9 New Technologies That Are A Sci-Fi Fan's Wet Dream

8. Breathe Underwater

Humans are a pretty resilient bunch, but we do have a major weakness: Cut off our air supply and we're wormfood in a matter of minutes.

Despite its frankly crucial status, there is only one way to get oxygen into our bodies, and that's via a vulnerable tube in our neck that is also connected to the tube we eat through. Talk about a design flaw.

Being able to bypass this frankly shoddy system and get oxygen into the bloodstream would mean that, should the airway become blocked, you would still be able to function without breathing. Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have come up with a way of doing just that by injecting oxygen intravenously.

Now, for the love of god don't go injecting air into your veins - the consequences of that are as painful as they are deadly. The researchers found a way of encasing oxygen particles in a layer of fat to ensure that it is dissolved into the blood properly. When they tested this on animals, they remained alive and well without taking a single breath for a full 15 to 30 minutes.

Not only would this revolutionise the sport of freediving, but it would enable doctors and paramedics to administer life-saving oxygen to a patient that has stopped breathing, reducing the risk of brain damage and avoiding the eventuality of ramming a tube through their trachea.