• Question: In the future could we live for ever

    Asked by Conor to Gavin, Karen, Mark, Michel, Roisin on 11 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Michel Destrade

      Michel Destrade answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      For ever, I don’t know! Might be boring! But it’s true that life expectancy keeps increasing. In the animal kingdom there is a type of jellyfish which manages to avoid biological death (but they die of other causes!). Scientists are trying to understand how they do that, and maybe they will be able to apply the same principles to humans? Don’t know if that’s a great prospect!

    • Photo: Roisin Jones

      Roisin Jones answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      We would have to figure out a way to stop our telomeres (that is the ends of our DNA) from degrading, which is one of the main reasons why we age, and that kind of technology is a long way off yet, though I suppose it may exist at some point in the future!

      The other option might be to transfer your consciousness to a computer, where you could live out eternity as a digital being, but again, the technology on that is a long way off!

    • Photo: Karen

      Karen answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      I was going to talk about telomeres but Roisin has it covered! So not any time soon is my answer?

    • Photo: Mark Kennedy

      Mark Kennedy answered on 14 Nov 2016:

      Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, approached the idea of “living forever” in a round-a-bout way, in his story “The Last Question”.

      http://multivax.com/last_question.html

      (I love Asimov, and recommend any of his books if you’re interested in science fiction)

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