It takes a lot to make me say: “Wow.”

Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon. Osama Bin Laden being tracked down. The Cleveland Browns managing two consecutive first downs against the Baltimore Ravens. (Although maybe I only imagined that.)

But when I read the other day about a Massachusetts woman who took a sip of coffee, all I could say was “wow.”

To understand the wow factor of that act, you have to know that the 59-year-old woman was a quadriplegic who had been paralyzed for 15 years. But she was able to sip her coffee merely by thinking about it.

As a reporter for the Boston Globe who witnessed the event described it:

“Cathy Hutchinson imagined picking up her coffee from the table. She thought hard about bringing the red bottle toward her lips and taking a drink, without any assistance.

Then, for the first time since a stroke left her arms and legs paralyzed 15 years earlier, she did it.

“A blue robotic arm, guided by an experimental brain implant that ‘read’ Hutchinson’s thoughts, grasped the bottle and carried it toward her. By picturing her own immobile right arm and hand moving, she navigated the robot arm to the right position, tipped the bottle toward her lips, and took a long, satisfied sip through a straw.”

This wasn’t a television magician purporting to bend a spoon or move an inanimate object through “psychic powers.” It was a team of scientists finding a way to enable a paralyzed human being to regain a tiny part of her life merely by thinking about it.

Having progressed no further in scientific knowledge than a C+ worth of high school biology, I can’t begin to comprehend how the implant called “BrainGate” works. Something to do with a pill-sized sensor, electrodes, a computer and algorithms, whatever those are.

And while it may only have been one small sip for mankind, the potential of what the New England researchers and scientists have accomplished with their work is, well, mind-boggling.

Thousands of paralyzed persons someday may be able to think their way to fuller lives. Victims of injuries. Stroke patients. Casualties of war.

And perhaps it goes beyond that. If, as scientists say, we currently are capable of using only a tiny part of our brains, what other powers may someday be released?

There is, to be sure, a long way to go. Decades of research. Thousands of experiments. Millions of dollars.

For now, though, reading about a paralyzed woman who was able to take a sip of coffee merely by thinking about it is more than enough to make me say “wow.”

Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.