Thread: Engineering immortality.

I imagine it would be possible to engineer immortality using tiny robots that can navigate through you blood streams, stem cells, and gamma rays. The robots could target bad cells like cancer, bacteria, and virus with gamma rays to destroy them while the clean out good dead and aging cells likewise and replace them with identical stem cell grown ones. I saw somewhere that one day we may be able to download ourselves onto computers. That would be better.

Why gamma rays?

i guess they can be focused in on small bodies like cells and viruses.

mmatt9876 I suggest looking at my post on regenerative medicine. Your idea of microscopic robots, is what is called Nano technology, which has lots of potential in the medical world. Although I'm not sure about the gamma ray part.

I saw somewhere that one day we may be able to download ourselves onto computers. That would be better.

I too have read, and seen this in many works of fiction, and even some nonfiction. However, in order to store the equivalent of one human brain on a computer would take massive amounts of storage. Thousands, if not millions of Terrabytes. With today's technology. I think that would be the ultimate way for immortality though. You should also read the book Footprints of God by Greg Iles. Its a good fiction book that has that sort of science in it... And its not a religious book by any account.

Originally Posted by Kukhri

Why gamma rays?

Well, you wouldn't want to use alpha particles would you?! Highly ionising... :-D

Originally Posted by Falconer360

mmatt9876 I suggest looking at my post on regenerative medicine. Your idea of microscopic robots, is what is called Nano technology, which has lots of potential in the medical world. Although I'm not sure about the gamma ray part.

I saw somewhere that one day we may be able to download ourselves onto computers. That would be better.

I too have read, and seen this in many works of fiction, and even some nonfiction. However, in order to store the equivalent of one human brain on a computer would take massive amounts of storage. Thousands, if not millions of Terrabytes. With today's technology. I think that would be the ultimate way for immortality though. You should also read the book Footprints of God by Greg Iles. Its a good fiction book that has that sort of science in it... And its not a religious book by any account.

I think in order to stare that much information on a computer we have today we would first have to understand the mathematics behind the brai and mind. The golden ratio comes to my mind since it seems to be a formula by which natural things grow out of.

Originally Posted by x(x-y)

Originally Posted by Kukhri

Why gamma rays?

Well, you wouldn't want to use alpha particles would you?! Highly ionising... :-D

Maybe simply have the robots consume the alien bodies and zap them to death with gamma rays or chemicals in their stomachs.

Nanobots to replace brain cells. Nuff said.

iPhone apps to replace thought.

nuff said.

The idea of using nanobots are over 30 years old.

If you want some kind of Philosopher's stone you should just work till you drop until you're like 60 and then invest all your money in research, by the time that you're 90 they should have progressed enough to at least expand you life spawn with 30 years.

Because essentially the only thing you need is the rejuvenation of all your cells.

Maybe we should look at jellyfish, they're immortal.. they don't die by old age.

Originally Posted by Tinholt

If you want some kind of Philosopher's stone you should just work till you drop until you're like 60 and then invest all your money in research, by the time that you're 90 they should have progressed enough to at least expand you life spawn with 30 years.

Because essentially the only thing you need is the rejuvenation of all your cells.

Maybe we should look at jellyfish, they're immortal.. they don't die by old age.

yes, they do.

There is one species of jellyfish that can reverse their development. Still doesn't mean they are immortal.

It is not possible to engineer immortality. You can always die in accidents.
I believe it is possible to stop aging, but more research is needed. The reason why we age has to be discovered first, only then we can meaningfully talk about how to cure it.

using nanotechnology presents issues. we have a pretty weak understanding of how to encorporate the large processing power required for such complex machinery into vessels the size of cells.

twit brought up a good point with us needing to do more research into aging before it can be stopped. the point about accidents was rather knit-picky, it seems that the intent of the author was to think of a way to make people immortal if they were content to not take any risks(i.e. live in a completely sterile environment for the rest of their lives and not do anything that could possibly kill them).

ultimately i think the solution to natural death comes in the form of biological engineering. if i have my way then the technology to cure aging will be available to the public long before bioethics catches up with me.