The future scares a lot of people. Climate change, a growing population, and fewer natural resources will certainly pose new challenges for the human race in the next few decades.
But when you consider ongoing social and economic progress and all of the coming innovations in science and technology, there's plenty of room for optimism.
Now that 2015 is here, we've pulled out some of our favorite ideas about what the world will look like 35 years from now.
Corey Adwar contributed to this original report.
Child mortality rates will be vastly lower.
During the 20th century, the sharpest declined in mortality involved deaths of children under 5 years old, according to the assessment on human health from the Copenhagen Consensus on Human Challenge. "However, the pace of decline has been rapid in low and middle-income countries, especially since 1950," that report said.
Between 1990 and 2012, the number of under-5 child deaths went from 90 deaths per 1,000 live births to 48 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to a 2013 report from UNICEF.
The Copenhagen report found these trends are likely to continue, with the rate dropping to 31 per 1,000 live births in 2050 and even more dramatic declines in regions like Africa.
The factors behind this decline include prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, immunization against diseases, insecticide-treated nets to control diseases like malaria, and micronutrients for children to prevent life-threatening deficiencies.
We'll have vaccines and cures for many diseases.
While we can't know what will threaten our bodies in the future, cures and vaccines for current diseases and illnesses will surely improve by 2050.
Researchers are confident that within 20 years they can design a vaccine to stop the spread of HIV, which currently kills anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million people per year. That's according to Martin Wiselka, consultant in infectious diseases at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, as reported in The Daily Mirror.
To be sure, we've had troubles coming up with a traditional vaccine to prevent HIV in the past. However, scientists are making big strides in understanding how our immune system interacts with the virus.
While treatment already exists for malaria, which kills 1 million people a year, many organizations are working to eradicate the disease entirely. Some remain hopeful for a vaccine, while others go to the source by genetically engineering mosquitoes carrying the parasite to self-destruct.
A better understanding of the processes behind Alzheimer's bring us closer and closer to a cure.
A US vaccine already exists for meningitis, which other countries will soon adopt.
As for cancer, we're making progress in treating some types. A rheumatoid arthritis drug recently cured a young child's leukemia. A modified measles vaccine put another woman's cancer into remission. Nanoparticles could even attack cancer stem cells, which cause tumors to form. Others are trying to teach the body to attack cancer directly, by training the immune system with "cancer vaccines."
Humans could be live forever as computerized brains.
In the coming decades, some scientists hope to upload the contents of human brains into computers, allowing people to live forever inside a robotic body or even as a hologram.
Neuroscientist Randal Koene and Russian financial-backer Dmitry Itskov are trying to transfer human consciousness and brain functions to an artificial body by 2045 by "mapping the brain, reducing its activity to computations, and reproducing those computations in code," according to Popular Science.
Koene said his work isn't just about achieving immortality. It's about giving people the ability to go places and do things that are impossible in our own bodies, like traveling close to the sun.
Even if we don't meet that goal by 2050, people alive today may still have their brains uploaded in the future. That's because other scientists are working on preserving human brains and all their contents indefinitely through immersion in chemical solutions.
"If we could put the brain into a state in which it does not decay, then the second step could be done 100 years later, and everyone could experience mind uploading first hand," scientist Kenneth Hayworth, of the Brain Preservation Foundation, told Popular Science. Hayworth believes scientists may discover how to preserve a mouse brain by 2015.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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