Science of the future wows crowd
Children growing up now will have an opportunity to become virtually immortal, if scientific advances continue at current rates.
This was one of the messages from renowned scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki during his address to a packed audience at Carnarvon’s Civic Centre on Sunday evening.
He said geneticists were on their way to developing a way to grow organs inside the human body, by applying the same regenerative mechanisms human bones have.
“We will be able to replace or improve human organs, so kids today will be able to live for 5000 years with a healthy body,” he said.
He said in about a decade, technology would exist to completely replicate a person using a piece of their DNA.
Dr Karl spoke about the great moments in science as part of Carnarvon’s Aspire Science and Innovation Festival on September 8.
Computer technology, climate change and 3D printing were among the focal points of his engaging and entertaining presentation.
He said by 2018, the world’s fastest computer would be the size of a human thumbnail.
“This will trigger social change in that people will become more like computers,” he said.
“There are already people walking around with computers in their brains to tackle Parkinson’s disease.”
Dr Karl said in just 15 years from now, mobile phones would be computer chips inserted under the skin.
“We will have a chip next to a nerve and if we want to call someone we can think it and if we want to go on Facebook the screen will appear before our field of vision,” he said.
He said 3D printing would change the face of manufacturing.
“In the future 3D printers will have every element known to humankind in them and will be able to manufacture anything from a vaccine to a violin to a milkshake,” he said.
Dr Karl also spoke about global warming as one of the greatest challenges the human race faced.
“We have to stop generating carbon dioxide now,” he said.
“If we stop within the next 10 years, the bad effects of climate change will last from 500 to 1000 years but if we keep generating CO2 for the next 50 years, the effects will last for the next 100,000 years.”
Carnarvon residents also heard from shark expert Ryan Kempster, went inside Scitech’s space dome and participated in star-gazing with Dr Karl as part of Sunday’s Aspire activities.
