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Originally Posted by Baltar  Can someone define "forever" please? It's not possible to live forever in the most literal meaning of the word. In a couple of billion years, our sun is going to run out of hydrogen, becoming a "red giant", and life on earth will die out (from things getting too hot actually, not too cold). Presumably you'd get off this rock by that point in time and find another star system with a compatible planet (" class M planet" as they call it in Star Trek). Then spend a few hundred million years in a tin can traveling there, then (assuming you didn't get eaten by the large carnivorous reptiles that no doubt live there) rinse and repeat after a few more billion years. Doesn't sound like much fun to me.
Eventually though, you're the victim of the ultimate fate of the universe itself. There are many theories for what will happen. Possibilities include that it will go dark completely (the "big freeze" theory), collapse in on itself due to gravity (the "big crunch" theory) thus starting another big bang, or the big rip theory where the universe can no longer sustain its expansion and everything gets ripped apart into "elementary particles of radiation". There are actually a lot more theories but this is enough to give me a headache.  The point is that living forever in the physical world is probably impossible in the end, no matter how you slice it. Clinging to physical life is therefore just delaying the inevitable. |
Haha you really think that some billions of years of technology advancement, especially since it advances exponentially, won't be enough for us to find a solution?
Here's an article that illustrates the idea better:
KurzweilAI.net
Once we get to build strong AI (smarter-than-human artificial intelligence), the rest will be easy.