There was speak for years about extending life, and the concept is commonly met with resistance. Persons are upset after they hear of an individual whose life has been reduce brief by some illness, however when confronted with the potential for prolonging an individual’s life altogether, they react negatively. “Life is simply too difficult to suppose it goes on endlessly” is a typical response. However normally folks do not need to finish their lives until they’re in loads of ache – bodily, psychological or religious. And in the event that they absorbed the continuing enchancment of life in all its dimensions, most such struggling can be alleviated. That’s, the extension of human life would additionally imply its vital enchancment.
However how will nanotechnology make this doable? For my part, the long-term purpose is medical nanorobots. They are going to be manufactured from diamondoid elements with built-in sensors, manipulators, computer systems, communicators and probably energy provides. It is intuitive to think about nanorobots as tiny metallic robotic submarines that chug by way of the bloodstream, however physics on the nanoscale requires a considerably totally different method. At this scale, water is a strong solvent and the oxidant molecules are extremely reactive, so sturdy supplies resembling diamondoid will likely be wanted.
And whereas macro-scale submarines can transfer easily by way of fluids, for nanoscale objects, fluid dynamics are dominated by frictional forces. Think about attempting to swim by way of peanut butter! Due to this fact, nanorobots might want to use totally different ideas of motion. Likewise, nanorobots probably will not be capable to retailer sufficient power or computing energy on board to carry out all of their duties on their very own, in order that they’ll must be engineered to attract power from their atmosphere and both obey exterior management alerts or cooperate with one another to carry out the calculation.
To keep up our our bodies and in any other case fight well being issues, we are going to all want huge numbers of nanorobots, every in regards to the measurement of a cell. One of the best out there estimates say that the human physique consists of a number of tens of trillions of organic cells. If we improve ourselves by simply 1 nanobot per 100 cells, that may be a number of hundred billion nanobots. It stays to be seen which ratio is perfect. It could prove, for instance, that superior nanorobots could be efficient even at cell-to-nanorobot ratios a number of orders of magnitude increased.
One of many foremost penalties of getting old is the deterioration of organs, so the important thing position of those nanorobots will likely be to revive and increase them. Along with increasing our neocortex, this may primarily contain serving to our non-sensory organs effectively enter or take away substances from the circulatory (or lymphatic) system. By controlling the provision of those very important substances, adjusting their ranges as wanted, and sustaining organ constructions, nanorobots can preserve the human physique wholesome indefinitely. Ultimately, nanorobots will be capable to utterly substitute organic organs if wanted or desired.
However nanorobots aren’t restricted to preserving the conventional perform of the physique. They can be used to manage the focus of varied substances within the blood to extra optimum ranges than regular within the physique. Hormones could be adjusted to provide us extra power and focus, or to hurry up the physique’s pure therapeutic and restore. If hormone optimization may make our sleep extra environment friendly, it will successfully be “behind-the-scenes life extension.” When you simply go from eight hours of sleep an evening to seven hours, it’s going to add as a lot waking life to the common life as 5 extra years of life!