Rejuvenating apples, boiling vats, plunging into which you can become a young handsome man; vials with dead and living water, capable of resurrecting a warrior who fell in battle.
The folklore of any country reflects people's attempts to gain immortality …
BORN FROM YOURSELF
According to biologists' calculations, human life expectancy can reach 280 years! But, alas, this is not yet possible. Although in the plant and animal world, such records are not uncommon. One of the cactus species lives almost forever. The same can be said about giant sequoias, baobabs, oaks. Some fish can also rightfully be called centenarians. Carp and pike can live up to 300 years. Several hundred years are not unusual for a crocodile and a turtle.
Aging of a person is due to the biological "clock" working in each of his cells. Their course can be slowed down or accelerated, but in no case can be stopped.
So, at least, it was considered until recently.
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So far there has not been a sensational statement by Woodring Wright, professor of molecular biology at the University of Texas at Dallas, radically refuting this opinion. In other words, the biological "clock" counting our earthly time, as if it is possible to stop and thereby ensure eternal youth!
It was also recently revealed that human and animal cells age due to the reduction in the size of chromosomes. So that the body does not die prematurely, nature has provided for a unique protein in them (the telomerase enzyme), which continuously replenishes the lost pieces of chromosomes. The protein manifests itself most actively in growing, developing organisms, and weakens and even completely disappears by the end of the period allowed by nature.
Professor Wright and his colleagues managed to get this protein to work after the cessation of its activity, that is, it again began to replenish the pieces of chromosomes that were seemingly irretrievably lost and thereby contribute to the rejuvenation of aging cells. Needless to say, rejuvenation means restoration of protective forces!
It turns out that it is possible to get closer to creating the elixir of immortality by studying in detail one of the types of jellyfish that live in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.
A tiny "turritopsis nutricola", if you put it in an aquarium and do not feed it for a long time, will not die, but, returning to the initial phase of its development, into the state of a polyp, it will again "be born from itself"!
BY THE LAWS OF DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNOLOGICAL FORMS
At the same time, Brazilian scientists from the University of São Paulo believe that the long-standing dream of mankind, if realized, could turn into a nightmare and put humans as a biological species at an extremely disadvantageous position. They came to this conclusion with the help of computer modeling, which showed that immortality in fact would not be an advantage, but a genetic disadvantage, a factor that ensures defeat in interspecies competition.
During the experiment, biologists led by Andre Martins modeled the competition between two populations - the usual one, whose members age and die, and the immortal, whose representatives die solely under the influence of external factors, that is, as a result of murders, accidents and man-made mutations.
Computer models behaved very differently depending on the tiny parameters of the program. At the initial stage, the “immortal” species had an advantage, but as additional external factors were added, the advantage of the “aging” population became more and more obvious.
As a result, as the modeling proved, the "immortals" will inevitably face complete extinction - and this despite the fact that in the real world there are much more external factors than can be foreseen in a computer program.
Thus, scientists argue, the aging of an organism, which occurs when cells cannot "conscientiously" perform their functions, can even be considered the result of evolution, which ensured the survival of mankind as a biological species - as well as all other biological species on Earth.
In the course of evolution, changes and mutations helped each subsequent generation adapt slightly better to new external conditions, which generally compensated for the negative impact of death. Not to mention, immortal people would most likely just go crazy with boredom.
Scientists who study nanotechnology have a slightly different opinion about human immortality. The use of nanorobots for medical purposes, predicted in 15-20 years, will become, in their opinion, the beginning of a person's transition from an evolutionary, biological form of homo sapiens to a completely new, technologically developing being.
Gradually improving biological nanorobots and at the same time increasing knowledge about the life processes of the human body, mankind will quickly come to a state that can be called "complete control" over its body. People will be able to manage all processes, instantly and automatically eliminate any diseases or abnormalities. Thus, the permanent existence of the human body will be ensured - people can indeed become practically immortal.
However, the acquisition of immortality will lead to the fact that the need for reproduction will disappear, since the population of immortal creatures does not need it at all. Then human instincts, sex differences and everything connected with it will disappear. And the homo sapiens who lived on Earth will turn into nano sapiens - a creature that will live not according to the laws of biological evolution, but according to the laws of the development of technological forms of thinking life.
Gennady Fedotov