In the eyes of many people, immortality may always be just a dream. But when we enter the age of technology and recognize the power of science and technology, immortality may no longer be a dream in the future, but an achievable wish. Perhaps most modern people also believe that immortality is impossible.
However, many scientists don’t think so. You must know that in the cognition of scientists, the mystery of life can be solved by science. If we crack all the mysteries of life, then eternal life will no longer be a matter. Therefore, modern science has regarded immortality as an important goal of life exploration, and many scientists have joined this field of exploration.
Even Google’s chief futuristic scientist Ray Kurzweil once predicted very optimistically that human beings will achieve immortality by 2045. Of course, this statement has not been recognized by many people. In the eyes of most scientists, even if human beings can achieve immortality in the future, it will be an extremely long time, and it will not be achieved in a short time.
Scientists have not only one way to explore human immortality, but three directions, through which it is possible for humans to enter the anomaly of immortality. So which of these three methods is easier to implement? First of all, let’s take a look at these three ways to achieve immortality?
The first way: to achieve infinite division of cells
Why do humans age and die? If we find the answer from the microscopic world, we can find the body of the cell. Everyone knows that the human body is actually composed of cells, and cells are renewed and replaced through constant division. Generally speaking, the aging of human beings is caused by the accumulated loss of cells in the body.
If cells can divide continuously, then body tissues can be constantly updated, and immortality can be achieved theoretically. But we all understand that cell division is not infinite, and the number of cell divisions in a person’s life is about 50-60 times. When the cells no longer divide, human life is about to come to an end.
So why can’t cells divide indefinitely? The main reason is caused by a structure called “telomere” at the end of the chromosome. This telomere can effectively maintain the viability and quality of the cell, but the telomere will continue to shorten with each cell division. When this process continues to a certain extent, telomeres will lose their function and the cell will no longer divide.
The goal of scientists is to hope that this telomere can be used indefinitely, so that it will not continue to shorten during the process of cell division. Or cells can synthesize telomeres indefinitely. When telomeres become so short that they no longer function, cells can re-synthesize telomeres by themselves, so that cell division will continue and humans can achieve immortality.
Can the loss of telomeres be repaired? In fact, in some special cells of humans, there is an enzyme that can synthesize “telomeres”, which can effectively prevent the shortening of “telomeres”, but this enzyme cannot be found in ordinary cells. . Scientists believe that the reason for this situation is genetic.
It is human genes that limit the telomeres of ordinary cells, preventing them from dividing indefinitely. And this limitation is very beneficial to the evolution of life, because in the long life of human beings of 4 billion years, early life has been carried out in this way of immortality for a period of time. However, in the later evolution process, nature discovered that this way of life of immortality was too bad and completely unfavorable to the evolution of life on earth.
Therefore, in the end, nature made a choice and ruined the road to eternal life. Since then, life on the earth has ushered in a wave of rapid evolution and development. It can be seen that there is a certain kind of yoke endowed by nature within genes. Only by breaking this yoke can humans achieve immortality. So is it easy to break this shackle? The answer is very difficult. Our current research and exploration of genes is not even an elementary level, let alone changing genes at will.
The second method: use technology to continuously repair human tissues
From a microscopic point of view, the human body is composed of a large number of cells. From a macro perspective, the human body is composed of various organs and tissues. Human aging is caused by the constant aging of these organs and tissues. If all parts of the body can be constantly replaced, then human beings can also achieve immortality.
Modern science and technology are actively exploring and researching nanotechnology. This technology is very powerful. It can remove all kinds of trash and lethal factors in the body. Various repairs can also be made to the body. When nanotechnology is mature, humans will be completely free from the troubles of various diseases. At the same time, it can also repair and replace the aging tissues of the body.
Even in the future, we can choose various organs, such as artificial hearts, artificial kidneys, etc., to replace important parts of the human body. In this way, the human body is actually regarded as a complicated machine composed of many parts. Which part is aging and can’t run, we can replace which part and keep the whole machine running forever.
When this method is applied to the extreme, human beings can basically achieve immortality. It’s just that this kind of immortality is more exotic, it may be a bit like a cyborg, and it’s no longer a pure human.
The third way: to achieve immortality through the transfer of consciousness
If you want to ask what is the most important thing for human beings? It is estimated that many scientists will answer consciousness. That’s right, the reason why human beings call it intelligent life is because we have intelligent consciousness, and the existence of consciousness is the foundation of human beings. If there is no consciousness, it is a walking dead, a machine without a soul, and naturally it cannot be called a human being.
Therefore, if human immortality cannot achieve physical immortality, can it make consciousness immortal? We don’t understand very little about human consciousness now. Like dark matter and dark energy, it is an invisible, intangible, but real thing. What is the bottom of the realization? There is no conclusion yet.
Although we still don’t know what is realizing? But we have no doubt about its importance. As long as consciousness can realize immortality, it is actually a kind of immortality of human beings. So early on, scientists began to study and explore the technology of consciousness transfer, that is, to treat human consciousness as a digital signal that can be downloaded and uploaded.
If we can download consciousness and transfer it to other places, then human beings will realize the immortality of consciousness. Some scientists believe that although the human body cannot live forever for various reasons, the human consciousness may be able to live forever. However, consciousness may dissipate with the end of the human body. Therefore, we have to transfer our consciousness before the end of the body. If this technology can be realized, then the road to human eternal life will also be realized.
The above three methods are the three ways to achieve immortality proposed by scientists. Through the above introduction, we can see that the second method is obviously easier to implement. Nanotechnology humans have begun to conduct research very early and have already made some good achievements. I believe that nanotechnology will be able to be applied to the repair of the human body in a few years.
At that time, even if we were unable to achieve immortality, there was no problem in increasing the life span of human beings. As for the first and third methods, in fact, scientists can’t be sure whether they can be realized. Whether it is to master all the mysteries of genes or decipher all the mysteries of consciousness, it is a very remote matter for human beings.