Amazing Science That Was Once Fiction But Is Now

#1

Invisibility - bending light through lenses to essentially make an invisibility coat for the wearer.

#2

Moon travel - The first sci-fi movie was made in 1902 France and featured astronauts blasting off on a bullet-like ship to visit the moon and its inhabitants.

#3

Self-cooker - TV dinners and lasagnas made in a minute and a half? Nothing unusual nowadays, magic a hundred years ago.

#4

Flying cars - The Fifth Element's flying car chase spurred an interest in many towards piloting their very own metal birds. And we're nearly there, with product's like Terrafugia's TF-X, expected to top out at a speed of 200 mph (320 km/h).

#5

Shark repellent - In Batman's 1966 movie, the hero used a can of shark repellent on his attacker. Scientists have created a device that uses magnetism to overwhelm some of the sharks' sensors (think of a strobe light or an ultra-high pitched sound to us) and send them swimming off.

#6

Communicator - It may have been wild in Star Trek's early days, but now the idea of a communicator (or a mobile phone, as we call it) is real and way beyond what the sci-fi writers envisioned.

#7

Dog thoughts-to-speech - Remember The Simpsons episode where they hooked up a bark-to-speech helmet to Santa's Little Helper? A new-ish headset called No More Woof uses a dog's brainwaves to tell you what your pet is thinking. It still can't form sentences, but at least it can tell you about some of their thoughts such as curiosity or exhaustion.

#8

Video chat - In the golden age of Skype, Facetime, and other video messaging software, it's hard to believe only 70 years ago, corded home phones were special to own and a complete novelty.

#9

Submarine - It's also hard to believe that so many sci-fi writers' predictions have come true. French writer Jules Verne's predictions were especially on point, like in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, written in 1869, where his characters used a submarine-like device to get around beneath the waves. Today's subs don't come with the luxury dining room and paintings his did, though.

#10

Mosquito drones - These miniature-sized flying robotic drones are terrifying to sci-fi enthusiasts for their ability to snap pictures, follow your movement, and even inject you with various diseases. But what's even more frightening is that they may be more real than you think, a 1.2 inch (3 cm) model was unveiled at a robotics conference in 2007 with development only continuing since then.

#11

Light from water - If you don't have the money to buy your own hydro-electric dam you're in luck, now you can generate electricity at home with Wat Lamp.

#12

Holographic displays - We're closer than ever to having things projected in front of our faces or on surfaces and being able to interact with them. We already have holographic displays on some car windshields and portable light keyboards.

#13

Replicator - Sci-fi calls them replicators: a machine that has the ability to duplicate physical objects. Reality calls them 3-D printers.

#14

Supervirus - Superviruses wreck havoc by rapidly and massively infecting the human population. In news that's as terrifying as it is relevant, Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier modified a strain of bird flu which went on to spread and kill over half of the ferrets used in testing.

#15

Smartwatches - A wristband television, communicator, printer, and more has been a sci-fi regular, especially since the early James Bond movies. With the top tech companies competing to see who can develop the best cell-phone watch filled with loads of extra gadgets and gizmos, this one technology has come true in a very big way.

#16

Self-cleaning doors - We think back to Gattaca's self-cleaning (with fire) shower on this one. Since doorknobs are one of the dirtiest places in the house, today there exists a self-sterilizing door handle which uses UV light to kill off germs when not in use.

#17 Moving walkways

The Jetsons seemed to travel almost entirely by my moving walkway, through the house and into the office. We've seen them for years in the form of travellators or flat escalators.

#18 Facial recognition

Though we have a few products on the market (and maybe there's one on your smartphone), none are that good compared to FaceFirst's technology. The software, currently used by some U.S. police departments, can take a picture from any camera (yes, that includes traffic light cams) and compare it to a facial database.

#19 Sight to the blind

Remember Geordi La Forge's VISOR on Star Trek? Geordi was blind and used it to see somewhat similarly to others. Today, retinal implants have been approved and are currently being implanted in patients.

#20 Memory erasers

Men in Black's neuralyzer is one of the coolest sci-fi devices we've seen but its ability to use a flash of light to erase your recent memory is also pretty scary. New York scientists are testing a drug which can block an enzyme that the brain uses in memory retention.