Predictions for 2008 promise supernatural

American magazine The Economist, each year in December released a compilation of predictions about what might happen in the next year. Soothsayers are the authoritative politicians, economists and scientists. Here are the most outstanding "predictions" for 2008.

City of robots in the realm of Neptune

Strange, but now we know more about the surface of the Moon and Mars than the depths of the ocean. In the future, scientists from NASA and the University of Washington begin to hitherto unprecedented project "Neptune". Along the coast of the United States and Canada at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean (the plateau Juan de Fuca) stretched underwater city area of ​​500 thousand sq. M. km.

Live in it will be robots. They will travel along the bottom, as the rovers to Mars rovers, engaged in drilling operations, to study local flora and fauna and take it all on video. The Americans promise to all the information, including the video quickly spread to the Internet - so that soon it will be possible to admire the underwater world in real.

By the way, the project "Neptune" is associated with the activities of NASA's search for life in the solar system. Plateau Juan de Fuca known underwater volcanoes near inhabited by strange creatures, breathing methane. There are suggestions that these organisms can live and on Titan, Saturn's moon.

The brain will connect directly to the Internet

At the end of this year, a neuroscientist John Donoghue of Brown University (USA) has announced the development of a unique instrument. With its help paralyzed people can operate a computer - to work with documents, surf the web and even play. Extremely power of thought.

Often it happens that the brain is paralyzed man completely healthy, but destroyed due to the vocal apparatus, and management apparatus limbs. Donahue has developed an installation that "understands" the desire of the brain and translates them into a computer.

Experiments on monkeys were successful, in the future, the installation will be tested on humans. The skull of the patient introduce a silicon chip, which with the help of hundred of filamentary gold wires will be connected to a variety of brain cells. His mission - to collect the electrical impulses from the cell and using an infrared beam to transfer them to an external computer, which will perform all the "guidance" of the brain.

Donoghue hopes that in the future it will also manage the installation of a wheelchair and prosthetic limbs automated. If he succeeds, then paralyzed people can lead a life a little different from the lives of normal people.

A three-dimensional printer

Next year will sell copiers, does not work with a flat object (paper, polyethylene, fabric) and with volume. Using a computer, they can recreate any of the special polymer three-dimensional thing given shape. Though baby doll, though bizarre detail. Even ... a human skull. In Japan, for several years on an experimental medical printer "stamp" the bone-prosthesis required for damage to the facial portion of the skull. Already have ten prostheses successfully taken root.

The technology is simple: imagine that any thing is the volume of a stack of flat sheets. In the interior of the scanner is a tank with a liquid photopolymer that hardens when exposed to ultraviolet rays. Beam beams controlled by a computer, and subsequently, millimeter by millimeter, the treated polymer begins to harden. A rough analogue of this process - the molding of the clay.

It is planned that in 2008 there will be three-dimensional printers in the free market. Machine dimensions 1x0, 5h0, 5 meters. The cost - about $ 5,000. About the price of consumables is not reported.

Disassemble the Arctic

From The Economist Russian scientists also waiting for major achievements in 2008. Magazine is pleased that Russia has again started to invest in the study of the Arctic. It is known that the ice field in the Arctic Ocean is rapidly disappearing. A thawed Arctic ice could change the direction of the warm Gulf Stream and the climate will change in the world. Here forecasters hope that our scientists can help to quickly understand what is really happening on the northern cap of the planet.

A promise that the prophets?

The astrologer Pavel Globa:

 - Elect a new president, the country will calm down for 4 years: no change, and political passions. But it will not "Brezhnev stagnation" and the time of accumulation of forces in order to successfully cope with the looming global economic crisis, which reached its peak in 2012, first in the US and then in Europe.

By the end of 2008, the dollar will collapse and 15 rubles for it will be pulled and the euro.

Candidate of historical sciences, the astrologer Alex Penza:

 - Political conflicts will start from the middle of the year. A number of accidents and terrorist attacks will decrease significantly.

BTW

Forecasts for 2007 were fulfilled 50 percent

A year ago, on December 21, 2006, we published in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" the prophecies of astrologers and scientists in an article entitled "In the year of the Boar Russia expects a lull, and the dollar - a further fall." One header proved to be prophetic. But to fulfill any other predictions? Let's check.

Prophet

Parapsychologists Gregory Kvasha Elena Belinsky, Lydia Nevedomskaya

Forecast

"Even before September 2007, the dollar will collapse much. By late autumn, the world generally face financial chaos. But Russia get out ».

"There is no major change in policy. Will remain the ruling "party of power" - as much as up to 2025 ».

"In 2007, we activated the" successor "- Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov. Subsequently, one of them becomes president ».

What came to pass

Dollar falls today. And the financial crisis really took place - and in Asia and the United States. But, thank God, our country all that is not much affected.

"United Russia" - the ruling party - the State Duma elections won an overwhelming majority.