All about death and Science...

This was my cognition for a long long time, but I never put effort to understand more. I always wonderd what happens when you faint or sleep. But now after an experience of fainting and realised that it was just a death for minute. So I started to explore the answer for the question : what is death ?

I have compiled this post long back, but not got time to publish it :) finally here it goes...

When I started searching for answer with the help of google, I came to know immediately that there are no definite answer till date. Death is only defined legaly and Clinically but scientifically it is not yet but there are multiple theories exists.

Information Death
One of the theory of death is Information-theoretic death (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death). This is actually explains that what we call death is not a death and just your information in your brain is lost its power to keep it alive. This is the current belief of the death.

Relatively speaking, a dead body is very much like powered off computer, that does not mean that the computer is dead. It is just not functioning and fully idle. All the information stored in its hard drive and non volatile memory are still available. When we power on again, it is alive and knows all the things stored in the memories and storages before its power went off. This is like fainting.

Based on information theoritic death, there are scientists allover the world doing multiple research to find how to get a dead person alive. There are two ways to this research
1. Keeping the body cells (mainly brain) intact so that when science grown enought to reinitiate the life pulses and heart beat.
2. Retriving information from the almost dead brain cells so that these information can be uploaded to another active brain (I am still wondering what purpose this will solve)

Cryonics
This is the first way. Here the assumption is that our brain cells are the eqivalent of non volatile memory. The problem with powered off(dying) human body is that the cells start decaying (even with in few minutes) , so if our body lost its power (or Dead!) for some time then the memory cells
started decaying and losing the information stored in it.

Cryonics is a way of avoiding this cells decaying and preserving the information in the brain cells for future use. This is more advanced form of mummies and life cell storage. The human body after immediate death (clynically not yet brain dead) is stored in a place where the cells are not going to decay and loose the information.

There are lot of rich (and intelligent ) people opted for storing their bodies in Cryonics until such time science improves and gives the life pulses and heart beat back to the Cryonically preserved body!!

There is a organisation doing this dedicatedly. You can refer the details at http://www.alcor.org/. This has been shown in many hollywood movies till now including
Austin Powers, Vanila sky etc.

Mind Uploading
This is the second way. Here it is about download and upload the information stored in the brain cells into a computer / robo. By doing this we are able to give a human another body. If we can make this work, then the Information death theory will become truth.

Here the aim is to let a dead human continue his life in a computer / robo. Weired ? but researches are in full swing on this method called Mind uploading.

Brain Transplant / Body transplant
This is not like the above mentioned two theoritical way. But this is straight forward but complex. This brain transplant is similar to any other limb body transplant but this is still in research stage. Reason being its not yet possible is due to the undelying complexities. This is for the persons who's brain is intact and body to support is damaged and lost power (dead!)

The future of this brain transplant is discussed detailed in here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/brain-transplants.html


The world has evolved and improved over decades on how to practically avoid burrial alive by detecting the death clinically. Before that it was worse that burial alive been reported regularly. People woke up after they got burried :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premature_burial

Possibilities are that in future robots will become second life of human or dead human living in other person body or you might come alive after 300 years your body in Cryonics.

 But this might be not possible even in next generation or even next few generations.
- Saravana Kumar (Since 1976)

What is the problem really ?

I was thinking about the problems we face globally challenging us and lot of money and energy spent on. These are my thoughts on what is our real problem and what is not.



The problem is not we are able to make a robot with human intelligence
The problem is we are not able to use the human intelligence available 


The problem is we are not able to build buildings taller than 1000 meter
The problem is we are not able to provide 1 meter tall shelter to all human


The problem is not that my neighbour country is killing my people and need huge military
The probelm is that we have our own people killing our own people


The problem is not that we have AIDS kiiling 200 K people and we are not able to find anti virus
The problem is that we have 10 Million infant death with all available medicines


The problem is not that we are not able make a rocket @ speed of light
The problem is that we are not able make a plane with no accident


The problem is not that we are not able to make mars livable 
The problem is that we are not able to make earth livable peacefully

- Saravana Kumar (Since 1976)

If we were only 100 people in this world

I just came across an interesting statistics site states on what if we are only 100 people live in this world and how our statistics looks like (its nothing but a % but it is interesting to see it in a simple way)

50 would be female
50 would be male

20 would be children
There would be 80 adults,
14 of whom would be 65 and older

There would be:
61 Asians
12 Europeans
13 Africans
14 people from the Western Hemisphere

There would be:
31 Christians
21 Muslims
14 Hindus
6 Buddhists
12 people who practice other religions
16 people who would not be aligned with a religion

17 would speak a Chinese dialect
8 would speak Hindustani
8 would speak English
7 would speak Spanish
4 would speak Arabic
4 would speak Russian
52 would speak other languages

82 would be able to read and write; 18 would not

1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

75 people would have some supply of food and a place to
shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 would not

1 would be dying of starvation
17 would be undernourished
15 would be overweight

83 would have access to safe drinking water
17 people would have no clean, safe water to drink

Source : http://www.100people.org

Saravana Kumar