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Modern life feels seamless. You buy a phone charger, and it fits. You send a letter, and it gets delivered. But behind that convenience is a complex web of invisible global standards—quiet, often century-old decisions that the entire planet just agreed to follow. Without them, your printer wouldn’t know how to format a page, your packages would get stuck at ports, and your calendar would be in chaos.

Here are 10 invisible standards that quietly keep everyday life from falling apart.

Related: 10 World-Changing Examples of Turning Dumb Technology into Smart Technology

10 Paper Sizes – ISO 216

The A-series paper system, including the familiar A4, is defined by ISO 216, first introduced in Germany in the 1920s and adopted internationally in the 1970s. The core idea is mathematical elegance: the aspect ratio of √2:1 means that each size in the series can be halved to produce the next smaller size while maintaining the same shape. A0 has an area of exactly one square meter, so each step (A1, A2, A3…) halves the area but keeps the same proportions. This makes it easy for printers and copiers to scale documents without distortion or manual adjustments.

ISO 216 is used by nearly every country in the world except for the United States, Canada, and parts of Mexico. In those countries, the default “Letter” size (8.5 x 11 inches) is not based on any coherent mathematical principle, and neither are related sizes like Legal or Tabloid. That’s why printing a European resume on American printers often results in awkward cropping or misalignment. Software like Microsoft Word must include entire formatting packages just to reconcile these systems. Without ISO 216, global document exchange would be riddled with margin mismatches, wasted paper, and printer errors.^[1]

9 The Global Shipping Container – ISO 668

Before standardized containers, shipping was chaotic and dangerous. Goods were packed in barrels, crates, and bags, each with different dimensions. Longshoremen manually loaded everything, which took days and often damaged the cargo. This changed in the 1950s when American trucking magnate Malcolm McLean developed the first uniform metal shipping container. ISO 668, adopted in 1968, cemented these dimensions: primarily 20-foot and 40-foot (6.096-meter and 12.192-meter) units, standardized for stacking, latching, and transporting across ships, trucks, and trains.

Today, over 90% of world trade travels in containers that comply with this standard. Ports are engineered to handle ISO containers with automated cranes, and shipping manifests are digitally mapped using their exact dimensions. Every time you buy something imported—from phones to fruit—it’s moved in these standardized steel boxes. A mismatch in container height or corner castings would make entire ships unusable. In 2021, container shortages during the COVID shipping crisis showed how fragile this system is. Without ISO 668, logistics would revert to chaos, costs would skyrocket, and global trade would slow to a crawl.^[2]

8 Time Zones and UTC

Before standard time, every city kept its own local solar time, which worked fine until the invention of railroads and telegraphs. Suddenly, coordinating train schedules across regions became impossible without a universal time standard. In 1884, the International Meridian Conference established the Greenwich Meridian as the world’s prime meridian, laying the groundwork for today’s time zones. But the real game-changer was Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), adopted in the mid-20th century and maintained by a global network of atomic clocks.

Modern GPS systems, aviation networks, satellite communications, and financial markets are all synchronized to UTC. Your smartphone, laptop, and smartwatch all ping UTC servers to update their clocks—whether you’re in Tokyo or New York. Even slight discrepancies in timing can cause GPS mapping errors, delayed aircraft takeoffs, or failed stock transactions. GPS satellites broadcast both location and precise nanosecond-level timing based on UTC. The Earth’s rotation is irregular, so atomic clocks sometimes need to insert leap seconds to stay aligned. Without UTC, the entire system of global coordination would collapse into inconsistent local guessing.^[3]

7 Screw Threading – ISO Metric Thread and UNC/UNF

The ability to screw one part into another and have it hold firmly—without cross-threading, loosening, or cracking—relies on global agreement about how threads are cut. The ISO metric thread system, adopted widely after World War II, defines everything from thread angle (60 degrees) to pitch and diameter. In the U.S., the older UNC/UNF standards dominate, but even these are now cross-compatible with metric equivalents in many industrial sectors. Engineers rely on precise tables that define tolerances for every application, from fine electronics to bridge bolts.

Thread standards are everywhere: eyeglasses, camera tripods, fire hydrants, plumbing systems, and jet engines. Without them, replacement parts would require custom machining for every repair, and supply chains would grind to a halt. A Boeing 787 has over 2.3 million fasteners, all adhering to precise standards. DIYers, auto mechanics, and surgeons benefit from these invisible agreements every day. When two parts screw together flawlessly from different corners of the world, it’s not luck—it’s a century of standardization across metallurgy, manufacturing, and geometry.^[4]

6 Electrical Plug Standards – IEC 60320 and Regional Variants

At first glance, electrical plugs seem chaotic—with over 15 different outlet types worldwide. However, under the surface, many devices still work globally thanks to the IEC 60320 standard, which governs appliance couplers—the part where a detachable power cord plugs into the actual device, like a laptop charger or printer. IEC 60320 specifies shapes, voltage ranges, current limits, insulation, and testing protocols so manufacturers can build globally certified devices.

This standard means your laptop can use the same charger base from São Paulo to Seoul—you only need a wall adapter, not a different device. It also allows regulatory bodies to enforce safety without redesigning every cord. IEC 60320 connectors like C13 and C14 (used in PCs and monitors) appear in millions of homes and server rooms. While wall outlets vary by country, internal components and plug-device interfaces are harmonized under IEC. Without this silent agreement, every device would require region-specific models, doubling manufacturing lines and choking repair ecosystems.^[5]

5 Date Formats – ISO 8601

Globally, people use wildly different date formats. In the U.S., the convention is MM/DD/YYYY; in much of Europe, it’s DD/MM/YYYY; in China and many international systems, it’s YYYY/MM/DD. Enter ISO 8601, an international standard introduced in 1988 that mandates using the unambiguous format: YYYY-MM-DD. This layout avoids confusion, is lexicographically sortable (dates sort properly as strings), and is easier for computers to interpret consistently across systems. You’ll see it used in filenames, software logs, government records, and anywhere exact timestamping matters.

More importantly, ISO 8601 prevents catastrophic errors. A reversed date format in medicine can cause a prescription or diagnostic to be misfiled by a full month. In software development, comparing MM/DD and DD/MM dates without conversion causes failed triggers or lost transactions. ISO 8601 is used in international aviation, ISO-certified manufacturing processes, and financial reporting. Systems like SAP, Git, and Amazon S3 object versioning all default to ISO 8601. Without this standard, timestamps across regions would constantly desync, breaking multi-national operations, corrupting logs, and opening security vulnerabilities.^[6]

4 Barcodes – EAN and UPC Standards

Barcodes look simple—just black lines and numbers—but behind each one is a rigid global standard: UPC (primarily in the U.S.) and EAN-13 (used globally). These were standardized in the 1970s by GS1, a nonprofit that assigns each manufacturer a unique code. Each barcode encodes information like product type, brand origin, and price lookup identifiers so that cash registers, warehouse scanners, and inventory software can understand with zero ambiguity. UPCs are 12 digits, EANs are 13, and they use mod-10 checksums to ensure scanning accuracy.

Every retailer, from Walmart to local pharmacies, uses these standards to maintain databases of millions of products. A UPC collision—if two companies used the same code—would create chaos in point-of-sale systems. EAN/UPC standardization allows products to be shipped globally without needing relabeling or repackaging. During the COVID-19 panic-buying surge, barcode scanners enabled real-time inventory tracking and resupply coordination. These strips of data are more than price tags—they’re the nervous system of global retail, quietly powering returns, restocks, and fraud detection.^[7]

3 Shoe Sizes – Mondopoint and Regional Cross-Mapping

While the general public is familiar with U.S., UK, and EU shoe sizing systems, manufacturers secretly rely on a universal measurement system called Mondopoint, defined by ISO 9407. It measures foot length in millimeters and includes width categories. Most global brands like Adidas and Nike use Mondopoint internally to design and grade footwear sizes, even if they convert to region-specific sizes for sale. Without this unifying metric, international sizing would rely entirely on eyeballed conversions or subjective fitting.

For example, a U.S. men’s size 10 might be a 44 in Europe or a 280 in Korea — but they all stem from the same Mondopoint reference. This allows factories in China or Vietnam to produce identical shoe lasts and molds for global distribution. Retailers like Zappos use Mondopoint to match international buyers with regional inventory. Even prosthetic limb companies use Mondopoint to ensure proper orthotic fit. The system is rarely printed on the box, but it ensures that the physical shoes you buy in Tokyo fit the same as the ones shipped from Berlin.^[8]

2 Credit Card Numbering – ISO/IEC 7812

Credit card numbers follow strict global formatting rules defined by ISO/IEC 7812, created in the 1980s to prevent fraud and ensure interoperability between financial networks. Each card begins with a Major Industry Identifier (MII) (such as 4 for Visa or 5 for MasterCard), followed by a Bank Identification Number (BIN), and a unique customer number. The last digit is a Luhn checksum, which can detect common entry errors instantly. This number system allows any terminal anywhere in the world to recognize, route, and authorize a transaction in milliseconds.

Behind the scenes, this format allows cross-border payments, airline ticketing, subscription billing, and fraud prevention tools to all function on the same foundation. When the U.S. transitioned to EMV chip cards, the number structure remained — only the storage and authentication changed. If credit cards used incompatible number systems across countries or issuers, global e-commerce would fracture overnight. ISO 7812 allows banks, merchants, and processors like Stripe or PayPal to all speak the same language, reducing friction and ensuring that a tap-to-pay gesture works in Berlin the same as in Boston.^[9]

1 Keyboard Layouts – QWERTY and ISO/ANSI Physical Standards

You might take for granted that every keyboard you use — from a laptop in Japan to a desktop in Sweden — feels roughly the same. That’s because of ISO/IEC 9995 and ANSI INCITS 154, which define key spacing, row offsets, and the positioning of function keys. These standards allow manufacturers to produce interchangeable keycaps, replacement parts, and input devices that remain familiar despite language changes. Even “non-QWERTY” keyboards like AZERTY or QWERTZ still use the same physical layouts beneath.

Though QWERTY dominates due to legacy adoption (originally designed to reduce typewriter jams), its continued use — and the ability to remap it — relies on consistent hardware design. Keyboard firmware, BIOS setup menus, and operating systems all assume a certain scancode mapping rooted in these standards. Gamers, programmers, and multilingual typists all benefit from knowing that the Ctrl and Shift keys will always be where they expect. Without this standard, laptop repairs, hotkey macros, and keyboard shortcuts would become a nightmare of mismatched layouts and muscle memory failure.^[10]

Ozempic is the new so-called miracle drug that, over the past few years, has taken the world by storm. The semaglutide meds are in high demand. The original use for the injection is to treat type 2 diabetes. But since people discovered it also helps them lose weight, everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Elon Musk has come out and urged their fans to get the jab.

The drug is now so popular that there have been global shortages and a large spate of knock-off copycat brands. From fears of stomach paralysis to claims it can reinvigorate your sex life, here are ten shocking discoveries about Ozempic.

Related: 10 Unbelievable Things Doctors Could Prescribe In Place Of Drugs

10 Students Work Out How to Grow It at Home using Plants

At some point soon, you could be growing weight loss meds from the comfort of your home. So say students at the University of Ottawa. In March 2025, the team announced they had devised a remarkable new way to produce drugs using plants.

The budding scientists developed a biopharming system they call Phytogene. It takes a plant and, in essence, turns it into a “machine” that can print copies of existing medication. The young researchers used Nicotiana benthamiana, a close relative of tobacco, to create GLP-1 receptor agonists. This is the class of drugs that includes the likes of Ozempic and Wegovy.

The students claim their innovative technique could help more people access the drug. It should also provide a more sustainable way to manufacture it. Student Victor Boddy explained, “Inspired by the recent Ozempic shortage, we built a proof-of-concept model system that expresses functional GLP-1 agonists in plants. We aim to create a future where people can reliably grow their own treatments at home, free from concerns about insurance, cost, or availability.”^[1]

9 Evidence Suggests It Could Recharge Your Sex Life

Taking Ozempic could give your love life a whole new whoosh of energy. Some say the drug has worked wonders on their libido. They say they have gone from feeling frisky maybe once a week to almost every day.

Researchers reckon this newfound passion could be linked to a range of factors. Obesity is known to take a toll on sexual health, so weight loss might cause a surge of desire. New body confidence, shifting hormone levels, and better sleep could all come into play as well. And some users have reported that Ozempic has harmed their sex life. A 2024 study found that overweight men have a slightly higher risk of erectile dysfunction from taking semaglutides.

For now, experts are unable to explain quite where the impact on libido comes from. More research is needed before they can untangle the complex web of human desire.^[2]

8 Study Finds Link to Rare Eye Condition

People typically take medication in the hope that it will improve their health. But all drugs have side effects, and Ozempic is no exception. In July 2024, semaglutides made headlines once again after scientists found links to a rare eye condition.

Non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) only impacts 10 in every 100,000 people. However, it is a serious condition that causes sudden vision loss in one eye. As yet, there is no way of treating it. The study revealed that those taking the drug for type 2 diabetes were four times more likely to develop NAION. For those medicating for obesity, it rose to seven times more likely. Even with the heightened risk, the condition is still rare. Harvard experts found just 46 cases from a study of nearly 17,000 people.

Scientists found no evidence that Ozempic is directly responsible for sight loss. They say more research is needed before they explain the heightened risk. Drugmaker Novo Nordisk also pointed out that the study did not consider other factors, like whether the patients were smokers or if they were taking the medication as prescribed. Nonetheless, scientists agree that the issue calls for further study. More trials are now in progress.^[3]

7 Surge in People Taking It in Microdoses

Move over, LSD. A new form of microdosing is sweeping the nation. The term usually describes taking a small amount of psychedelics. But now, people are microdosing weight-loss drugs. Scientists say plenty of potential benefits exist, as long as it is done with the correct guidance.

There are many reasons why patients microdose Ozempic. They might have shed the pounds already and are now trying to keep their new weight. Maybe they only want to lose a small amount. Or perhaps they cannot afford the full dose.

“It’s basically a tailored approach to dosing Ozempic to meet the needs of the individual,” says Dr. Britta Reierson, an obesity medicine specialist. “Now, where we get concerned is when this is happening without any guidance from a medical professional.” Experts warn that adverse reactions are likely if users do not follow their doctors’ instructions. They also worry that microdose users are more likely to inject after the medication has expired.^[]4

6 Could It Help Reduce Alcohol Addiction?

Ozempic is in no way a miracle drug or a magical cure for all illnesses, despite what some TikTok influencers might claim. However, studies suggest that the drug holds uncharted benefits, like helping in the fight against addiction. Ozempic is prescribed to people who want to lose weight because it reduces their food cravings. But evidence is growing that the drug lowers not just the desire to eat, but to drink, take drugs, and other addictive behaviors too.

Research found that people with alcohol addiction who took the medication had a 50% lower drinking rate than those who did not. Those with opioid disorders were also 40% less likely to overdose.

Researcher Fares Qeadan told reporters, “While we hypothesized that these medications might impact cravings and reward-seeking behavior, the observed reduction in severe outcomes for individuals with opioid and alcohol use disorders suggests a broader, more protective effect than anticipated.”

Scientists are yet to work out exactly how Ozempic works. While they are hopeful it can one day help treat addiction, they say more studies are needed before it can be rolled out. Nonetheless, Qeadan explains that the study “provides an exciting direction for future research.”^[5]

5 Scientists Might Have Found a Natural Alternative

In May 2025, scientists revealed what they believe is a natural way to copy the effects of Ozempic. They claim their method could allow people to control their blood sugar levels and cravings without the need for the contentious jab.

A team at Jiangnan University in China tested their new process on diabetic mice. They found that treatment with certain microbes could alter the compound levels in the rodents’ guts. Phocaeicola vulgatus (formerly Bacteroides vulgatus) caused the creatures to produce more hormones, including GLP-1. GLP-1 helps control blood sugar levels and hunger.^[6]

4 It Could Be Linked to Severe Stomach Paralysis

Ozempic’s main side effects are the same as most drugs. Nausea, headaches, vomiting, and diarrhea. The usual suspects. However, scientists are more concerned about the growing evidence that suggests the jab could be linked to rare forms of illnesses, including stomach paralysis.

Ozempic is known to alter the behavior of the stomach. The drug causes the organ to empty more slowly, which means food stays in the stomach longer. This appears to be playing havoc with a few patients’ insides. A 2023 study at the University of British Columbia found that people taking semaglutide had a greater risk of affliction. Although still rare, they are more likely to be hit by conditions like pancreatitis, bowel obstruction, and stomach paralysis. This was from a sample of 16 million U.S. patients without diabetes from 2006 to 2020.

“Given the wide use of these drugs, these adverse events, although rare, must be considered by patients thinking about using them for weight loss,” explained Mohit Sodhi, an expert in experimental medicine.^[7]

3 The Death of the Body Positivity Movement

Ozempic has killed body positivity. So say plus-size models who claim the interest in curvy women is drying up, and they are struggling to find work. Curve model and activist Felicity Hayward reckons the wave broke sometime around 2023. “Ozempic arrived into our industry, and there was a definite change,” she told reporters.

People in the industry say the rise in the drug’s popularity, coupled with shifting trends and the return of ’90s “heroin chic,” has undone what they say are positive changes over the last ten years. Others believe that fatphobia never actually vanished. They say the whole movement was a fad that some brands only got behind while it was popular.

“I think you’re seeing the separation between people that were doing it because there was a movement at the time,” says Skye Standley, who has previously modeled for Dolce & Gabbana and Rihanna’s Fenty brand, “and the people who are truly passionate about it.”^[8]

2 Prices in the U.S. are Sky-High Compared to the Rest of the World

It is hardly a shocking new truth that the U.S. healthcare market is more hungry for profit than any other country. Nonetheless, Ozempic brings home just how wildly prices can vary around the globe. In 2024, Novo Nordisk, the firm behind the drug, had to answer tough questions on its prices from the U.S. Senate HELP Committee.

The diabetes and weight-loss drug sells for around $969 in the States. In Canada, it costs $155, while in France and Germany, it costs $71 and $59, respectively. “The vast majority of the American people are sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices for prescription drugs,” Senator Bernie Sanders told Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, the CEO of Novo Nordisk.

Sanders explained that, of the company’s $50 billion sales, 72% came from the U.S. He also said he had conversed with other drug makers, who told him they could produce a generic alternative for under $100 a month. Jørgensen replied that, if Ozempic is covered by health insurance, it can cost as little as $25.^[9]

1 WHO Sends Out Global Alert over Counterfeits

In June 2024, the number of dodgy Ozempic fakes going around reached such a critical level that the World Health Organisation had to step in. The UN agency issued a global alert. They say the counterfeits are a danger to people’s health and should not be bought from unknown websites or on social media. Instead, they say that, like doctors, patients should only procure drugs from secure sources.

Medical experts first came across Ozempic knock-offs in 2022, and the WHO has been tracking the issue ever since. Authorities in the UK, the U.S., and Brazil have all been forced to step in to take counterfeit drugs out of circulation. Many of the jabs do not contain the medication that they claim to, which can cause all kinds of unwanted impacts if taken.

WHO Assistant Director General Dr Yukiko Nakatani recommends that “healthcare professionals, regulatory authorities and the public be aware of these falsified batches of medicines.”^[10]

We typically don’t expect to see much when we look inside our mouths other than our tongue, teeth, and gums. And naturally, the most “foreign object” we’d expect to find would perhaps be some food leftover from our last meal or snack. While that’s usually true, given that there’s not much to see with the untrained eye, these news stories showcase mind-blowing accounts where strange things have been found inside both human and animal mouths.

From bizarre items, scientific discoveries, and tragic turns of fate, here are ten shocking and stomach-churning finds made inside the mouth. But beware, some of these stories are not for the faint of heart or those with a weak stomach!

10 Raccoon with Meth Pipe in its Mouth Found During Traffic Stop

At approximately 7:15 p.m. on May 5, 2025, Summit County, Ohio, police conducted a traffic stop that led to an absolutely wild encounter. Not only did the vehicle have picket fences on the front and back passenger side rather than windows, but the vehicle owner—55-year-old Victoria Vidal—had an active warrant and a suspended driver’s license. Vidal was detained without incident, but the traffic stop got even more bizarre from here.

After Vidal was detained, an officer returned to the vehicle only to discover Vidal’s pet raccoon, Chewy, sitting on the driver’s seat with a meth pipe in its mouth. While the officer removed the pipe from Chewy’s mouth, he discovered another pipe in the raccoon’s hand. Naturally, the sight prompted a search of the vehicle, which led to the discovery of approximately 7.15 grams of crystal meth, 0.10 grams of crack cocaine, and several pipes.

Vidal was charged with F3 possession of drugs, three counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, and was cited for driving under suspension. As for Chewy, Vidal did have the proper paperwork to own the raccoon as a pet, so the animal was placed in the care of a family member.

9 Inmate Suffers Horrific Fate in Confinement

On June 12, 2022, 35-year-old Lashawn Thompson of Winter Haven, Florida, was arrested in Georgia for misdemeanor simple battery. However, because Thompson was unable to post the $2,500 bail needed, he was held at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta and later transferred to the psychiatric wing of the jail due to mental health issues. Unfortunately, the three months Thompson spent in custody would be far worse than any punishment handed down by the criminal justice system.

On September 13, 2022, Thompson was found dead in a dirty jail cell, his body riddled with insects and bed bugs. Thompson’s cause of death was initially listed as “undetermined.” His family, who claimed they were unaware that Thompson was in custody until jail officials contacted them about his death, began a public outcry for justice and a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.

The family went on to pursue their own independent autopsy of Thompson, but sadly, the new autopsy revealed Thompson’s death to be “one of the most deplorable in-custody deaths in the history of America.” During his three months of incarceration, Thompson—who weighed 180 pounds (81 kg) upon arrival—had lost approximately 18% of his body weight, weighing only 148 pounds (67 kg) at the time of his death.

The toxicology report was also found to be negative for medications prescribed to Thompson for his schizophrenia, with him having received the last dose of his medication 32 days before his death. Even more disturbing, Thompson’s hands, feet, fingernails, and toenails were filthy; he had over 1,000 bites, and insects were found in his mouth, ears, nose, and across his body. Ultimately, Thompson’s death was deemed a result of severe neglect evidenced by untreated schizophrenia, poor living conditions, poor grooming, extensive and severe body insect infestation, dehydration, and rapid weight loss, which led to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia.

Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat requested and received resignations from three executive staff members at the jail. Multiple investigations were opened by agencies such as the Atlanta Police Department, the Office of Professional Standards, and the United States Department of Justice regarding Thompson’s death, as well as the conditions at the jail. On August 2, 2023, Fulton County Commissioners voted unanimously to award Thompson’s family a $4 million settlement regarding his death.

8 More Than 500 Teeth Found in Child’s Mouth

An unidentified 7-year-old boy, who had long complained of having a swollen and aching jaw, was taken to the Saveenta Dental College and Hospital in Chennai, India, in July 2019, after his parents began to fear that his swollen jaw might be the result of cancer. There, an X-ray of the boy’s mouth revealed a “well-defined bag-like mass” nestled in the molar region of his lower jaw. While his swollen jaw wasn’t the result of cancer, what was discovered within his mouth was much more shocking.

The sac, which weighed 7 ounces (198 grams), was surgically removed from the boy’s mouth and contained hundreds of miniature teeth—526 to be exact—ranging in size from 1 mm to 15 mm. So, how exactly did he end up with such an abundance of teeth? The young boy, unfortunately, was suffering from a very rare condition called composite odontoma, a developmental anomaly where benign tumors made of enamel and dentin are formed.

And why exactly did his parents wait so long to seek treatment? They didn’t. Well, not exactly. You see, the boy’s swollen jaw began at the age of three, and even though he was taken to a doctor, he was so uncooperative that doctors were unable to examine him or perform any sort of investigative procedures. Unfortunately, this meant that his condition went undiagnosed, and the mass simply continued to grow over the next four years.

7 Woman Found in an Alligator’s Mouth

On September 22, 2023, 21-year-old Jamarcus Bullard was walking to a job interview in Largo, Florida, but as he passed the McKay Creek, he spotted a massive alligator with a human torso in its mouth. Bullard then alerted the authorities. When deputies arrived on the scene, the male alligator—which was nearly 14 feet (4 meters) long—was pulled from the canal and loaded onto a flatbed truck before being “humanely killed.”

A necropsy of the alligator later identified the victim as 41-year-old Sabrina Peckham, a homeless woman who was living in a makeshift campsite approximately 35 to 45 feet (10 to 13 meters) from the canal. Sadly, Peckham’s death was not due to foul play, but instead, the tragic result of blunt trauma and sharp force injuries sustained during an alligator attack.

6 Mouth Bacteria Can “Melt” Certain Cancers?

Head and neck cancer is the sixth most common cancer globally. While survival rates vary depending on how far the cancer has spread at the time of diagnosis, researchers at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ and King’s College in London made a discovery that has the potential to revolutionize treatment for these types of cancer.

In July 2024, a team of researchers led by Dr. Miguel Reis Ferreira published their findings, which revealed that patients who have higher levels of Fusobacterium—a common bacterium found in the oral cavity and gastrointestinal tract—in their mouth had “much better outcomes” when dealing with head and neck cancers. During the lab studies, researchers put quantities of the bacteria in petri dishes and left them for a few days. Upon their return, they found the cancer had almost disappeared! In fact, there was a 70-99% reduction in the number of viable cancer cells after being infected with Fusobacterium.

These findings are even more shocking because Fusobacterium is usually associated with the progression of bowel cancer. However, the bacteria seemingly has the opposite effect on head and neck cancers. Researchers hope these findings will lead to new treatments for patients diagnosed with mouth, throat, voice box, nose, and sinus-related cancers.

5 A Dangerous Game of Fetch

Like many dogs, Dennis Spring’s Peppah loves a good game of fetch. Unfortunately, when Spring and his two daughters decided to go on a weekend trip to Anna Bay, New South Wales, in August 2017, the family forgot to bring anything for Peppah to play with. The curious pup, however, was undeterred and quickly got to work.

Soon, Peppah returned with a rusty object that looked like a bike or car part and began initiating a game of fetch with her family. Thankfully, before anyone threw the object, Spring’s youngest daughter, 12-year-old Shenandoah, quickly noticed that the object resembled a bomb. It turns out that’s exactly what it was- an unexploded WWII mortar measuring 5 inches (15 cm) in length, which Peppah had proudly been carrying in her mouth.

Spring contacted the police, and the Royal Australian Air Force completed a controlled detonation on site, disposing of Peppah’s dangerous dog toy.

4 DIY Dentistry

Angie Barlow’s mother had a tooth removed, but during the dental appointment, she also learned that she had throat cancer. Barlow’s mother succumbed to the cancer at the age of 34, and her passing instilled a fear in Barlow of dentists that led her to take extreme measures when it came to her oral health.

Due to Barlow’s smoking habit, many of her teeth eventually began breaking into pieces and falling out. However, rather than seeking professional help, Barlow practiced DIY dentistry for over a decade, which led her to use superglue from a hardware store to glue the teeth back into her mouth. However, the situation eventually became so bad that the 48-year-old from Altrincham had no choice but to go to the dentist.

Unfortunately, by the time Barlow sought treatment, the toxic chemicals in the superglue had destroyed 90% of the bone supporting her teeth in her upper jaw. While Barlow was able to have her smile rebuilt in 2015, avoiding the dentist wound up costing her her life savings.

3 Mom Pries Son from the Jaws of a Mountain Lion

After being alerted by the sound of screaming, an unidentified mother in Colorado raced into her front yard where her two sons were playing on the evening of June 17, 2016. There, she was met with a horrific sight. A mountain lion was hunched over her 5-year-old son, and the boy’s head was inside the lion’s mouth. In a desperate attempt to save her son at all costs, the boy’s mother pried the cat’s jaws open, reached into the animal’s mouth, and freed her son’s head before running away.

Just after the attack, the boy’s father returned home from a run, dialed 911, and transported his wife and son to Aspen Valley Hospital. Thankfully, the five-year-old survived the horrific attack despite suffering deep lacerations to his cheek, a swollen eye, and having part of his scalp pulled back.

Prior to the incident, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials received reports of two mountain lions being spotted in the area. Both were later located and killed by wildlife officials.

2 Curiosity Lands Cat in Emergency Situation

When a cat named Kevin began vomiting and having trouble swallowing, his family took him to a veterinary urgent care clinic in Portland, Oregon, in June 2024. Kevin, however, was referred to the DoveLewis Veterinary Emergency and Specialty Hospital for further evaluation. There, an X-ray and sedated oral exam revealed the source of the problem- Kevin had a sewing needle embedded in his mouth.

While the blunt end of the needle was pressing against the base of Kevin’s tongue, the other end was impaled through his hard palate and into his nasal cavity. Thankfully, with Kevin sedated, the needle was extracted, and he made a full recovery. But how exactly did the sewing needle get there in the first place? Unbeknownst to his owners, Kevin, known for his curious nature, snuck into a child’s room where a sewing project was laid out, and he decided to taste the needle

1 Attempt at Social Media Challenge Goes Terribly Wrong

Imagine what emergency room staff would think if they saw a man and woman walk in, with the woman’s fist fully lodged inside the man’s mouth. Believe it or not, that was the scene inside a hospital in China’s Jilin Province on March 18, 2025.

The unidentified couple was attempting a viral “hand-eating challenge” where a man is supposed to open his mouth wide enough for a woman to put her clenched fist inside. While the woman’s hand did fit inside, unfortunately, it became stuck. Although the woman tried to remove her hand from the man’s mouth, her efforts were useless. The man’s face instead became red, he began drooling, making gargling noises, and eventually his teeth clamped down on her wrist due to muscle spasms, leaving them no choice but to seek medical attention.

To solve the bizarre dilemma, hospital staff played relaxing music in an attempt to calm the couple and prevent the man from choking or vomiting. From there, a special mouth opener was used to expand the man’s jaw enough to inject a muscle relaxant. Thankfully, after approximately 20 minutes, Dr. Zhang Mingyuan was able to rotate the woman’s wrist and set the couple free.

Astronomers have spotted an apparent supermassive black hole snacking on a star 600 million light-years away, wandering through a galaxy with an even larger black hole at its core.

The event, dubbed AT2024tvd, was first spotted by the Palomar Observatory’s Zwicky Transient Facility and later confirmed by powerhouse space telescopes including Hubble and Chandra, which helped zero in on the cosmic crime scene. To the researchers’ surprise, the responsible black hole was not at the center of its host galaxy, as supermassive black holes tend to be. Rather, this one was 2,600 light-years from the galactic center—a huge distance on paper, but really just one-tenth the distance between our Sun and Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) like this one occur when a black hole’s gravity pulls on a star so violently that the less massive ball of gas is stretched, shredded, and swirled around the black hole, in a process delightfully called spaghettification. The fleeting burst of energy from the event is gargantuan, even rivaling a supernova—the explosive death of a massive star—in brightness. The burst of light is also visible across the electromagnetic spectrum, making TDEs an invaluable resource for spotting black holes that might otherwise be too quiet or hidden to detect, such as the recent rogue object.

What makes AT2024tvd special is that it’s the first offset TDE discovered by optical surveys, according to a forthcoming paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, which is also posted on the preprint server arXiv. The achievement demonstrates how rogue black holes—warping spacetime and shrouded in darkness as they move through the cosmos—can be spotted, as long as an unfortunate object sacrifices itself for the massive object to reveal itself.

“Tidal disruption events hold great promise for illuminating the presence of massive black holes that we would otherwise not be able to detect,” said study co-author Ryan Chornock, a researcher at the University of California – Berkeley and a member of the ZTF team, in a NASA release. “Theorists have predicted that a population of massive black holes located away from the centers of galaxies must exist, but now we can use TDEs to find them.”

The team has a couple of ideas about how the rogue black hole ended up offset in the galaxy, and so close to the supermassive black hole at its core. (The rogue black hole’s mass is estimated to be roughly one million solar masses, at least ten times smaller than the black hole at the galactic center.) One option is that the black hole was at the center of a smaller galaxy that was subsumed by the larger galaxy, and now the black hole is simply drifting through the larger galaxy. Another possibility is that the black hole was the weakest link in what was once a three-body system, and was pushed out by the bigger objects; in other words, two larger black holes may lurk at the galaxy’s core, and the rogue black hole was ejected thousands of light-years out.

“If the black hole went through a triple interaction with two other black holes in the galaxy’s core, it can still remain bound to the galaxy, orbiting around the central region,“ said Yuhan Yao, also a researcher at UC Berkeley and the lead author of the study, in the same release. But at the present moment, the team isn’t sure if the black hole was pushed out or is being dragged in by the larger black hole.

With future instruments like the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Roman Space Telescope coming online, astronomers are hopeful this is just the beginning of an entirely new class of discoveries. Because if there’s anything more unsettling than a black hole swallowing a star, it’s the idea that the hungry, hungry objects are just drifting through space in unexpected locations.

One of science fiction’s favorite themes is time travel. HG Wells wrote The Time Machine back in 1895, but Gaspar wrote El Anacronópete in 1887, which also featured time travel. Charles Dickens hammered out A Christmas Carol in 1843, which also technically features a man traveling both to the past and future. Our fascination with the concept has endured ever since.

What makes time travel so appealing may be the fact that there are circumstances when science allows for the possibility of it happening, at least in theory. For instance, all of us are traveling into the future at this very moment. It happens nonstop at a speed of one second per second! 

But that’s not what most of us mean when we say time travel, is it? We’re talking about going back and riding a dinosaur, or traveling way into the future and riding a robot dinosaur. So, is that possible? Let’s take a look!

Time Dilation and Clocks

Dr. Ana Alonso-Serrano has explained how space and time are not absolute values. Mathematically, which is to say on paper, you can account for literally curving space and time around so that you make it into a loop, which is what time travel is. But the problem is translating things from paper to reality. Physically speaking, we need to understand more before any of this could ever become real. 

What we do understand, and can even demonstrate right now, is how time dilation works. The idea behind time dilation is that time actually passes differently for different observers, depending on several factors that affect it, including gravitational fields and relative motion. In very simple terms, as far as it can be most easily understood by us on the ground, speed and gravity affect time. All of this is part of the Theory of Relativity.

The relative part of relativity is where things come into play here. You’ve probably heard that if you’re on a rocket ship traveling near light speed, when 5 years pass for you, maybe 36 years will pass on Earth. That’s relativity in action. For you, it would never seem like you were somehow skipping ahead in time. You’re just traveling quickly. But relative to the people on Earth, you are traveling into the future. 

A fun example of this, that we saw in the real world, was the comparison between identical twin brothers Scott and Mark Kelly. Scott spent one full year in orbit, traveling at 17,500 mph in much lower gravity than his brother experienced on Earth. When Scott returned from orbit, Mark was 5 milliseconds older than he had been compared to his brother, thanks to the effects of time dilation. 

Experiments with atomic clocks in the 70s showed that those flown around the world on jets were off compared to those that stayed on the ground when they landed. The effect is the barest fractions of seconds and would never matter to a human during their lifespan, but it proves Einstein’s theory was true. More modern and even more precise clocks have confirmed this. 

GPS satellites, because of their speed and altitude, have to have specially adjusted clocks. They gain around 38 microseconds every day and need to be reset continually, or they would never work properly on Earth. Each day, they would give coordinates that were off by 10 kilometers if they weren’t adjusted. 

Time does travel differently based on relative conditions, and if we could achieve incredibly high speeds, the effect would be far more pronounced. You would, based on the observations of those you left behind, travel to the future. A hundred years could pass on Earth, but you might only age a few years, or even months, depending on the speeds achieved. 

What’s Stopping Us From Traveling to the Future?

The big speed bump, quite literally, in achieving time travel-type speeds is mass. As you increase your speed, your mass increases, and that means you need more energy. This is why nothing can travel faster than light. You’d need infinite energy to move your mass at the speed of light, and that’s just not possible. Light, which has no mass, travels as fast as possible.

So let’s say you want to travel at a fraction of the speed of light. You still need a lot of energy. Doubling your speed requires quadrupling your kinetic energy.  Tripling speed requires nine times the kinetic energy. 

Mathematically, if you want to move a 50 kg weight at 1% the speed of light, you need 200 trillion joules of energy to do it, which is the average daily energy consumption of two million Americans. This is by no means impossible, but it’s not super practical or easy to do. Plus, the average space shuttle weighs 2 million kg, so you need to up the energy used accordingly.

Another thing to remember about this kind of time travel is that you’re going somewhere. If you just wanted to loop around space and come back to the Earth in the future, you could theoretically do that, but you could never go back. The future by traveling close to light speed is a one-way trip.

Speed and Time

Traveling close to the speed of light is one way, theoretically, to get to the future. But a lot of time travel is focused on going back to the past. Is that possible at all? One theory says that you could if you could go faster than the speed of light, which we just spent some time explaining is impossible. Still, this is in the realm of the theoretical, so let’s just play with it. 

To an observer on Earth, if you were to leave in a vessel traveling faster than light speed and then return, the people on Earth would see the vessel returning, they see it leaving in reverse, and they’d also see it park right where it took off from all at the same time. It only gets more complicated from there. But none of it really takes you to yesterday. It just ensures you’re always here and also in space, and also traveling in reverse. 

Others, like Stephen Hawking, have argued that even if time travel into the past were possible, you could never travel to a time before you built the machine that let you travel back in time. It’s like saying you could never take the subway to any place that doesn’t have a subway stop.

Time Travel By Gravity

You may have heard that time slows down the closer you get to a black hole. Even if you were stuck on the Event Horizon of a black hole, time would stop completely. This has nothing to do with speed, but rather gravity. This is the other side of Einstein’s relativity coin. The more gravity, the slower the flow of time.

Time flows more slowly closer to the center of the Earth, and faster the further you get away from it. That’s partially why those atomic clock experiments work. It’s the Earth’s gravity affecting it. In theory, if we understood all the physics and had the technology to master it, we could use a black hole as a time machine. While minutes would pass in our time machine, years could potentially pass outside of the machine. You just have to make sure you don’t get pulled in, of course. 

This effect is fictionalized in the movie Interstellar, where a planet exists near a black hole and time is drastically altered. In reality, this would probably never happen, but, again, theoretically, maybe. 

Forward vs Back

So forward in time is possible in more than one way. But backwards? That’s a sticky wicket. The Laws of Thermodynamics don’t like reverse time travel because the universe can’t go back to the way it was. Things stay the same or they become more disordered over time; they don’t become more ordered, especially in the same way they used to be. 

Traveling back in time presents a world of paradoxes that are hard to puzzle out. The Grandfather Paradox, for instance. If you went back in time and killed your own grandfather, thus preventing one of your parents from ever being born, and in turn preventing you from being born, how did you go back in time in the first place?

One attempt to explain this away is that you obviously didn’t kill your grandfather, and if anyone ever did, they never existed for the rest of us, and that’s why we don’t remember them to know that they did. So it’s not a paradox, it’s just that, if you did it, you’d never know you did because you never existed, and no one ever knew you did to say differently. How’s that for a brain buster?

Another theory, which researchers feel is mathematically sound, suggests that any paradox you create would inevitably resolve itself by necessity. Basically, time corrects itself no matter what.

In practical terms, traveling back in time through any traditional means is simply not possible, according to most scientists. But there are non-traditional means out there.

Special Cases for Traveling Back

Einstein again gives us the possibility of a shortcut to traveling back in time. Wormholes, passages that allow spacetime to curve back on itself and take you back to a place and time that has already happened, are a theoretical possibility. Extremely theoretical, in that no one has ever seen one before, and we have no evidence they exist, it’s just that science doesn’t preclude their existence. 

Science fiction loves a wormhole because it makes travel through space and time convenient. And while an Einstein-Rosen Bridge sounds good on paper, we haven’t seen much evidence for one in real life yet. But space is vast, so you never know. More importantly, not everyone believes that, even if they did exist, they could be used to travel back in time. 

If a wormhole could go to the past, how would that work? One theory suggests a tube in space-time that connects a black hole to a white hole. Mathematically, a white hole makes sense and is just what it sounds like, the opposite of a black hole. While nothing can escape a black hole, nothing can stay in a white hole. It shoots out energy the way a black hole sucks it in. 

If a white hole connected to a black hole, the time dilation effect on one end could mean that, when you enter the hole, and when you leave the hole, are at vastly different times. So different, in fact, you could exit before you entered. 

The big problem here is that, to cross through this wormhole, you need to get past the black hole event horizon, and that’s not technically possible.

Another potential path to the past is cosmic strings. A “one-dimensional topological defect” created at the beginning of time itself, these strings could create closed time-like curves which could, in theory, let us go back to the past. 

A cosmic string theoretically formed when the universe was just being formed. As time and space and everything exploded out, there were little cracks or wrinkles, basically imperfections in the fabric of reality itself. Those are strings and, in theory, they can do a lot. If they date back to the beginning, and you could find one, you could ride that string back to any place in time. 

Of course, if these strings exist, they would be volatile beyond words. Extremely dense and packing almost immeasurable energy, these things would be like lasers cutting through anything that got in the way, time travelers or planets included. You’d have to learn to navigate around one very carefully to travel in time. 

If two strings crossed paths, a time machine could travel to the past along them. 

As you have noticed, the word “theoretically” pops up a lot here. Things that work in equations don’t always work in reality, and we are far from having the ability to test any of this. It would take centuries to even find a black hole with our current technology, for instance. Then we still need to figure out how to navigate one. 

Is time travel possible? Yes. We have even proven it with things traveling forward. But can we visit our ancestors, or the world of tomorrow, then be back in time for dinner? That’s looking like something that may never happen.

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How long can a person live? The oldest human ever, at least that’s been confirmed, was Jeanne Calment, who lived to see 122. So that is literally as long as a human can live right now until someone gets older. 

The average human lifespan is about 70 years but there are many factors that play into that all around the world including numerous diseases, malnutrition, war, and so many other things. Some geneticists believe 115 years is about all we could ever hope to get even under ideal circumstances, though Ms. Calment obviously spit in the eye of that idea.

These numbers are very much related to “natural” lifespan. But humans have a knack for taking nature and making it better (or worse). So, if we applied our brains, our technology, our science, what could we do? How long could a human live if we gave ourselves an assist? Would we ever have to die?  Let’s find out!

How Do You Get to Be the Oldest Human Ever?

In 2025, the oldest living person in the world is Tomiko Itooka, who is 116 years old. She has a ways to go to catch up with Jeanne Calment. But how does anyone live so long?  According to friends of Calment, she wasn’t just the winner of the genetic lottery, but you can bet that played an important part. She also had some other things going for her.

We won’t bury the lede on this one – Calment was rich. Rich people have a lot of advantages. She didn’t really work, she just socialized. She had a cook so she never even needed to think about what meals to make, and people did her shopping for her. She lived a life of leisure, by all accounts. She travelled the world, she saw the Eiffel Tower as it was being built, and she attended social functions. That’s not very stressful. And she took care of herself, because she had the time and the means.

In Japan, Ms. Itooka didn’t have as luxurious a life as Calment, but it sounded like a memorable one. In her younger years she was very active and was fond of hiking and climbing. In her 80s she even completed the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage which covers 33 different temples.

So let’s say, based on a very rudimentary reading of the lives of these two women, that longevity may be related to living a healthy, stress-free life. So simple! 

Change in Lifespan

Human lifespan has evolved considerably over the years. Everyone has heard the anecdotal idea that the average human lifespan was only 30 years a hundred years ago (or 200 years, or whatever fits that narrative). While that is not wholly inaccurate, life expectancy for someone born in the year 1900 was only 32 years, it also misrepresents the data. 

Average lifespans in the past were so low due to high infant mortality. If you live to 80 and your sibling died at birth then, between the two of you, the average lifespan was only 40 years. But, in reality, if you did survive to adulthood, then you probably lived a life not entirely different than you would in the modern world, at least in terms of duration. Most people survived well past 50. No one was elderly in their 20s.

Prior to 1900, 18% of children died before the age of 5. This was mostly due to infectious diseases, the sort of stuff we can vaccinate against now like measles and diphtheria. The infant mortality rate was around 10% and, in some cities, as much as 30%. That means 100 to 300 deaths per 1,000. In 2022, that number was 5.6 per 1000. 

As infant mortality improved, thanks to things like better neonatal health, vaccines, nutrition and sanitation, overall lifespan increases. Battling other conditions like heart disease has also improved the life expectancy in most countries. 

Covid took a big swing at global life expectancy and reversed almost a decade’s worth of progress. Numbers will probably go up again, globally, as long as trends continue the way they had been before the pandemic.

That said, if the growing antivax trend gets too much bigger, progress could be delayed or reversed even more. Vaccination rates dropped below 93% for some vaccines in 2022-2023. For 2024-2025 it’s likely the number will increase.

Charts showing the stunning success of vaccines when it comes to saving lives paint a very clear picture.  Over half a million people per year got the measles before a vaccine. After? 13. By March 2025, the CDC had confirmed 222 cases in the United States. All of this is going to lower the natural lifespan of Americans moving forward.

Theories on How Long You Could Last

So if 122 years is the absolute best we’ve ever done, and in the last few years we’ve actually started backsliding because of poor decisions and novel diseases, what’s next? Can we hope for better?

To start with, it’s worth remembering that this all has to be speculation. Because, again, 122 years is the best anyone has ever done. And she did it without any help from cybernetic body parts, nanotechnology, altered genetics, or alien DNA. That said, there are experts in the field out there who believe a human can potentially live for a thousand years. Just try to imagine how much you would hate that.

João Pedro de Magalhães, a professor of molecular biogerontology, thinks we could wipe out aging on a cellular level based on his study of long-lived animals. If we do that, we could crack 1000 years. Or even something absurd like 20,000 years. What’s the science behind it? He doesn’t know. But he does believe we could invent it. Fair enough!

Others look at aging and death as two separate things that we wrongly link. Aging doesn’t lead to death, at least in the eyes of some. It’s just that the longer you live the more likely you are to die of something. So, theoretically, with improvements in medicine and technology, our life expectancy could continue to dramatically increase the way it did from the 1900s to now.

Of course, not everyone believes we can live forever. Some pick 120 to 150 as the range as the most we can ever hope for because disease and other hallmarks of aging will drag you down at that point no matter what you try. Bayesian statistical analysis has led some researchers to narrow it down further. The next “oldest” person in the world will likely make it between 125 and 132 years. 

Striving for Immortality

Improvements in healthcare, medications, quality of life in general, are technically scientific advancements. But, when we ask could science help you live forever, is that really what we mean? No. You’re hoping for something much more dramatic. 

When you think about science letting you live forever you’re thinking about genetic engineering or robotic body parts or something like that. Gerontologist Aubrey de Grey famously declared that the first person who will live to see 1,000 has already been born. So let’s look into the world of speculative science and see what it has in store for us.

We know there are creatures in the world that are functionally immortal right now. Something like the hydra comes to mind. This little life form is made out of stem cells so that it can keep renewing itself pretty much indefinitely.  You can put a hydra in a blender, mulch it into a liquid, and the cells will reform into a living creature again.

Humans, however, are more complex. We can’t be only stem cells. If our cells constantly renewed like a hydra, we could not be complex life forms. Imagine if your neurons kept replacing themselves. Everything in your mind, your personality, your memory, all of it, would never form in the first place and if you ever did form something, it would vanish again as the cells regenerated. 

Our cells have a limited time to them before they become senescent, which is to say worn out. Your cells do replicate, but only for so long. In time they just stop. They end up dying. You sort of grind down. 

Some believe the key to getting past 120 years is nanobots. If our cells can repair themselves like those of a hydra, then we give them a helping hand. Microscopic robots in our bloodstream programmed to destroy cancer cells as they form, or repair red blood cells so they don’t break down. 

Nanobots could maintain hormone levels, keep our brain functioning at peak levels, ensure organs never suffer any slowing or disease. They would, again in theory, eliminate anything that normal slows or limits a human body as it occurs.

If you are never slowed or never limited, then what could possibly kill you other than something sudden and out of your control? There would be no such thing as a “natural” death again. Only accidents or homicides.

Of course, since the human body has about 37 trillion cells, this process is easier said than done. That’s a hell of a lot of maintenance to put on technology that doesn’t even exist yet. 

Nanobots are not alone as being the potential bringers of immortality. Genetic engineering also offers some hope in terms of changing how we age. If we can alter the way our DNA ages, we can extend our lives. CRISPR technology could allow us to edit our genes and work around diseases and degenerative conditions.

 Another potential kind of immortality comes with abandoning the flesh. If you believe who you truly are exists in your mind, then what if you could upload your mind into a computer? Either into the cloud, or maybe even a robot designed to look like you. 

If your mind could be transferred, fully and completely, that could be considered a kind of immortality. From your perspective, you would still be there. And, theoretically, this process could be done indefinitely even as your new artificial body falls apart after hundreds or thousands of years. As long as there’s still materials to make new bodies, what would stop you from continuing forever?

This idea sounds far-fetched, but scientists have already accomplished something similar. Not on such a grand scale as a human, but the mind of a roundworm was put into a Lego robot and a Lego robot started acting like a roundworm. That’s going to be the most terrifying sentence you hear all day, or the most amazing one. That happened all the way back in 2014, incidentally. 

Can We Live Forever?

It’s an interesting question, to be sure. Could a human live forever? Or could we live 500 years? 1,000 years? The number of people who have suggested there are potential ways to extend our lives almost indefinitely seems encouraging, at least in terms of answering the question. But it’s also worth remembering that all of these different methods that might lead us to long life spans are speculative.

In much the same way someone can tell you about all the ways you could become a millionaire, the practical application is quite a bit different from the reality. They’re not even necessarily telling you something that’s untrue, it’s just knowing how something could happen and making it happen are often two very different things. In the end, we’ll know it works if it ever works. Until then, all we can do is keep speculating.

In London’s Imperial War Museum, a team staged a curious experiment: they fed a modern AI the problem that haunted Alan Turing during the darkest days of World War II and get a result in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee.

This is a reminder of how far computing has come. But it’s also a big question mark for where encryption goes from here on.

Apparently Less Enigmatic Nowadays

The Enigma machine, with its three rotating rotors and a labyrinthine plugboard, was Nazi Germany’s pride. It was considered to be one of their symbols of invulnerability. When German generals tapped out encrypted messages each morning, they trusted that the ever-changing complexity of their code—different settings each day, no letter ever mapping to itself—would be more than the Allies could solve.

That confidence wasn’t absurd. The mathematics behind Enigma was daunting. Each rotor could be set to one of 26 positions, and combinations of plugboard wiring created over 150 quintillion possible configurations.

“The number of possible ways in which a message could be encrypted was astronomically large,” Prof. Michael Wooldridge, a computer science expert at the University of Oxford told The Guardian. “Far, far too large for a human to exhaustively check.”

Cracking the Enigma was a mammoth challenge. That’s why it took Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park months to gain a foothold. After the groundwork laid by Polish mathematicians, the British team built their own machines—nicknamed “bombes”—which automated the brute-force search for valid Enigma settings. At peak efficiency, they could decrypt about two messages per minute. But every second mattered in times of war, and the cracking of the Enigma code was a pivotal moment.

“To be able to crack it—it took them months, more than a year—but to be able actually to do this within the lifetime of the war, it was a huge thing,” said Dr. Mustafa A Mustafa, a senior lecturer in software security at the University of Manchester. “God knows what would have happened if we hadn’t cracked Enigma in time.”

Modern Machines, Ancient Ciphers

Fast-forward 80 years. What took bombes hours, modern processors dispatch in moments. One AI model, trained on German using Grimm’s Fairy Tales and aided by 2,000 cloud servers, decrypted a four-rotor Enigma message in just under 13 minutes.

Unlike the rigid methods of Turing’s day, this AI used probabilistic reasoning—comparing decrypted outputs to patterns in the German language. “The AI was trained to look for German language, and then work out the statistical probability of the sentence decrypted being the accurate original,” Lukasz Kuncewicz, Head Data Scientist at Enigma Pattern, the company behind the demonstration, told Tech Radar.

Wooldridge added that the whole process could be replicated even more efficiently using contemporary computing models. “It would be straightforward to recreate the logic of bombes in a conventional program,” he said. “Then with the speed of modern computers, the laborious work of the bombes would be done in very short order.”

That doesn’t mean Turing’s legacy is diminished. Far from it. His pioneering work cracked a wartime code and laid the foundation for the very computers that render it obsolete today. He is, after all, considered the father of artificial intelligence.

“The bombes were crude hardwired mechanical computers,” Wooldridge noted. “And the power of modern datacentres is hard to imagine. Enigma would not remotely be a match for these.”

The problem is how our modern encryption stands up to potential attacks.

What does this mean for encryption?

While cracking of Enigma might seem like a historical footnote, it raises pressing questions for today’s digital age.

If AI can unravel what was once unbreakable, what codes remain secure?

For better or for worse, encryption systems like RSA keep the internet secure for now. But RSA was developed in the 1970s and based factoring large prime numbers, so it’s hard to tell how long it will still hold — especially with quantum computing just around the corner!

“In the case of RSA, it’s the problem of factoring very large numbers. Brute force techniques—looking through all the alternatives—just won’t work on these problems,” Wooldridge said. “If quantum computers ever deliver their theoretical promise, then we may need completely new techniques to keep our data safe.”

This is no longer the domain of spies and generals. As AI becomes more capable, the same techniques used to crack Enigma could potentially be turned on passwords, personal data, and secure communications. “It’s like a knife,” Kuncewicz said. “It can save lives or it can take lives.”

For now, most AIs require human oversight. The AI used in the Enigma test still needed engineers to check that it hadn’t gone off-track—declaring nonsense as meaningful. But this boundary is becoming increasingly thin.

Would Turing be amazed? Perhaps. But he might also have seen it coming.