Perhaps de Gray is way too optimistic, but plenty of others have joined the search for a virtual fountain of youth. In fact, a growing number of scientists, doctors, geneticists and nanotech experts—many with impeccable academic credentials—are insisting that there is no hard reason why ageing can’t be dramatically slowed or prevented altogether. Not only is it theoretically possible, they argue, but a scientifically achievable goal that can and should be reached in time to benefit those alive today.

“I am working on immortality,” says Michael Rose, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine, who has achieved breakthrough results extending the lives of fruit flies. “Twenty years ago the idea of postponing aging, let alone reversing it, was weird and off-the-wall. Today there are good reasons for thinking it is fundamentally possible.”

Even the US government finds the field sufficiently promising to fund some of the research. Federal funding for “the biology of ageing”, excluding work on ageing-specific diseases like heart failure and cancer – has been running at about $2.4 billion a year, according to the National Institute of Ageing, part of the National Institutes of Health.

So far, the most intriguing results have been spawned by the genetics labs of bigger universities, where anti-ageing scientists have found ways to extend live spans of a range of organisms—including mammals. But genetic research is not the only field that may hold the key to eternity.

“There are many, many different components of ageing and we are chipping away at all of them,” said Robert Freitas at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, a non-profit, nanotech group in Palo Alto, California. “It will take time and, if you put it in terms of the big developments of modern technology, say the telephone, we are still about 10 years off from Alexander Graham Bell shouting to his assistant through that first device. Still, in the near future, say the next two to four decades, the disease of ageing will be cured.”

But not everyone thinks ageing can or should be cured. Some say that humans weren’t meant to live forever, regardless of whether or not we actually can.

“I just don’t think [immortality] is possible,” says Sherwin Nuland, a professor of surgery at the Yale School of Medicine. “Aubrey and the others who talk of greatly extending lifespan are oversimplifying the science and just don’t understand the magnitude of the task. His plan will not succeed. Were it to do so, it would undermine what it means to be human.”

It’s interesting that Nuland first says he doesn’t think it will work but then adds that if it does, it will undermine humanity. So, which is it? Is it impossible, or are the skeptics just hoping it is?

After all, we already have overpopulation, global warming, limited resources and other issues to deal with, so why compound the problem by adding immortality into the mix.

But anti-ageing enthusiasts argue that as our perspectives change and science and technology advance exponentially, new solutions will emerge. Space colonization, for example, along with dramatically improved resource management, could resolve the concerns associated with long life. They reason that if the Universe goes on seemingly forever—much of it presumably unused—why not populate it?

However, anti-ageing crusaders are coming up against an increasingly influential alliance of bioconservatives who want to restrict research seeking to “unnaturally” prolong life. Some of these individuals were influential in persuading President Bush in 2001 to restrict federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. They oppose the idea of life extension and anti-ageing research on ethical, moral and ecological grounds.

Leon Kass, the former head of Bush’s Council on Bioethics, insists that “the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual”. Bioethicist Daniel Callahan of the Garrison, New York-based Hastings Centre, agrees: “There is no known social good coming from the conquest of death.”

Maybe they’re right, but then why do we as humans strive so hard to prolong our lives in the first place? Maybe growing old, getting sick and dying is just a natural, inevitable part of the circle of life, and we may as well accept it.

“But it’s not inevitable, that’s the point,” de Grey says. “At the moment, we’re stuck with this awful fatalism that we’re all going to get old and sick and die painful deaths. There are a 100,000 people dying each day from age-related diseases. We can stop this carnage. It’s simply a matter of deciding that’s what we should be doing.”

Very much like the Death Star, the gigantic space station in the movie series Star Wars (“That’s no moon,” speaketh Obi Wan Kenobi), the beams will focus on a single point to unleash their full, joint potential. The target: a BB-size pellet of frozen hydrogen in the center of a 33-foot- (10-meter-) diameter chamber. The ultraviolet lasers should heat the pellet to hundreds of millions of degrees, forcing nuclear fusion to occur—the same superhigh heat and pressure atomic reaction that fuels the stars.

Scientists have long hailed fusion as the ultimate clean energy source—hydrogen is abundant, though producing and storing it remains economically unattractive. Unit for unit, though, the amount of energy that could be generated via fusion with even a tiny bit of hydrogen fuel is astronomical (think: E=mc2) compared to any other power-making scheme in operation today.

Crucially, the lab expects to generate a net amount of energy, reaching the milestone that has plagued other laboratory attempts at developing fusion as a future energy source, according to Hirschfeld. A fusion reaction requires an immense amount of energy to get going, robbing its potential power output, and harvesting and storing that energy is another task altogether. Currently, NIF’s lasers cannot fire anywhere near quickly enough to sustainedly produce energy, Hirschfeld says, noting that not one watt of energy for commercial purposes will come out of NIF, which stands as a proof of principle experiment.

Beyond gunning for fusion, NIF could also one day focus its lasers on burning up some of the spent nuclear fuel from power plants that now sits in on-site pools or cement casks. For years, the U.S. and other nations have grappled with what to do with this radioactive waste. (The Obama administration recently canned long-standing plans to bury it in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.) NIF, or a facility based on its technology, could use these leftover fissile materials in place of the hydrogen pellet to generate power, while getting rid of volatile nuclear material.

Other NIF missions include updating supercomputer simulations of the nation’s aging nuclear stockpile, which cannot be tested due to a 1992 moratorium. Astrophysics work on the fusion in stars and materials science will also take place at NIF. (“We’ll be squeezing materials harder than they have ever been squeezed,” Hirschfeld says.) Despite any Darth Vader–like urges to the contrary, though, the NIF lasers will not see service in blowing up rebellious planets.

Inside the targeting chamber at NIF. The target positioner extends from the right [top]. Laser Bay 2 (of two) where the lasers are generated at NIF [right]. Image Credits: Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC / Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Created by Chilicoke, this incredible Gran Turismo 5 racing cockpit was modeled after the S2000′s and features a Logitech G25 racing wheel, mated to a 6-speed shift as well as a custom handbrake. According to its creator, “the button below the shifter enables clutch.” Continue reading for a video and more pictures, which can be viewed in gallery format here.

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Escherichia coli (E. coli) can give you a severe case of food poisoning or, with a little genetic engineering, a useful plastic. Scientists at San Diego–based Genomatica, Inc., have announced success in manipulating the bacteria to directly produce butanediol (BDO), a chemical compound used to make everything from spandex to car bumpers, thereby providing a more energy-efficient way of making it without oil or natural gas.

“We have engineered the organism such that it has to secrete that product in order for it to grow,” says bioengineer Christophe Schilling, president and co-founder of the company, launched in 2000 to develop such chemical-producing microbes. “The interests of the organism are aligned with our interests: It grows faster when it produces more.”

The E. coli can be grown in large fermentation tanks, exactly like those used to brew ethanol from corn, and have also been genetically tweaked to tolerate high concentrations of BDO in their water. “Originally, BDO was toxic to E. coli at fairly low levels but we evolved the organism such that it now tolerates the concentration we need it to grow at,” Schilling says. “We grow the bacteria in sugar and water to produce the product, then purify and separate that product out of that water.”

Schilling and his colleagues are attempting to produce BDO first precisely because current methods of making it require are so energy-intensive. “You need some significant energy,” says chemist Herbert Exner, an executive in charge of producing BDO and other chemicals in the U.S. at Germany-based chemical giant BASF, one of the largest BDO manufacturers in the world.

In addition, BDO itself is getting more expensive, rising from below $1 to around $1.22 per pound for bulk orders, Exner says. “Natural gas and oil peaked in the last 12 months and all processes are either gas or oil related,” he says. “Therefore, by nature, the raw material costs went up, so also the prices for BDO went up.”

Cost will be the ultimate factor in whether this someday becomes a widely used plastic-making process; Genomatica says it’s not sure how much its E. coli–produced BDO will cost, noting that results thus far have been confined to the lab.

But the company calculates that their process (even including all the energy needed to gather and transport the raw feedstocks, ranging from sugar to cellulose) requires only 32,000 British thermal units (Btus) of energy, at least 30 percent less than traditional methods. CEO Christopher Gann says the company plans to use “inexpensive, readily available, nonfood-competing renewable feedstocks.” Then the E. coli can turn these waste sugars into BDO at normal pressure and temperatures under 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), unlike the petroleum alternatives.

“This isn’t an aberration where we need $250 per barrel oil to be cost competitive,” Gann adds. He says the researchers so far have produced less than two pounds (a kilogram) of BDO; he expects a pilot plant to be up and running next year.

“Natural gas or oil are materials that could one day be gone,” BASF’s Exner says. But “major industries, such as auto manufacturers are not willing to pay a significantly higher price just because you gave your product a bio-label.”

Given that three billion pounds (1.4 billion kilograms) of BDO are produced annually relatively cheaply, Genomatica has a long way to go. But the company suggests that its genetically engineered E. coli may prove a more sustainable way of producing a range of necessary plastic compounds in the future.

“We selected BDO to start with because it’s a product that is relatively sophisticated in the sense of the number of steps to make it starting from oil and gas,” Gann says. “In our case, we start with land and water and sunshine to end up with sugar in water to produce BDO. The important competitive advantage is less energy and a much friendlier environmental footprint.”

There is a nasty rumor making its way around the interconnected series of tubes we call the Internet. The rumor was sparked by an article on The Neurostimulation Technology Portal by Liz Elliott entitled “Magenta Ain’t A Colour,” which has since had people exclaiming, “Fact: Magenta isn’t a color,” or, “Magenta is a lie.” The truth is a little more complicated than that, but I assure you that magenta is not a lie—or at least not any more a lie than any other color.

See, what we call the “visible spectrum” is really a very narrow band in a much larger spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. It is visible because our eyes have cells called “cones” in the retina that are sensitive to these wavelengths—in the range of about 400–700nm—to varying degrees. Some of the cones are sensitive to longer wavelengths, some to medium wavelengths, and others to shorter wavelengths. These wavelengths correspond to (roughly) what we call red, green, and blue light, and form the basis of the RGB color model used by digital images, TVs, flat panels, and more.

This chart shows the range of EM radiation, and the narrow band we call visible light within it.

Wikimedia Commons

As visible light enters the eye and strikes the cone cells, the cells send electrical signals along the optic nerve to the brain. This is how our body “senses” light. Our brain interprets those three separate sensations to produce the perception that we call “color.”

So back to this rumor that magenta somehow isn’t a color. Elliott’s thesis centers on the argument that magenta appears nowhere on the spectrum of visible light, so it therefore isn’t a “real” color. If you look at a standard CIE chromaticity diagram, which maps wavelengths of light according to human perception, you’ll note that every point along the curve corresponds to a single wavelength of light. Magenta, as it were, lies along what’s commonly called the “pink-purple line” that runs across the bottom. All colors along this line do not exist as single wavelengths. But, all points inside the “color bag” above that line do not exist as single wavelengths, either.

The CIE 1931 color space chromaticity diagram. The outer curved boundary is the spectral (or monochromatic) properties of light, with wavelengths shown in nanometers.

Wikimedia Commons

The truth is, no color actually exists outside of our brain’s perception of it. Everything we call a color—and there are a lot more than what comes in your box of Crayolas—only exists in our heads. We define color in terms of how our brains process the stimuli produced by a mix of wavelengths in the range of 400–700nm hitting specialized cells in our eyes—”one, or any mixture, of the constituents into which light can be separated in a spectrum or rainbow,” says the OED. Elliot’s article might be better titled, “Magenta is not a single wavelength of electromagnetic radiation in the ‘visible’ spectrum, but our brain perceives it anyway.”

So despite what you read on Twitter, Virginia, there is a magenta. And it’s all in our heads.

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Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.

In 1993 an international group of six scientists, including IBM Fellow Charles H. Bennett, confirmed the intuitions of the majority of science fiction writers by showing that perfect teleportation is indeed possible in principle, but only if the original is destroyed. In subsequent years, other scientists have demonstrated teleportation experimentally in a variety of systems, including single photons, coherent light fields, nuclear spins, and trapped ions.  Teleportation promises to be quite useful as an information processing primitive, facilitating long range quantum communication (perhaps unltimately leading to a “quantum internet”), and making it much easier to build a working quantum computer.   But science fiction fans will be disappointed to learn that no one expects to be able to teleport people or other macroscopic objects in the foreseeable future, for a variety of engineering reasons, even though it would not violate any fundamental law to do so.

In the past, the idea of teleportation was not taken very seriously by scientists, because it was thought to violate the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which forbids any measuring or scanning process from extracting all the information in an atom or other object. According to the uncertainty principle, the more accurately an object is scanned, the more it is disturbed by the scanning process, until one reaches a point where the object’s original state has been completely disrupted, still without having extracted enough information to make a perfect replica. This sounds like a solid argument against teleportation: if one cannot extract enough information from an object to make a perfect copy, it would seem that a perfect copy cannot be made. But the six scientists found a way to make an end run around this logic, using a celebrated and paradoxical feature of quantum mechanics known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect. In brief, they found a way to scan out part of the information from an object A, which one wishes to teleport, while causing the remaining, unscanned, part of the information to pass, via the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, into another object C which has never been in contact with A. Later, by applying to C a treatment depending on the scanned-out information, it is possible to maneuver C into exactly the same state as A was in before it was scanned. A itself is no longer in that state, having been thoroughly disrupted by the scanning, so what has been achieved is teleportation, not replication.

As the figure to the left suggests, the unscanned part of the information is conveyed from A to C by an intermediary object B, which interacts first with C and then with A. What? Can it really be correct to say “first with C and then with A“? Surely, in order to convey something from A to C, the delivery vehicle must visit A before C, not the other way around. But there is a subtle, unscannable kind of information that, unlike any material cargo, and even unlike ordinary information, can indeed be delivered in such a backward fashion. This subtle kind of information, also called “Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlation” or “entanglement”, has been at least partly understood since the 1930s when it was discussed in a famous paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. In the 1960s John Bell showed that a pair of entangled particles, which were once in contact but later move too far apart to interact directly, can exhibit individually random behavior that is too strongly correlated to be explained by classical statistics. Experiments on photons and other particles have repeatedly confirmed these correlations, thereby providing strong evidence for the validity of quantum mechanics, which neatly explains them. Another well-known fact about EPR correlations is that they cannot by themselves deliver a meaningful and controllable message. It was thought that their only usefulness was in proving the validity of quantum mechanics. But now it is known that, through the phenomenon of quantum teleportation, they can deliver exactly that part of the information in an object which is too delicate to be scanned out and delivered by conventional methods.

This figure compares conventional facsimile transmission with quantum teleportation (see above). In conventional facsimile transmission the original is scanned, extracting partial information about it, but remains more or less intact after the scanning process. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is imprinted on some raw material (eg paper) to produce an approximate copy of the original. By contrast, in quantum teleportation, two objects B and C are first brought into contact and then separated. Object B is taken to the sending station, while object C is taken to the receiving station. At the sending station object B is scanned together with the original object A which one wishes to teleport, yielding some information and totally disrupting the state of A and B. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is used to select one of several treatments to be applied to object C, thereby putting C into an exact replica of the former state of A.

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