The fairies in Artemis Fowl don’t just have magic, they’re also highly technologically advanced. Here is where you’ll learn how close humans are to achieving some of these marvels!

Cloning

Cloning means to create exact genetic copies of living tissue. It exists in nature, entirely without human or fairy intervention, in the way single-celled organisms reproduce.

However humans are now able to create clones of whole animals in two different ways.

The first is called embryo twinning, and involves splitting an embryo in half and implanting both halves into a living mother’s uterus. Each half develops into a genetically identical whole.

The second is called somatic cell nuclear transfer. This is when scientists take the DNA from an animal’s cell and transfer it into an egg which has had its own DNA and nucleus removed. The egg develops into an embryo genetically identical to the original animal, which is implanted into an adult female’s uterus.

We still haven’t cloned a human, partly because of the risk of mistakes in the process, and partly due to ethical concerns.

Scientific drilling

The deepest into the earth that humans have drilled is 12,262 metres (40,230 ft), at the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia. However humans have only been down as far as about 3,900 metres (12,795 ft), in the TauTona gold mine in South Africa. It’s 55 °C (131 °F) down that far, highly inhospitable for people. That means we’ve only been about 0.06% of the distance to the centre of the earth, and given that drilling at Kola stopped in 1994, and the goldmine hasn’t been deepened since 2008, getting any further any time soon does not seem likely.

Mars exploration

There are currently three unmanned and operational rovers on the surface of Mars: two American, and one Chinese. Eight orbiters are surveying the planet from space. One lander is investigating the deep interior of the planet.

No manned missions have ever been sent to Mars, the primary obstacle being that of energy consumption. Due to the eccentricity of Mars’ orbit, lower-energy-using periods occur roughly every 15 years, with the next due in 2033. Proposals are constantly under discussion, but it’s unclear yet what our first manned mission to Mars might look like.