Immortality has always lured me. Immortality is not just living indefinitely — it is to keep struggling to be alive. It means you cannot die of natural factors but you can, however, die if, say, someone switches off your simulation on a chip and you are incapable of doing anything because you have not updated yourself with the time and the environment that you are living in.

But it should be noted that there is no thing such as 100% immortality. Nothing, including the environment, is fully immortal, because that would violate the law of life/energy. We will all die ultimately when all the free (usable) energy of universe is used up.

I'm interested in achieving immortality because I want to see all that humans are capable of achieving. It would be sad for me to die before the arrival of teleportation technology, before I can take an intergalactic tour from Earth to Mars to Andromeda, before we have achieved true artificial intelligence or before we make ourselves adaptable to silicon environments. I want to see all these developments, hovering closer in the not-too-distant future. I know that we (currently known as humans) will achieve all these things one day, but I also know that I might die before then. It is like going for a treasure hunt and knowing that the adventure will definitely end before the goal is achieved. It is like playing a game with 'game over' before 'game end'.

There are many pathways for immortality. We haven't even achieved 0.000001% of our total potential. There is long way to go and I want to see it all. Currently, there are so many methods which describe immortality and even more which will arrive someday. Some of them are:

• Running yourself into a computer simulation.
• A brain transplant into your clone.
• Tearing off the telomere from cells to make them immortal.
• Preserving dead bodies cryogenically for the future technology to make them alive (sci-fi stuff).

Before we delve into the theory, I would like to discuss the term 'environment'. 'Environment' here is discussed in the most abstract sense. It can be anything where it fits best. And, yes, 'environment' is subjective here. This is because subjectivity gives more options for evolution than objectivity. More subjects, more exploration. 'Environment' here can be Earth, Mars, carbon, silicon, bits and bytes, differential equations, time, EM waves, etc.

The terms 'organism' and 'energy' are also used in an abstract sense. They can mean anything we want them to mean. It should be carefully observed that, in this way, the terms 'environment', 'organism' and 'energy' are mutually interchangeable. We can name anything whatever we like, as long as it makes sense. In this sense, an 'organism' or 'energy' can be Earth, Mars, carbon, silicon, bits and bytes, differential equations, time, EM waves, etc. Therefore:

Environment = Organism = Energy

All three exist for the benefit of each other — or, in other words, they depend on each other for their existence. They exist mutually.

Now we can take a look at the 'organism'. But please note that you can freely replace the term 'organism' with 'environment' or 'energy' in any of the text below or above. For example, if an organism lives by exchanging energy with stale or nonliving things, we can very well say that the environment lives, but not the organism. Or that energy lives on the organism, using the environment as a medium.

Why do we live? Why do we come into existence? Basically it is environment which drives the life. As with every system, the environment wants to decrease its free energy. That is why it gives birth to life (it is a part of evolution). When the life comes into being, then the search for the ultimate energy harvester starts. This is called evolution. As the complexity in life emerges, the organisms become better energy harvesters. They take energy from the environment and use it, thus converting the free energy into unusable energy, which is what environment wants. The environment makes us die because it does not want to halt the process of evolution. Evolution is very much necessary for the environment because it is the process by which new and better energy harvesters comes into being. If an organism lives forever he possibly will trap the resources for himself, which might lead to better organisms or which other organisms can use better. Thus it halts one path for evolution to occur and environment certainly does not want it. To become immortal, an organism needs to do one of the following:

• Fool the environment into thinking that it has evolved.
• Constantly change the environment (from carbon to silicon to bits and bytes), thus making itself new (to the environment) and thus giving time for the environment to analyze its feasibility.
• Constantly hop around new environments: each time an organism enters a new environment, it gets more time to live.
• Actually evolve into the existing environment.
• Create a new environment in which it is the ultimate organism. By ultimate organism, I mean an organism which is the best harvester of the its current environment.

About Paras Chopra: Paras Chopra was born in Patiala, Punjab, India on 3 June, 1987. His interests lie in subjects ranging from nanotechnology to biotechnology to artificial intelligence. His goal in life is to achieve immortality. Visit him at www.paraschopra.com.

NotScientific: Yeah, yeah, you got it right again. I have no ideas. And I just can't write any great science stuff. But I can find some great ones. Please drop me a note and I promise I'll start firing again as from next week.

If you've got any ideas on topics I could write in this column, just drop a note or message me on MSN Messenger: [email protected]!

Other science issues (not too complicated don't you worry) can be found at:

Not Scientific Science
Archive

NotScientific

10.11.05 Front Page

Back Issue Page