Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Human Upgrade

I'm not going to get lots of time to write today, so I can't explore this in depth, but I had to pass on this way cool article to you. Tom Maguire, guest-blogging at Instapundit, posted a link to WIRED, and a piece called "Be More Than You Can Be". Noah Shachtman relays his experiences with personally testing the Glove, a bio-enhancement device being developed for the U.S. military, along with other futuristic, sci fi-ish, totally amazing experimental attempts to upgrade human performance. Did I say attempts? What I should have said was successes. The Glove is able to help humans perform through extreme heat and exertion, and survive intense cold. You'll have to read the article to see how incredibly effective it is at helping people do the impossible. That's not the only "the future is here" kind of research going on, either. Experiments with hydrogen sulfide are sending mice into "suspended animation," allowing them to live for six hours with only 5% oxygen in the air. To give you some idea of how astounding that is, the mice who were part of the control group--no hydrogen sulfide--died after fifteen minutes! How can you not go read the rest?