What is the secret of genius?

Is there a secret to genius? Most likely not, but there are common features that distinguish smart, creative people who are ready to push the boundaries. Such should be geniuses. We will tell you about six people who help to transform the world in their own way, including a teenager who was able to develop an innovative prosthesis, a woman-astrophysicist who hunts for a "second Earth", and a scientist who wants to preserve the memory of mankind in his DNA. Their thinking stands out against the background of their peers.

Look for indirect ways

If aliens live on a distant planet, then our optical telescopes are simply unable to see them. But maybe we should not. Sarah Seager, an astrophysicist from Massachusetts University, is looking for a "second Earth." She suggested that we could discover another life back in this century if we paid attention to the atmosphere of exoplanets. These are small enough objects that are close to bright stars. If they really are a home for extraterrestrial life, it becomes clear why we could not find it. However, Sarah Seager does not stop just because no one has been able to do this before. Currently, she is looking in the universe for these atmospheres, which can bear the indirect signs of extraterrestrial life.

Do not be afraid to tell the complex truth

All of you use a global delivery network to purchase many necessary products, from the clothes you are wearing right now to the gadgets that you use to read these words. Unfortunately, such activity creates a cacophony of noise in the sea, and it turns out to be fatal for marine life.

Once Michel Andre of the Technical University of Catalonia collided with a dead whale on one of the beaches of the Canary Islands. It turned out that the reason for such an event was noise from shipping. It is the vessels that carry out the transportation of goods, which are supported by our consumer society.

This is an unpleasant truth, but Andre believes that it is necessary to take appropriate measures and difficult decisions to correct the current situation.

Learn by yourself

A person with a really creative mind often feels like trying to discover the unknown by himself, rather than wait until he is fed from a spoon. This is just the case of the teenager Easton LaChapel, who created the prosthesis, controlled by the brain. Its development costs much less than the analogues in the world. And it all began when Easton began to get involved in robotics at the age of 14 years. Prosthesis Easton created with the help of the already known technology of 3D printing. Despite the fact that the manufacture of the prosthesis was relatively cheap, it did not affect the quality. Each finger of such a "hand" is capable of lifting the weight to 22 kilograms. With the brain it is connected by means of a special wireless system.

Bridges, people and areas of activity

Having at least one talent can lift you to the top of the profession, but real innovations emerge when a person is willing to try themselves in another field. For example, Anita Goel from the company "Nanobiosim" is developing a tricorder, through which it will be possible to diagnose diseases outside the hospital. This technology can completely change our understanding of what healthcare should be like. The research that she conducts, exists at the intersection of three completely different areas of activity - nanotechnology, physics and biomedicine.

Look beyond the horizon ...

People with exceptional consciousness and abilities can surpass the immediate environment and look at things in the long term. In a way, they can look beyond the horizon.

For Robert Grass - a scientist from Switzerland - this way is simply necessary. After all, he, together with his colleague Reinhard Heckel, is trying to find a way to store human knowledge inside DNA, which would allow them to exist forever. According to the scientist, such encoded "texts" can be stored for about two thousand years if the ambient temperature is 10 degrees Celsius. But even at -18 degrees, information can be available even after several million years. Grass plans to write down in DNA the data about everything that the person could create. To do this, he intends to select the most valuable texts that could potentially be useful to historians in the future. In addition, this information should reflect the state of society at this stage of its development.

Do not forget to look around for inspiration

Sometimes our obsession with new and innovative does not allow us to see the inspiration that is next to us. Jill Forrant of the University of Cape Town decided to create drought-resistant crops that could be without water for a long time. This problem is quite serious, given the climate change that is currently taking place.

Forrant realized that she already knows how to do this, thanks to what she saw in her childhood. It was a plant that can return to life after several months or even years without water. Now she is studying whether it is possible to transfer the genes of this wonderful plant to crops.