5 Real Science Experiments Straight Out Of A Horror Movie

5

A Medical Training Robot That Breathes, Cries, Bleeds, And Pees

In the early stages of their training, doctors mostly practice on mannequins, because no sick or wounded patient wants to hear "This is my first try!" While dummies are mostly fine, they can't replicate the emotional or physical responses of human patients. Even actors have their limitations -- a doctor can only get so invasive before they move beyond "required method acting" into "light war crimes." Enter the French company Gaumard and their hyper-realistic synthetic child HAL.

It ... it never goes well when you start off naming your invention after an evil robot, does it?

HAL was "built to suffer," and he expresses every bit of that suffering in excruciating detail. He's full of sensors that help him show a variety of emotions and responses. He bleeds, he cries for his mom, he urinates, and of course, he goes into anaphylactic shock. Yes, all of the major emotions, from bleeding to urination. HAL is truly representative of the full human experience.

HAL can have his pulse, blood sugar, blood oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels measured, his pupils can be dilated, and when he's left alone, he can presumably reposition himself in subtle yet deeply unsettling ways.

Gaumard ScientificFinally, a doll that screams and bleeds without having to navigate the "Paranormal" section of eBay.

Medical trainees who previously complained about practice situations not being realistic enough now struggle to handle the eerie realism that HAL offers. This urinating homunculus has even brought participants to tears when the stress level was cranked up enough. Which is convenient, because HAL is clearly powered by the sound of human weeping.

Gaumard ScientificA sound which he also emits, if you didn't have the spine to click on that video up there.

4

There's A (Horrible) New Way Of Imaging Animals For Research

Preparing animal specimens so biologists can look at their innards is a pretty gnarly process. After the defleshing (via a bath in cow stomach enzymes), standard protocol is to dye the bones red and the cartilage blue to make each stand out, then take a photograph before the whole shebang turns to mush. But there's a new way for researchers to gawk at the plumbing of critter cadavers, and it replaces instinctual disgust with primal dread.

Matt GirardAnd not only because they come out looking like gummy bears made by H.R. Giger.

3

Purdue Built A Terrifying Metal Baby To Study Dust Inhalation

Babies can't walk, because they're dumb. And because they're so utterly worthless, they pay no mind to all the dust and dirt they both pick up and inhale as they search for shiny objects to choke on. Because it's generally frowned upon to put babies in hazardous situations for experimental purposes -- no matter how flawless Cracked's Baby Trebuchet patent application might be -- Purdue University built a crawling robot baby covered in tinfoil to investigate this problem.

Purdue UniversityWe also expect it will one day serve as the world's most adorable terminator.

Researchers collected a variety of dust-covered carpets from actual homes, and the debris the robot inhaled was analyzed. Turns out breathing in "floor debris" wasn't all bad, as studies suggested that it helps babies develop an immunity to asthma and various allergies. The movements of the robot baby itself, before it was taken outside and burned in a cleansing fire, were also carefully analyzed ... for potential weaknesses, should a person find one speeding toward them in the dead of night.

2

A Terrifying Robotic Insect That Enters Your Body To Deliver Drugs

Most medication can be delivered orally or via needle, but what if you need to reach a specific, hard-to-access part of the body? "The solution is obvious," scientists declared. "Just eat this robot we invented."

That's a product of the City University of Hong Kong, and yes, it is absolutely intended to crawl around your squishy bits. The inside of the human body is full of a wide variety of hostile surfaces, but this thing has hundreds of tiny legs that let it navigate through mucus, blood, and whatever else you've got going on inside of you. And it can carry a load 100 times heavier than its tiny self, so it can effectively deliver medication to a specific location. It even looks kind of cute in action, until you remember that it's designed to ramble around your stomach wall.

CGTNThe little hills are their polite way of confirming "Yes, this is absolutely capable of slithering over your pancreas."

1

The Japanese Invented A Disembodied Mouth That Moans Like The Dead

Japanese scientists, setting back decades of work to combat stereotypes about their country, went and invented this here singing dick sock:

"Why?" we can barely hear you asking from what you foolishly assume to be a safe distance. It is not, as one would assume, because the scientists want a fleshlight that can scream for help. They want to mimic human speech to help the hearing-impaired. And look, it talks just like us! By moaning and wailing like one whose soul is being sucked from their body.

Kagawa UniversityWe assume the nightmare sounds are mainly to discourage people from sticking their dicks in it.