This could be the key for humanity to achieve immortality

Defeating death has been one of humanity’s biggest fascinations for ages, life expectancy has increased, but ultimately the end of the journey is always the same. Nonetheless, scientists are now closer than ever to achieving the ultimate breakthrough.

Popular Mechanics writes that living forever could be theoretically possible, however we would need to beat a little pesky thing called the Law of Physics first.

There are many theories about why we age. The evolutionary theory claims the body of living beings slowly stops to repair itself to make way for newer generations.

Another theory, explained by the scientific journal Nautilus Magazine, argues that it's physics and not biology the responsible for aging. This is called the “wearing out” theory.

The same molecular “machines” that control the cells that make up our bodies are not static, but rather controlled by the laws of thermodynamics.

This means that the transference of energy (or thermal motion) that allows our bodies to live, grow, and heal becomes imperfect and disorganized, causing the cells, and our bodies, to decay in the long run.

Therefore, if we somehow managed to overcome the law of physics that control our bodies, immortality could be a possibility.

This decay process is called entropy and only increases through time. Some physicists speculate that entropy could eventually expand through all the things in the universe.

If entropy expands throughout all the things in the universe, there would not be enough energy to form and sustain new processes, such as life, ultimately causing the universe to end.

However, other people are optimistic. Futurist and former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil believes humanity will be able to reach immortality by 2030.

According to the New York Post, Kurzweil affirms that in less than a decade humans will have created nanobots capable of repair our bodies at cellular level.

Not only does this technology allow us to keep aging and disease at bay, in theory we can eat whatever we want while maintaining a fit, energized body.

Although this sounds farfetched, biological immortality have potentially been observed in sea life, such as the hydra, tiny organ-free freshwater creatures that according to DW can only be killed or die from starvation.

Although we haven’t fully mapped out the human brain, many people wonder about the possibility of uploading our minds into computers to achieve immortality.

However, this would only really be a digital copy of a person, creating whole new dilemmas about personhood and if machines have souls.

The biggest question is, do we really want to live forever? Wouldn’t someone immortal eventually grow tired and bored with human existence? Well, only time will tell.