Most people are afraid of death, and most would be lying if you said they weren't. Now with new data and technology, scientist and physicist theorize that in the future being immortal might be possible. The three main causes of death is aging, disease, and physical trauma. All of these problems can be fixed by science and technology.
The first problem is aging. Aging happens because when our cells divide, they have little mistakes in the DNA. Over time these mistakes build up causing mutations that lead to death. One way to solve this is to change the genes that control your cell reproduction. We could modify it so that it makes sure that your DNA is exactly the same.
A different way is to transfer your brain to a mechanical body through brain surgery. You have two choices: transfer your real brain or change all your neurons into small transistors to make a big mechanical brain. The first way works like new prosthetics; they connect with your brain to figure out what to do. With a mechanical body, you basically have a huge prosthetic that connects with your brain. They connect with your brain by measuring the electricity coming off your brain. The body then reads those signals and does what the brain wants. The other way is to change your brain way, This way could be easier or harder then the transfer brain way. It could be easy because it doesn't have to read the signals that the brain sends. It could be harder because of changing every neuron into a miny transistor. We have billions of neurons in our brain so imagine making each of those neurons into a transistor.
That would probably take a long time to convert. Another problem is the heart degrading until it can't beat anymore. In Nancy Farmer’s novel, The House of the Scorpion, people create clones so they can transplant the clone’s organs into their original body. This could be a solution because the new transplanted organ would be young so it would be able to last longer than your old one. This is kind of inhumane because you are basically shortening the life of another human being. In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin falls into lava, He gets a new heart, a pump that pumps his blood for him. This solution that is more humane. This solution would be replacing your heart and lungs with an apparatus that oxygenates your blood for you. In the robot solutions, the heart would not be a problem because robots don't need air. In the cell solution instead of replacing the heart, you could genetically enhance it so it would last as long as you.
The next cause of death is disease. Most diseases are curable and in a few hundred years, the cost for these cures will go down to an affordable price. The hardest to cure are the diseases that are caused by mutation. Sickle cell anemia and cancer are examples of mutations that create diseases. Anemia is the shortage of blood cells in your body. Sickle cell anemia is when red blood cells become rigid and sticky. These sickle cells are crescent shaped and can slow or block blood from moving to other parts of the body. Sickle cells live for a shorter time than normal cells; normal cells live for about 120 days, while sickle cells live only about 10 days. Since sickle cells live such short lives, they cause blood shortages which makes it an anemia. Sickle cell is an inherited disease, which means you can only get it from your parents. If only one of your parents has a gene mutated by sickle cell, then you won’t get sickle cell anemia. This scenario can actually protect you from malaria. The other scenario is when both parents have the gene that is mutated by Sickle cell. When that happens, you will have sickle cell anemia. The only cure is to have a transplant of bone marrow, and this could be supported by the clone idea. Another way is to become a robot because you wouldn’t be able to inherit or develop diseases anymore.
Another type of disease caused by mutation is cancer. This is when a cell reproduces to much making a tumor. The breakdown of reproducing is usually due to the p-53 protein that controls the reproducing of the cell. A solution to cancer is to use drugs to target the cancer cells and wipe them out. This solution already exist today, known as chemotherapy. Another drug related solution is to introduce a chemical to your body that teaches the white blood cells target the cancer cells. This would be pretty nice because we could make it so that the cure passes through generations, therefore doing this would eradicate the world of cancer. Every time you get anything wrong then your clone would fix it or you could just get a mechanic.
The last cause of death is physical trauma. Physical trauma is a serious injury to our body. There are two types of physical trauma:
Blunt force trauma, blunt force trauma is when an object or force hits the body. This can cause concussion, broken bones, and/or deep cuts
Penetrating trauma is when an object pierces your body, this usually can cause open wounds.
We can fix trauma by working on each type of trauma one at a time.
First of all blunt force trauma can be caused by vehicle crashes. We can make cars safer by installing air bags everywhere so when cars crash then you hit a bunch of nitrogen filled pillows. This works like the airbags work today. When a car crashes, its speed decreases monumentally. If the decrease in speed is enough, then a chip triggers the airbags. When airbags are triggered, they start deflating so they slow you down without causing blunt force trauma.
In airplanes we could have a chip that compares the planes position with all other planes in the area using gps. If another plane gets close, then each one goes to one side thus avoiding each other. Instead of making things safer, we could make products to help us heal faster. We could have nanorobots in our bloodstream so that everytime we got hurt then they would go there. In them would be stem cells, these robots then cultivate the stem cells into the type of cell in the place that got hurt. These would speed up the process because with extra speed of the extra stem cells then we could heal faster. These robots can also help “parts” we can’t get to in time. These parts can be internal organs that we can’t get to without cutting open the body. These could keep you alive until you can get to the hospital. If you decide on the robot idea, trauma would also affect you because you could still be smashed and your brain would die. To help for this all the robotic parts could be covered in graphene (a very strong carbon formation 1 atom thick). The bones of the robot could be made of carbon nanotube (basically graphene rolled into a tube). These would strengthen your “body”. In side the skin there could be a bunch of nanobots that check your systems and make sure their working.
Being immortal might sound like gods and heroes right now, but in the future immortality might become real using technology and science. This will be a new age of collonating universe like in Star Wars because of our overpopulation, this age will be until forever.
Cites:https://medlineplus.gov/stemcells.html
https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/pages/factsheet_trauma.aspx
https://www.the-scientist.com/features/how-we-age-35872
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/what-is-cancer
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sickle-cell-anemia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355876