Phoenix: Rise From The Ashes

वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय

नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि |

तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा

न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही ||

Meaning : 

    As a person sheds worn-out garments and wears new ones, likewise, at the time of death, the soul casts off its worn-out body and enters a new one.

I know what you are thinking right now, a Greek mythological bird - phoenix and verse from Bhagavad Gita that you just read, what is the relation between them. Just wait a couple of minutes and you will get a clear picture of what I want to say.

Re-Incarnation of soul

       After reading the verse of Bhagavad Geeta if you are thinking that this article is about rebirth or birth after death, so let me tell you, it's not about that. So what the article is all about? It is nothing but, I try to combine science and mythology and my imagination to think of a better future.

We are currently living in the 21st Century. A century of technology or a technical revolution. We can proudly say that we are in a better position in terms of technology than our ancestors, whether it is in the field of medical - our life expectancy or life span is increased up to nearly 80 years which is way large than our ancestors who had a life span of nearly 60, engineering - we have great machines which are helping humans to make there life simpler, astronomy - we literally touch the moon which is ancestors might not even think in their dreams, and so on.

Life Expectancy

Let me take you in the deep, let's talk about us. We, the humans, an intelligent species among the number of species that are living on a blue planet in our solar system. Humans, an intelligent species, but what makes us intelligent, that's right, it's our brain, that evolves in the current state what it is right now, throughout the period of evolution.

Human brain, the world's most complex machine, a machine that is nearly impossible to build by humans, in current time with current technology. We are just trying to replicate its functionality with the help of machines i.e intelligent computers. That's related to artificial intelligence or AI, but that's not our topic today. We are interested in another field, that's a cyborg. Yes, cyborg a mixture of machines and human. We are currently progressing in this field, to combine mechanical parts or mechanical organs with actual human organs. That is for amputated people, there arms or legs can get replaced by machines or some kind of mechanical exoskeleton. These machines help them, simplifying their life, helps them to do their daily tasks. The point to be noted is, nearly every part or organ of the human body can be replaceable even heart, except the human brain, we can't replace a human brain with a mechanical one right now.

Our human brain has a memory of around 2.5 Petabytes, that's really huge. As I talked earlier, we can't build this complex machine, we can just replicate its functionality. I was thinking that rather replicating the human brain's functionality, why don't we try to copy or move the human brain from the human body into an equivalent size memory device. Yes, you read it right a memory device, which can plug into any system at any time, anywhere. Sounds great right. Our brain has short term and long term memory the same as RAM and ROM of any computer. Likewise, any other computer our brain also generate or work by electrical signals. Our memory device will also have RAM and ROM for short and long term memory.

For some time let's assume we develop the machine that transfers human brain into a memory device, now our brain is nearly immortal, I said nearly, not 100% immortal that's because memory device can get corrupted or it may face some mechanical failures. In that case, the brain, which is currently in that device will die. But apart from this, our brain since, now it is a memory device we are able to create it's back up likewise we create a backup of our data. That is now our brain is sustainable for a large period of time.

  The next thing that we need is a system or a body in which we are going to plug our memory device which contains the brain. I am not talking about computers like PC or Laptop of today's world, no, not at all, because they can't move physically. We want a body much more like an Andro-Humanoid Robot or mechanical human body. Our system will not contain any controlling unit, like robots, have computers to control them, rather than the system's own controlling unit our memory device containing the brain will become the system's controlling unit. It will control the system, same as our brain is currently controlling our own body. So without our memory device, our system is nothing but an empty shell. It will be the same situation like without our brain our body is also an empty shell.

So till now, we transferred our brain into a memory device and we have a system to plug that device. You know what, if whatever we had talked earlier became a reality in the future, the situation is the same as any iron man movie. Likewise Tony Stark has it's Iron man suits, we also have our suits, all suits will be our look-alikes, and our brain will be in a memory device which can be plugged and can control that suit. Tony Stark enters into one of its suits and begins controlling it, similarly, we will get plugged into a suit and we will control that. If the mechanical body faces some issues we can easily replace the body and get a new one.

If this happens in the near future, the situation will be similar like the one mentioned in the verse that you read at the beginning. As mentioned in the verse our memory device containing brain will represent the soul, our mechanical body will represent the human body. As the verse says, the soul is immortal and can't die, after death the soul will leave the current body and will get into a new one. Similarly, as our brain will be in a memory device it nearly can't die, and after the death(failure) of mechanical body, the memory device will get a new body. It will also represent a rise form ashes, as after a complete failure of the mechanical body the brain will get a new one.

This doesn't mean our human body will not have any value, as we have our mechanical ones. Our human body is and will be precious all the time, but it has some limitations, like expiry date, after which it can't be replaced or renewed.

If we succeed to make this happen in the near future, then according to me it will be one of the biggest success of mankind. It will open lots of opportunities for humans. We will be free form biological disorders and diseases, our life span will be as much as we want. The main issue that we are facing right now in the space sector is, space is vast, it has no boundaries, and currently, we have boundaries, the boundary of life span. We cannot go after a certain limit in space just because we have a shorter life span and the destinations are far longer.

Humans are intelligent species, just because they are curious. We are curious about space, we are curious about nature and a lot more, but due to our physical boundary of the human body and life span, we can't actually explore the things. We have to send robots on distant stars and planets maybe just because of two reasons, either, our human bodies are not made for those environments, or those places are far away from our reach.