jellyfish are at least 500 ma old, some are immortal, and: If I offered evidence that jellyfish are displacing penguins in Antarctica — not someday, but today — what would you think? If I suggested that jellyfish could crash the world’s fisheries, outcompete the tuna and swordfish, and starve the whales to extinction, would you believe me?
Tag: lifeextension
Life extension solvency
it is a huge missed opportunity if you can’t contribute to society in the decades after retirement, and online opportunities might be a way out. whether it is fixing up wikipedia, or teaching kids halfway around the globe your language by video conference. i wrote about this half an eternity ago in 2005
The only realistic way to lower Medicare expenditures and keep the economy afloat is to develop therapies that improve human health and change the culture of retirement.
Backup Life
as life backups become a thing, expect this sort of stuff to be much more common. and then of course some will turn off the backup intentionally to make it feel more real.
The Ukrainian urban climber “Mustang Wanted” has described himself as a “dumbass” – not for hanging by 1 arm off the sides of buildings, as you might think, but for failing to maintain a proper website to update his legion of fans.
Brain Preservation
The Brain Preservation Foundation announces a prize for the first team to demonstrate a technique capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term (>100 years) storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable.
2012-12-07: Eternal Brain. This is fascinating. It doesn’t really matter that much whether we’ll be able to reconstruct a brain from a 3D scan, brain plastination seems a much more appealing memento mori than the alternatives. Would I want my dear friends in the ground vs a urn vs a pretty paper weight? Definitely the paper weight.
2013-08-02: The real postmortem.
In the near future, a neurologist and 2 homicide detectives use experimental brain taping technology to question a murder victim about his final moments.
2014-10-09: Brain death after heart death
The largest scientific study of “life after death” and near death experiences in cardiac arrest patients (who were resuscitated) suggests that some people may sustain several minutes of awareness after the heart stops. Conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to 3 minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped.”
2020-01-07: 2.5 ka brain scans
It was just amazing to think that a brain of someone who had died so many 1000s of years ago could persist just in wet ground. the first organ to really deteriorate and to basically go to liquid is the brain because of its high fat content. Axel Petzold had spent years researching 2 types of filaments in the brain – neurofilaments and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) – which act like scaffolds to hold brain matter together. He found both of these were still present in the Heslington brain, suggesting they played a key role in keeping the brain matter together
Immortality Philosophy
Imagine that some sort of “fountain of youth” were discovered, which was not too difficult to reach, and which would grant true immortality to the first 12000 people to reach it.
What sort of people would compete most fiercely to reach that fountain, and what would their motivations be? Which motivations would you judge to be good versus bad, and what would the ratio be? Of the 12000 people who made it to the fountain, how many would you be comfortable with having as immortal?
Choose a life
from the cafeteria of halcyon molecular: the most ambitious company statement ever.
91-Year-Old Track Star
At last fall’s Lahti championship, Kotelko threw a javelin more than 6m farther than her nearest age-group rival. At the World Masters Games in Sydney, Kotelko’s time in the 100 meters — 23.95 seconds — was faster than that of some finalists in the 80-to-84-year category, 2 brackets down. World Masters Athletics, the governing body of masters track, uses “age-graded” tables developed by statisticians to create a kind of standard score, expressed as a %, for any athletic feat. The world record for any given event would theoretically be assigned 100%. But a number of Kotelko’s marks — in shot put, high jump, 100-meter dash — top 100%. (Because there are so few competitors over 90, age-graded scores are still guesswork.)
Oldest living things
the oldest bacteria are 500 ka old, the oldest trees 80 ka.
Autophagy
huh. drexler seems to be saying that at least part of the benefits of caloric restriction are due to autophagy. wild.
The importance of vigorous autophagy to human lifespan is an inference, but it’s more than just plausible. Diverse results in humans, mice, and C. elegans: they all fit a pattern of effects that stems from a process as old as eukaryotic cells.
Modern Male Sati
jealousy: you can’t undertake technical means to outlive your partner.
Peggy’s initial response to this ambition, rooted less in scientific skepticism than in her personal judgments about the quest for immortality, has changed little in the past 20-odd years. Robin, a deep thinker most at home in thought experiments, believes that there is some small chance his brain will be resurrected, that its time in cryopreservation will be merely a brief pause in the course of his life. Peggy finds the quest an act of cosmic selfishness.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 