I mean really.. why? Why am I alive in the first place? Obviously I was birthed and junk, but what is that subtle difference between life and death? At least concerning death.. does it just come down to the brain? Heart attack keeps blood from brain, you die. What about natural causes? How does someone just die in their sleep? Is it something in their brain, like the last five cells that were keeping the system going finally gave out? What's up? Is the "spark" an illusion?
Could the phenomenon we refer to as death be brought about by the breakdown in the genetic "code" which "instructs" cells to reproduce accurate copies of themselves? Is it not known that with the passage of time, detrimental effects caused by everything from free radicals from foodstuffs to the naturally occuring radioactivity of the Earth damages the DNA in cells so that they eventually do not reproduce exact copies of themselves? ie: At some point the "inaccuracy" level becomes sufficient to disrupt the functions of either a key organ such as the heart, or perhaps the transmission of nerve impulses from the areas of the brain which regulate autonomic functions (breathing, heartbeat) If so, you wouldn't be dead yet because your body is still faithfully reproducing new cells - or at least faithfully enough. Or... Was there not a bit of info revealed - at least to the general public - during the hubub over the sheep cloning which stated that the clone was in effect as old at birth as the original was at the time its DNA was used in the experiment. This proven via the fact that a test on the clone's cells revealed that some sort of chemical "timer" or something of that nature showed as much "elapsed time" as the originals? (sorry if this sounds convolluted. I recall it only from news stories) Anyhow, if the "timer" actually exists, perhaps you only get so long, and then cell reproduction decreases until some vital system fails, and... well... so do you. Also, wouldn't a heart attack be considered a "natural cause"? Something has to give eventually. People dying in their sleep might just be coincidental. Whatever was going to cause it just happened then as opposed to at their job, or walking in a park, or whatever. As for why one is alive to begin with... Yeesh! I scarcely feel qualified to comment on what death is or is not, let alone what the "spark of life" is.
sounds like this might be of interest to you, http://www.i-sis.org.uk/hoarchi.php I know the science is a bit dodgy but the ideas nice. . . .?
I think what you're refering to with Dolly are telomeres. Telomeres are the stretches of DNA at the end of Chromosomes. It has been shown that these stretches get a little shorter every time DNA replicates and a cell subsequently divides. So when they took DNA from an adult sheep its telomeres were already shortened. There is thought that telomeres signal to cells about their age and tell the cell when to stop dividing and when to die. How exactly telomeres do this is not known.
The new scientists –think its last week’s has an news story of research which compared the telomeres of five different birds, each with different life spans. This seems to indicate that it is the rate of shorting, not the length which determines an organisms life span. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
you are not dead because the chemical reactions in your body are not at equilibruim although they are constantly trying to attain it. when you reach balance, that is death.
Aging is cause by 3 things mutually 1.Chemical decay and breakdown: free radicals, toxins, radiation 2.Telomeres: to prevent cancer or even more necessary to control normal growth and development. I am pretty sure you have a basic idea of how these work already. 3.“The Car Warranty Effect”: the simple truth was that we are not designed to last, evolution no longer has a effect after you have children: any genetic disease you have that kills you after you have kids will get passed on. Naturally nothing could last forever, eventually it would succumb to infection or predation: as a result evolution never had a chance to make anything capable of lasting forever. Even so there are many animals that have life spans that are many times longer then our own (even when compared to metabolic rate). I like the case of the mouse and the bat. Most mice live 2-3 years, the brown bat (of equal or slightly higher metabolic rate to the mouse) lives for 30 years! So it is not at all impossible for a creature of equal metabolic rate to to live many times long if evolution has made it to do so.
Very very low metabolic rate... remember aging is caused by those 3 things (Breakdown, Timer and Mortality) the tortoise with its metabolic rate does not produce or ingest as many toxins, oxides and free-radicals as animals like us do. In the case of a particular breed of Seagull somewhere around Ireland (that I can’t name off the top of my head) which lives for 80 years in the wild, testing of cell cultures show that is was incredible resistant to oxidization… a example of superior mortality: simple able to withstand far more chemical breakdown. Now why do some animals live longer then other with equal metabolic rates? Well the most common theory is that animals with few predators and a low rate of infectious disease live longer because the ones with longer life span can have more children so it becomes a evolutionary advantage. unfortunately this theory barely answer the majority of long life-span animals and fails repeatedly (like the brown bat which has many predators and diseases) so basely we just don’t know why yet.
That is really amazing. how their cells acquired such resistance to oxidization..? anything to do with their food habit.? Thanks.
I have no clue, do you think a diet of moths and small insects is the fountain of youth (in the case of the brown bat)? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
not just tortoises, all reptiles live for a very long time because they are cold blooded, hence their slow metabolism.
I find this the most satisfying answer so far, all reactions occur because everything has a tendancy to move to where it has the least possible potential energy, anything that interacts with other things in it's surroundings does so for this reason e.g. two bodys travelling/falling towards each other; the closer they are the less distance they can fall and thus less potential energy. Or when a carbon atom reacts with oxygen, it releases energy as heat and light therefore having less potential chemical energy. We as organisms require this potential chemical energy to function, we sustain an unbalance by feeding ourselves and discharging the waiste, when our bodies achieve balance, we have no energy, we are therefore unable to function and we are dead. not sure how the unbalnce can just run out though Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! . I guess it could happen as already kindof mentioned when someone has a heart attack, there is no longer oxygen getting to our body (our brain runs out first) and our organs our left with only sugars but nothing to burn them with, on its own a glucose molecule has no potential anergy since it has nothing to combine with and our brains simply run out of energy and cease to function.
Don't you think that is possible to stay alive for an eternity? like ETERNAL LIFE! what about genetic? we can change our genetic code to stay alive longer and then we can even upgrade us with some cyborg parts, then we can change them after some time and in that way we would be able to stay alive forever!!! Humanity should invest money in this kind of projects and then everything it would be easier you know....
Why are you not dead? hmm... because the Many Worlds Hypothesis is correct, and this is one of the many worlds in which you are not yet dead... the number of worlds in which you are not yet dead may decrease over time, until there are very few, and you are very old- however in one or more of those worlds you will survive long enough to recieve anti-aging treatment, and then you will continue to live on in that world line in which it is possible to extend life indefinitely. Call it Quantum Immortality. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality ________________ SF worldbuilding at http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
It's all about consciousness. Intuition, medicine, religion, and psychology converge: Life, in humans, equates to consciousness, or at least the ability to regain consciousness within a standard time interval after sleep or injury. We'll push that envelope to its limit. If we see brain waves that clearly indicate dreaming, meaning that the brain is still functioning in unconscious mode and therefore the personality is probably intact, we will allow more time for consciousness to resume. But when people fall into comas, there is no sign of even unconscious functions, and there is no way to predict whether they will ever regain consciousness, they are at the limit of life. At some more or less arbitrary point, the guardians and caregivers reach a consensus and decide that life has stopped. So the answer to the question, "Why am I not dead?" is, "Because you are, or were recently and are expected to soon be again, conscious." It works pretty much the same way with all warm-blooded animals. They all have a consciousness and (as far as I know to date) they all dream. If we bothered we could make the decisions about our pets and zoo animals being alive or dead the same way we do about each other, by looking at brain waves. The lower orders would be more difficult. The lower you get the more they have distributed reflex centers instead of a single controlling brain. Consciousness is not a property of animals below some line we could draw across our chart of the animal kingdom. I'd have a hard time explaining to an earthworm why he is not dead, but luckily he would have an even harder time asking me the question, so I'll probably never find myself in that awkward position.
