INter Stellar Travel, cultervating mars and even immortality. Its all

[ajdaha]

I am about 16 (wait, I am 16, lol) and I can\'t wait to find out what science has to offer me in my up-coming life.
I found out recently about the technology to stop aging. I wonder if it can be implemented into a living person, or weather it has to be injected into the single fertilised egg? I really really want to live forever.
For one that would allow me to furfill my dearest dream. Which is, to fly and live forever in a space-ship, searching for other inteligent life. Man, that would be so sweet. No wonder why I can\'t find a profession for myself. This is what I want to do, its be an astronaut. Yay for me!
If I cannot live forever, then there will realy be no point in gowing to space in search of other sentient species, they\'ll probuably be millions of light-years away, anyway.
So the next best thing will be to fly to mars and set up life there. I want to be one of the first to go there and live there. Perfect peace, harmony and the sence of gradioure (sp?), whilst I read some OSC and play some Advent Rising, whilst watching Ender\'s Game the movie on the Dual Screen.
A boy can dream.... (not just dream, I really want to do this)

Anyway, something else that I was wondering about. Does anyone else know about this...it is possible to stop light in its tracks and then a couple of secs/mins/hours later (or whichever time period) let it go again. So for example you shine a light onto this clear box with certain gases in them, the light doesn\'t come out the other end. the you change these gases in the box and the light sines through the other end.
Wat I hear was that this would lead to super-powerful computers. So when are they gonna implement this stuff onto notebook computers. Cause I really want to get a laptop, but whats the point of wasting money on second-grade stuff?

OKay, now you go...

[buddha]

My love of science started with similar feelings.

I think one thing you could do is read http://slashdot.org/ every day.  Why?  About two weeks ago they posted that someone at Stanford ( I think) slowed light down as it went through the lab.

EDIT: Below is the wrong article on light.  I read somewhere that a single photon had been captured, but I dont\' remember where I read it.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/0036207&tid=160&tid=14

as for space:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/11/231249&tid=160&tid=126

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/09/183200&tid=160&tid=14

Live forever?  Well...

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/2259248&tid=191&tid=14

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/09/0158211&tid=191&tid=14

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/08/0259213&tid=191&tid=14

Science is cool.  I met the head of the Mars Rover project on Friday.  That could be your job.  Stay inspired and skeptical about everything.  Find out for your f(n) self.

So the point is: there is plenty of work to be done by those who are able to do it.  Um, stay in school and don\'t do drugs...?

[Uloim]

Death is certain, and I\'m sure that we humans will never be able to stop death completely.  Think about it though, if everyone could live forever, we would NEED to leave Earth for more planets, for the population would explode.  Also, life would just be boring if you lived forever.  I\'m a religious person, if I had the chance to live forever I would most certainly decline.  I\'ll have my eternal life when I leave this world.

Then again, science has an answer for everything, right?  Why be religious when you know you were created on accident.  How comforting...

Anyways, how could you possibly live forever?  I mean, sure you might be able to stop disease and live for ages and ages.  But what if you were attacked by someone?  What if you were murdered?  What if you fell down and broke your head?  Hmm...

Well, I have my beliefs and you have yours.  Don\'t stop what you are doing, follow your dreams!

[Efflixi Aduro]

Living forever would be the ultimate punishment unless everyone else could too.
You would see all your loved ones die and die again and you would become the lonlyest person ever.
Not to mention what would happen to you when time its self ends or the universe implodes. You would probably suffer a fate worse than our minds can imagine.

And about the light, its possable. You would need to have a box with very stable condions inside. You would put two gasses in that have a very low activation energy. Just enough to react from the light shining through. The gasses would absorb the light for the reaction until the reaction occurs. Then the new gas would let the light pass because it has no need for that energy.

Of course that\'s an educated guess/theory but it might just work. I love science so I know my stuff.

But what intrests me the most is the thery that comes with light speeed. They say it\'s possable that time travles at the speed of light, so, if you go the speed of light you would be keeping up with time, and therefore not aging which would allow inter-galexy travle though it could take you a few hundred years for the people outside of lightspeed, yet, it would take you no time at all. Sh*t thats trippy. O.o

[RussianVodka]

Is there such thing as time? Or is time nothing more than a human measurement.

Is time nothing more than a measurement of the speed at which a normal human mind can analize it\'s suroundings? If some change takes up too little \"time\", it will go un-noticed... If some change takes up too much \"time\", the same will happen. (I guess you can use radioactive decay for both examples).

Also if as people say time is \"infinite\", than it must be infinite in both directions; infinitely long, yet at the same time infinitely short. For a alien species that lives outside our galaxy, time could be analized so slowly, that the entire human existance will pass in a blink of an eye. Yet as far as they know, they only live for what to us feels like a few years (I think that just confused the hell out of ya).

Likewise to get a perception of the time that has passed, you would also have to analize how much of that time you actualy remembered. (Now I\'m just going on an idiotic rant, so I\'ll stop.)

[kbilik]

Originally posted by ajdaha
Anyway, something else that I was wondering about. Does anyone else know about this...it is possible to stop light in its tracks and then a couple of secs/mins/hours later (or whichever time period) let it go again. So for example you shine a light onto this clear box with certain gases in them, the light doesn\'t come out the other end.

There was an article in Scientific American about them slowing light using super-cold gas.

http://www.physics.hku.hk/~tboyce/sf/topics/lightfreeze/lightfreeze.html#ultracold
Original location (a snippet of the article)

And here is the practical side (optical computers):
http://www.physorg.com/news3679.html

If you are interested in research into life-extension and serious debate on whether immortality is possible, look in this site:

http://www.imminst.org/



Some more science/tech news sites:
http://www.newscientist.com/
http://www.physorg.com/
Physics news update
Wired
Kurzweilai site  

And buddha is right, take things with a grain of salt.

[Zan]

Being a biomedical sciences student I can safely say that science hasn\'t come close to being able to create eternal or semi-eternal life yet. While they may have one or two factors of aging under control (theoretically that is) there are tons of other factors they don\'t even know about or can\'t slow down.

The main issue in eternal life is DNA, the blueprint for our entire body which resides in every single cell. It is copied over and over and over every time a new cell grows. So in one normal lifetime your DNA, beginning from that very first fertilized egg is copied a whole damn lot. Aside from the unstoppable and completely natural degeneration, every duplication of your DNA also gives a room for errors. Errors which can lead to cancers, tumors, infertility, ... So the longer you live the more errors can appear and the higher your chances of getting cancer are. At the moment us humans have 8 irrepairable errors or mutations in a lifetime, double that lifetime and it won\'t be 16 though but probably more like 20. Instead of increasing linear it will increase exponentially.

That is one main factor which science is only starting to explore and discover. So I won\'t say they \'ll never be able to stop aging but I do know we \'re still far far away from that happening. Immortality is something I dare claim we \'ll never posses though. Not even science can stop a bullet from tearing through our hearts or halt nature from keeping its balance.

Nature always finds a way to maintain the balance of life and death.

[Xordan]

Living forever would be cool, as long as you can commit suicide if you ever need to

Of course not everyone would just be able to go out and take an immortality pill if they wanted to. I suspect that you\'d have to be very rich to afford it, and there would be some governmental control on it. And anyone who took one would be blown up be religious fanatics who think it\'s against god\'s will and that you\'re an infidel etc. etc.

As I\'m not religious in any way I think that anything is better than death generally, so I\'d go for immortality if it were available. If technology advances enough, it\'s entirly possible for a person to even become a God But as we\'re nowhere near that yet, I\'ll not put it as a life goal or anything.

[kbilik]

I believe immortality (as in eternal life) is impossible. However, slowing down the mechanisms of aging is a very big possibility. It is an engineering problem (but a very complex one).

DNA does degenerate with every cell replication. The DNA - mRNA transcription process is also not perfect and it sometimes leads to faulty protein production. Metabolic processes in the cell produce toxic waste and this becomes a problem as these toxins slowly build up, accelerating the rate of decay. There are also environmental causes of aging like radiation, free radicals, and disease. Even breathing causes aging; the air is part oxygen, a highly reactive chemical.

The best ways to live longer right now is eating healthy food and getting plenty of exercise. There is no \"miracle pill\" (and probably never will be).

Theoretically, it is possible to repair DNA at the molecular level and increase mitochondrial/metabolic efficiency. It is also possible someday to re-engineer DNA by promoting genes that slow aging or aid in cellular repair mechanisms. Then there are other more radical options - replacing worn out tissues with those grown from stem cells, molecular machines (either bionano or nanobots) that clean the body from within, machine replacement parts, etc etc.

Since aging is a finite solvable problem, it can be overcome. The question is when.

[ajdaha]

Guys I\'ll do you a favor (cause I like you). In about 7 years I\'ll discover how to prevent the degeneration of DNA.

Also, about immortality:

1) I wouldn\'t really be afraid of getting murdered when living in a space-ship, soo.
2) Everyone else I would know in the space-ship would live forever as well. (Unless of course, diseas strikes someone dead or summin\' but by that time, in about 10 years we\'ll probuably stop most illnesses very quickly)
So I won\'t really be lonely in that respect
3) Its the only way we can travel long enough to reach the closest star to us. I don\'t want to go on a trip, only to die and have my children which I would have with a very sexy woman complete my mission.


PS: I realize I\'m putting a lot of faith into our ability as people to improve our technology and increase our range of exploration, really fast.
And in fact, its going realy slowly, I mean, what the hell, why does NASA take 5 years to launch a probe onto the moon of jupiter (or pluto, the one that has ice caps).
Its too long, they should do everything quicker. Imagine how much material and man-power was wasted on building things like the pyramids and the great wall of china. We need that kind of man-power to spring the whole thing along.

Oh yeah, if our cells were to keep dividing. Would we have to consume more energy?

[Monketh]

I\'ve watched far too much of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex.
This does pose the question, however, why provide immortality in fully organic bodies?

[buddha]

Why does it take NASA so long?  Two reasons:
1. Engineering
2. Funding.

The first is unavoidable.  As we all know, the computers used to run the shuttles are pretty meager.  It\'s not that they can\'t afford better computers, but the device itself has to be rigorously tested.  If the shuttle takes, say five years to build, then they can have at best a five year old computer on board.  But it\'s even older because they had to test the thing for years to make sure it works with everything  else.

As for the second, call your congressman.

On the subject of living forever, there are people all over the world making progress.  In fact, there is a team at UCLA who has slowed aging in various plants, like corn.  Cool stuff.   We need more researchers.

[ajdaha]

I can\'t believe how dissorderly the world is. Lets prioritise people.
Of course, space exploration and immortality is the first thing to achieve on my list.

[Xordan]

Using our current technology, we can travel to the next nearest star in a human life time. You\'d live your whole life on a space ship, but you\'d make it, and then die before you got home again Of course nobody is going to fork out the billions to make a ship that could do the journey

[John_Thazer]

Hm...interesting...although I have little to say...

Immortality IS the price!