-trotting creatures that like to know things and figure them out, aided only in the shallowest of ways by sight and touch, mostly keenly by logic.
The age of discovery is not behind us, in the days of Columbus or Darwin. It’s right now. It’s all around us, going on every day entirely thanks to those incredible technologies and the brilliant people who dream them up. And the most exciting discoveries? They are still ahead of us, waiting to be discovered.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do these processes enable faster discoveries than traditional methods?
These technologies crunch data at speeds and scale no human capability could match. AI can process millions of data points in hours that humans — who might work decades to crunch those numbers — would need years to analyze. Quantum machines process complex simulations exponentially faster than classical computers. Advanced telescopes collect more light and data than their predecessors, and genetic tools allow scientists to directly test hypotheses rather than wait for nature to take its course. Together, speed, scale and accuracy vastly accelerate discovery.
Are these technologies accessible only to the big research institutions?
Top-of-the-line setups, such as quantum computers and space telescopes, often need major institutional support to function at all, but others are starting to become more accessible. These CRISPR kits are also available for education purposes and are relatively inexpensive. AI tools are becoming more open source and can run on regular computers. Citizen scientists participate in discoveries using space telescope data as well as help classify galaxies, find exoplanets and discover new species online. This trend of “democratization of discovery tools” is still alive and well.
Can these technologies help fix climate change?
Absolutely. AI is being used by climate researchers to track and measure climate impacts on wildlife and humans—from food supplies to sea levels. AI models are improving climate predictions and finding optimal locations for renewables. Synthetic biology involves engineering organisms to capture carbon dioxide and produce clean burning fuels. Quantum computers are aiding in the design of better batteries and solar panels. Deforestation, ice loss and changes to the atmosphere can be observed from space in real time thanks to satellite technology. Earth exploration technology describes the interactions and processes of systems on the planet. Technology by itself won’t solve climate change, but these tools are critical for understanding the problem and devising solutions.
What breakthrough do scientists believe will occur first: discovering alien life or curing all genetic diseases?
Both are moving at a rapid clip, but the discovery of life beyond Earth might come first, perhaps in the next 10 to 20 years. Indeed, missions to Mars, Europa and Enceladus are explicitly aimed at finding biosignatures. But “cure all genetic diseases” is a more complicated goal than it seems, because there are thousands of different ones. We can already cure some genetic diseases with tools like CRISPR, but wiping them all out would take decades or more. That being said, the timetable for either could be quite a bit faster than we expect — major breakthroughs often occur as out-of-left-field surprises.
How can a non-scientist participate in these technological breakthroughs?
Volunteer projects such as citizen science offer opportunities for those who are not researchers to make direct contributions to knowledge. You can categorize galaxies for astronomers via Galaxy Zoo, assist in untangling damaged scrolls, transcribe historical weather data, spot animals in camera trap photos, or lend your computing power to help solve protein structures. Much has been discovered by citizen scientists: new exoplanets and previously unknown species in the oceans. Moreover, open-source AI projects enable programmers to participate in algorithmic development independent of scientific education.
Are human scientists going to be replaced by artificial intelligence?
No, AI is not going to replace humans. It is a tool that enhances human capability. AI can be great at pattern recognition, data processing and optimization — but it’s not creative, contextual, intuitive or capable of actually asking new questions. Science requires imagination — dreaming of hypotheses no one has tested, designing experiments no one has tried, and interpreting data in new, unexpected ways. AI enables scientists to do their jobs better and faster, but curiosity, creativity and judgment — the intangibles of discovery — are still inimitably human. And that’s where the future of science lies: humans and AI cooperating, each doing what they do best.
