Out of 49 votes so far, here are the things that a majority think will happen:

Chiefs win a Super Bowl
Massive earthquake somewhere in the U.S.
Humans set foot on Mars
Small-scale radiation dirty bomb set off
U.S. is no longer the most powerful nation

These are the things that less than 10% of people think will happen:

Anti-gravity brought into everyday use
Evidence of pre-Ice Age civilization
Major meteor strike kills 1 million+ people
Peaceful Arab-Isreali solution
Cessation of Islamic extremism and terrorism
Poverty is eliminated in the U.S. based on quality of life
Race is no longer an issue in the U.S.
House or Senate becomes majority female
Worlds ends according to holy predictions
Time travel to the future
Time travel to the past
U.S. splits into two or more countries

The biggest thing I draw from this is a pessimism that we can resolve issues of social concern, both internal to the U.S. and also external. What does that mean? Does it mean that we should redouble our efforts to solve them? Give up on them? Just work to keep them from getting worse? Or does it mean that they're not important in the big picture?

While it doesn't show up in my summary above, I also scan the full list and see some optimism about science. It appears that people are reasonably optimistic that science can make notable leaps forward even if mankind can't solve its social problems.

Cure for cancer never as it already exists and is hidden, too much money to be made from it. Peace? no just can't happen governments won't allow that, they have to keep us busy. Chiefs win the big bowl? hmmmmmmmmmmmmm really reaching on that one, yet i remain optimistic :D

50 years is too short. Almost none of this will happen. Maybe we visit Mars and maybe someone hits 130. Thats about it. 50 years ago was 1964. Advances since then have been very good but almost in an unpredictable way. The internet would have been WTF? in 1964.

Al Gore came along so the internet made it's fasttrack ways into our lives. WHat a guy!

Well you can't very well vote for things that are impossible.

While I voted for science/medicine/technology I thought was possible in the next 50 years I seriously doubt we go that long without a third world war.

So let's go down the list. Right now, 40% think we'll have a human celebrating their 130th birthday in the next 50 years.

I voted yes. I think we've had people hit 120, so it's not that much of a stretch. However, I've also heard that life expectancy may be going down in the U.S. because of bad diets and no exercise. So it may be a small window in the short term where we have people who lived without fast food and get modern medicine, assuming no revolutionary breakthroughs.

But I voted yes primarily because I think some scientist somewhere will figure out how to slow down our cellular degeneration. I think there will be a revolutionary breakthrough. It won't help everybody, but if you're the type who lives to 100 it'll help you keep going.

Of course, the other wildcard is quality of life in China. If they continue to make strides forward, they may have big life expectancy boosts, and that doubles the pool of people who might make it to 130.

The interesting sidebar to this issue is affording to live that long. A 130 year-old person today would have likely retired shortly after World War II. That's a long time to stretch your savings. So if we can live longer, are we working longer to afford it? That's a different question in my mind. You're trying to keep people vital from ages 75 to 90 or so, as opposed to stretching out the 105 year old another 25 years.

No Sex-Bot option?

Those have already been created. They're called vacuum cleaners.

It barely missed the cut. I assumed that it was a given.

Mile-high skyscraper.

I agreed with cdcox on this, and voted no, though for a somewhat different reason.

Simply put, I don't think a building that large is necessary in any sense. The current tallest buildings are being built solely as a tourism attraction; it's not that there's a need to build that high. I think the cost would be very high and there are better ways to invest in a tourism infrastructure.

I think humans COULD build a building that tall, but I don't think anyone will want to, and I don't think businesses would want to be in the building. Frankly, it would be inconvenient if you were on an upper floor, not to mention a host of safety and security concerns.

I think we will soon be able to slow down degradation due to aging but it may not help folks who are already way old to live longer. Since the folks to make it to 130 must already be 80, I don't think this will happen.

Admittedly, it's a tough one.

Apparently the oldest living person right now is 116 years old. But I bet the next fourteen years is hard to pull off.

Item 3: A war producing 20 million deaths.

I voted no on this one.

To produce 20 million deaths, I think you have to have two big combatants going all out and throwing haymakers at each other. Unless someone launches nukes, we're talking about a sustained war that involves divisions and lots of people in uniforms and tanks and planes.

First, I think that type of war is going out of style. It's expensive and generally unpopular. It's better to find some angry minority group and arm them, or do cyberwar on their infrastructure, or stuff like that. I don't think anybody wants to get into a big massive land war these days.

Second, there aren't a lot of candidates for a war that produces 20 million casualties. At that scale, I can probably name the only real candidates:

India vs. Pakistan
Russia versus Ukraine or other former Soviet Republic
Russia versus China
Russia versus NATO
Iran versus somebody, but I don't know who. Maybe whatever Iraq becomes.

That said, there are other possibilities, such as:

Israel gets pushed to the wall and nukes most of the surrounding countries
Maybe Nigeria or Burma or Ethiopia gets into a really protracted fight against a neighbor.

The most likely probability would be some very long and protracted civil war in some big third-world country that goes on for 20 years and kills a bunch of people each year. But it would take a really big country to lose 20 million internally. Maybe Nigeria or Vietnam or Mexico with the drug wars. But there aren't that many countries that could lose 20 million without something unprecedented happening.

I think it's either a major nuclear war, which I think is unlikely, or a protracted civil war, which isn't likely to happen in a big enough country to produce that many casualties.

Im intrigued. Tell me more.