What's going to happen in the future? Will robots control our planet? Will computers become smarter than us? Not likely. But here are some things that scientists say are most likely to happen in 10 to 0 years from now, according to the BBC.

 Digital money      

      We used to pay with cash(现金) for everything we bought. Now when we use a credit card(信用卡) to shop online, money is spent without us seeing it. That means we are already using digital(电子的) money. Using a card is much easier than searching our pockets for change. It is also safer than carrying a lot of cash.    

When ATM cards were first introduced, they were not accepted everywhere. But now it's hard to live without them. It's reported that people in Sweden completely stopped using cash last year, and the US might be next.

Bionic(仿生的) eye    

It's no longer something only in a science fiction movie. People who are blind may have a chance to get their sight back—by wearing bionic eyes.

      A blind eye can no longer sense light, but a bionic eye can use a camera to “see” the environment and send data(数据) to the mind. Now the bionic eye only allows patients to see lights and unclear shapes. A high resolution(高清的) image could be just a few years away. 

Self-driving cars     

      Unlike a human driver, a self-driving car won't get distracted(分神) by a phone call, the radio or something outside the window. Sensors (探测器) and cameras on the car would allow it to stick strictly (严格地遵守)to the rules of the road and keep a safe distance from other cars. This would greatly reduce（减少） the number of road accidents. You could even take a nap while the car drives itself. In the future, driverless cars would be widely accepted.

    All living things on the earth need other living things to live. Nothing lives alone. Most animals must live in a group, and even a plant grows close together with others of the same kind. Sometimes one living thing kills another, one eats and the other is eaten. Each kind of life eats another kind of life in order to live, and together they form a food chain (食物链). Some food chains are simple, while others are not. But all food chains begin with the sun, and all food chains become broken up if one of the links (联系) disappears.

    All life needs sunlight to live on. But only plants can use sunlight directly (直接). Plants are “factories”. They make food from sunlight, water and things in the soil (土壤) and air.

    Plants feed all other living things. Animals can only use the sun's energy (能量) after it has been changed into food by plants. Some animals feed directly on plants, others eat smaller animals. Meat-eating animals are only eating plants indirectly.

    What about human beings? We are members of many food chains. We eat wheat (小麦), rice, vegetables, fruits and so on. We also eat meat and drink milk. But humans often break up the food chains. They kill wild animals. They also make rivers, lakes and seas dirty. When these rivers, lakes and seas are polluted, the fish in them cannot be eaten. If men eat the fish, they will get strange diseases (疾病).

    Each form of life is linked to all others. Breaking the links puts all life in danger.

    Do you know why different animals or pests (昆虫) have their special colors? Colors in them seem to be used mainly to protect themselves.

    Some birds like eating locusts (蝗虫), but birds cannot easily catch them. Why? It is because locusts change their colors together with the change of the colors of crops(庄稼). When crops are green, locusts look green. But as the harvest time comes, locusts change to the same brown color as crops have. Some other pests with different colors from plants are easily found and eaten by others. So they have to hide themselves for lives and appear only at night.

    If you study the animal life, you'll find the main use of coloring is to protect themselves. Bears, lions and other animals move quietly through forests. They cannot be easily seen by hunters (猎人). This is because they have the colors much like the trees.

    Have you ever noticed an even stranger act? A kind of fish in the sea can send out a kind of very black liquid (液体)when it faces danger. While the liquid spreads over (散开), its enemies (敌人)cannot find it. And it immediately swims away. So it has lived up to now though it is not strong at all.

    "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." Have you ever said to someone? If so, you may have ended up becoming friends.

    It seems that similarity often helps form a friendship. Aristotle once said, "Some define (给……下定义) it (friendship) as a matter of similarity; they say that we love those who are like ourselves."

    Now, there are some scientific explanations for this idea. The scientists from the University of California said friends have similar brains, Scientific American reported.

    The scientists invited 42 university students to take part in a scientific test. Each student watched the same set of videos. At the same time, the scientists scanned (扫描) their brains and recorded their brain activities.

    According to their study, friends who watched the same videos reacted (反应) in similar ways. Similar parts of their brains lit up while watching the videos, especially the parts that were connected with motivation, learning and memory. However, people who weren't friends had different reactions to the same videos.

    "Having close friends whose brains react like ours may be rewarding because it reinforces (加强) one's own values, opinions and interests," lead scientist Carolyn Parkinson told Business Insider.

    But brain similarity is not the only thing that can result in a friendship. Scientists from the University of Leipzig, Germany, found that a friendship is also based on how physically close you are to someone. They did a scientific test on first-year college students who met in class for the first time. In this test, students who sat next to each other were more likely to become friends.

    Some people claim they" never forget a face". But what does that saying mean? Is there really no limit to the number of faces a person can remember? A new study at the University of York in England has found that, on average, people can remember as many as 5,000 faces.

    The study is the first time that scientists have been able to put a number to the abilities of humans to recognize faces. The research team tested people on how many faces they could remember from their personal lives and in the media. They also tested them to see how many famous faces they recognized. Rob Jenkins works in the psychology department at the University of York. He said the researchers' study centered on the number of faces people actually know. He said the researchers were not able to discover whether there is a limit on how many faces the brain can handle.

    In the study, people spent one hour writing down as many faces from their personal lives as possible. At first, they found it easy to come up with many faces. But by the end of the hour, they found it harder to think of new ones. Their change in speed let the researchers estimate when they would have run out of faces completely.

    The results showed that these people knew between 1,000 and 10,000 faces. Jenkins explained that some people may have a natural ability for remembering faces." There are differences in how much attention people pay to faces and how well they process the information," he said. Jenkins also said it could be because of different social environments. Some people may have grown up in more populated places. Therefore, they may have had more social contact throughout their lives.

    The people in the study included 25 men and women between 18 and 61 years old. Researchers think age may be an interesting area for further research. "It would be interesting to see whether there is a peak age for the number of faces we know", Jenkins said. He said it is possible that we gather more faces throughout our lifetime. But, he added, there also may be an age at which we start to find it harder to remember all of those faces.

    The study suggests our facial recognition abilities enable us to deal with the many different faces we see on the screens, as well as those we know, like family and friends. Today, facial recognition technology is used in many ways, including by law enforcement agencies to prevent crime and violence. Governments use it to keep secret areas secure and, in extreme cases, control populations. .Even Facebook uses facial recognition. For example, when you "tag" or name a friend, Facebook technology may recognize the person's face from a different picture you had shared before.