Our ever-expanding growth technologically and scientifically has taken us to challenge many beliefs close to our heart and soul. We have, as a society, transgressed past many boundaries that were thought of as unreachable at one point. Medicine has given us hope of extending our lives, science and technology have started to hint at the possibility of living in forms that seemed impossible and ludicrous, scenarios more closely related to a science-fiction book or movie script. Lets take a look for example at the micro-world that makes up every single thing in the known universe.

At a simple and casual glance, quantum mechanics relates what happens within and around us in a way that seems magical. Quantum mechanics delves into the ‘micro-world’, trying to make sense of all the sub-atomic particles that make up everything around us. The unprecedented insight the studies into the sub-atomic world have giving us has changed our modern life, examples ranging from MRI machines in the medical field to telecommunications, computing, and space travel. All of this from a field that awakens more questions than answers. Personally, I am all here for that, a curious mind will tend to gravitate towards questions more than answers.

“Are we pushing into this infinite abyss the same way we push further out into space?”

In 1965, North-American physicist, Richard Feynman, declared, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”, a thought that probably still holds true to this day. Photons existing in two spaces at a time, the observer effect, Spooky action at a distance, Schrödinger's cat, and many more terms that each warrant pages upon pages of me trying to explain something my mind cannot possibly grasp. How can one tell me I’m mere sub-atomic energy, when I can feel it all so deeply, nothing like the plethora of atoms and empty space that make up our being. Right? Again, more questions than answers.

Renowned theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, relates perfectly our possible future in his book, “Physics of the Future”. Kaku says, “By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory.”

Every day we realize life is not as simple as we thought, our essence emanates past the usual physical and superficial concepts of reality. Scientific advances have given us a new ambition; to reach other physical worlds, other planets we could one day call home. From this lonely spot where I stand, amongst dying leaves crinkling with every step, it seems this is highly plausible, more a question of ‘when’ will it happen, than ‘if’ it will happen. Far away solar systems seem not so distant anymore, every year we inch slowly out into the outer limits.

From the micro world, we go macro. The Cosmos.

Millions of years will go by before most stars slowly reach their end stages, finally amplifying into a fiery phenomenon. Their light expanding to its immediate universal space, the blast traveling through time at astonishing speeds, expanding outward, going on and on, perhaps indefinitely. The nuclear reactors of the universe, with a plethora of stories to tell. Their light, blazing through the universe, to us mere humans, seems like it will burn into an apparent eternal spectrum. No end in sight. A supernova can explode into an intense energy, yet it can be thousands of years before we ever catch a glimpse of its light, a vision into the past.

Some stars, few, are known to shine bright, and at their final stages dim into themselves, folding into their own matter, packed dense, until they collapse space-time around them. Its as if they leave a hole in their place. Crushed under their own dense energy, gravity wins the battle, counteracting the stars outward push, provoked by its intense gases, finally extinguishing itself, blinking out of apparent existence. This process could very well lead to the creation of blackholes, the much mystified occurrence of the universe, object of countless theories, movies and books.

Pictured above, the constellation of Orion The Hunter. Top, brightest star is Betelgeuse, who many believe may one day reach supernova. (Image Credit: NASA, shutterstock)

Image captured by the Cassini spacecraft. Pictures are Saturn’s rings, Earth and our moon. (Image credit: European Space Agency website.)

“Does our energy push outward in a magnificent blur or does it succumb to gravity and collapse into itself? ”

Staying present, in space and time, is much more difficult. As humanity learns and explores deeper, we find ourselves living out fantasies we only, at one point, held in our imagination. We have seen how far we can venture out into space. A great example are the NASA Voyager missions, currently millions of miles from earth, hurtling through interstellar space at thousands of kilometers per hour. The farthest objects we have sent out to collect information on some of the deepest questions that have arisen throughout human history. The Voyager mission spacecrafts, launched in 1977, have demonstrated, quite spectacularly, the unspeakable distances that exist outside of our world. To us, their arrival into “interstellar space” is an incredible feat of perseverance and outstanding technological capability. Yet, in the gran scheme of the universe, the spacecrafts have barely made a dent into space travel. They just left our neighborhood, and the universe after that is at a scale that our minds cannot compute. If a grain of sand within all of the world represents our known galaxy, then the Voyager spacecrafts have barely even recorded movements within the one grain of sand.

Everything we know and have ever known is contained within that pale blue dot, lost in space dust. NASA released this updated version of Voyager 1’s famous, “Pale Blue Dot” image on Feb. 13, 2020. (Image credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech)

My belief is, many of these questions are scientific in nature but they allude to profound philosophical doubts, doubts that haunt our impeccably powerful brain, and afflict our eternal gift, the gift of consciousness. To quote Michio Kaku once again, “The brain weighs only three pounds, yet it is the most complex object in the solar system.”

Finally, a question arises, the single most influential doubt we have as conscious beings; we now view the future as a place we can inhabit, could we possibly be heading in a direction where not only do we think of our immediate future in space and time, but of a future after death? Are we headed towards an explanation on death? What happens after the lights go out? Does our energy push outward in a magnificent blur or does it succumb to gravity and collapse into itself?

Sounds crazy and rhetorical, yet many past unfathomable concepts have been reached throughout history, concepts that only inhabited our imagination, like the utilization of fire, the wheel, agriculture, the manipulation of electricity, our understanding of human psychology and many more.

Famed author, inventor and scientist, Ray Kurzweil, definitely seems to think there is an answer, or a solution to death. His work into ai, life augmentation and prolongation, hint at the possibility of humans reaching scientific, technological and spiritual levels that are straight out of a Isaac Asimov novel. In Kurzweil’s vision, he imagines humans merging with machines, “spiritual machines” he calls them. Kurzweil is a huge proponent on the possibility of us reaching the Singularity, a boundary of space-time after which the normal rules of measurement no longer apply.

In an interview with wired magazine, he claims the following, “...while artificial intelligence will render biological humans obsolete, it will not make human consciousness irrelevant. The first AIs will be created, he says, as add-ons to human intelligence, modeled on our actual brains and used to extend our human reach. AIs will help us see and hear better. They will give us better memories and help us fight disease. Eventually, AIs will allow us to conquer death itself. The singularity won't destroy us, Instead, it will immortalize us.”

My brain hurts just thinking about that.

However, these theories are not without detractors, philosopher Nick Bostrom claims in his book, “Superintelligence: Paths, dangers and strategies”, that the existential dangers of toying with ai and simulations have far more dangerous implications to humans than we thought possible, maybe even reaching a point where a ‘superintelligence’ could replace humans as we exist. “We are like children playing with a bomb”, Bostrom has famously exclaimed.

Now, these questions do have deep spiritual and scientific implications, many moral and ethical quandaries pop up. We are in an age of supplements, surgeries, and body modifications, all in the pursuit of eternal youth and our hands are reaching out, barely touching the concept of an extended life, or immortality. We strive to extend our lives but at what point is enough really enough? Are we pushing into this infinite abyss the same way we push further out into space?

We advance through time and space in an ever-expanding growth, a constant mutation. Perhaps, in pursuit of the answer to one of our biggest mysteries, the fuel of much of our inspiration; a quest for immortality, to answer the question of death. The beings that will one day reach another habitable planet may be unrecognizable to what we are now. I personally, cannot grasp the concept of living forever, or if we could reach such a stage. We could conceivably conquer death in such a way that whatever state we inhabit after that could be considered as alien-like, maybe even god-like. To reference a small muse I had, maybe we were created by such god-like creatures. We are just tumbling through time as an eternal loop of creation.

I merely pose this question, not as a way to find an answer, but as a way to enhance our curiosity and to deepen our connections with who we are now. In our current state, we are already infinitely incredible, with all our quirks, manias, and all our history. Just as individuals lost in glimpses of history, we are astounding beings, our lone existence having a tremendous impact every day on anyone that surrounds us. The fact that you are sitting here, on the spaceship of earth, hurtling through space at break-neck speeds, reading these words, is a miracle of existence. Our appearance in the universe could very well be a coincidence, one that is impossible to replicate, yet here we are, breathing, laughing and crying, against all the odds of physics.

Art by US artist Steven Belledin. (Instagram @stevenbelledin)