HUMANITY TO 0-1

Modern science tries to create virtual models that are reacting like our body. Immagine that we will be able to test drugs, do surgery operations, do brain experiments or other types of experments on a virtual model that works just like our body. In the future, doctors, will be able to test their’s ideeas on computer models. This technology will be a big step forward in treating cancer, AIDS, etc…

Why haven’t science people created this technology yet?

Let’s immagine we scanned all our body atoms into a computer, in 3d.  We have atoms, that make cells, tissues, organs and in the end our  body.

We have the atoms now, but how do we get some “movement”?

This is a very good question. First of all… we need to start from the beginning…. from vectors.

A vector is a “carrier”, something that, in abstact, takes something from a point to another. It has four characteristics: magnitude, sense, direction, initial point. For example: We want to move an object from point A to point B with a certain force. We will have point A as initial point, force as magnitude, the sense will be from A to B, and the direction will be (A,B). In a 2d plan this is a basic movement, or a vector movement. Our body moves with milions of vectors at once in 3d plan. When we eat an apple, our mouth makes so much small movements, that is dificult even for a computer to keep count of how many vectors were involved in that movement.

When we take a hammer in hand, this movement can be transformed into vectors. We can immagine and project, the movement of every finger, and the force that every finger needs to have, to keep the hammer in hand. Our hand also moves into a 3d space and is connected to our body, that need to balance it. More we want to take into consideration every vector we can create with our movements, more complicated this is.

And this is not all. This are just the vectors of movement, but we also have blood vectors, neurological vectors, DNA,  etc…

Can we realy project each atom of our body into a computer?

This can be done in theory, but is very hard to put in practice. To knwo where an atom is found in a 3d plan, we need to irradiate that plan.

Problems that may come when we are being scanned

1. Our body needs to stay still and scanning needs to be done in an instant. Even a milisecond is alot. If the body moves, the atoms that are being scanned, are not projected well into computer. Our body is a living organism. Our blood flows, our neurons change shape etc…

2. Too much radiation at once could result into some medical problems for our body.

3. The rays that will be used are smaller in frequency than all other rays used today in medical science because, we are studying atoms and not cells. The difference between gamma rays and X-rays is in the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation. Gamma rays and X-rays are both types of electromagnetic radiation, and gamma rays are higher on the frequency spectrum, and have more energy than X-rays.

Still, gamma rays have wavelength less than 10 picometers, that’s less than the diameter of an atom.Let’s take Carbon (C-6). Carbon has an atomic ray of 67pm (picometers). Gamma rays can project atoms less than 10 picometers. Still, because atoms are not all the same, we need to use very high frequency radiation, to distinguish them, even higher than gamma rays.

How many elements are in the human body?

Some say we have all the elements in our body,  because of our constant poisoning with the environment, but we use and need only some of the elements.

According to “What Are the Elements in the Human Body?” from http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/blbodyelements.htm, our body is made out of these chemical elements:

1. Oxygen (65%)
2. Carbon (18%)
3. Hydrogen (10%)
4. Nitrogen (3%)
5. Calcium (1.5%)
6. Phosphorus (1.0%)
7. Potassium (0.35%)
8. Sulfur (0.25%)
9. Sodium (0.15%)
10. Magnesium (0.05%)
11. Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)
12. Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

To distinguish between these atoms is a hard thing to do, but this will be possible in the modern science.

2045: The Singularity, according to Ray Kurzweil, will give us the possibility to buy a computer a billion times more powerful than the human brain, with only $1000. That is something that will realy be useful in scanning our body.

Diseases

Let’s say we have all  body’s possible vectors taken into consideration. In that moment, we will want to take into consideration also the diseases. This could take years or even decades. Let’s immagine we want to put a simple scratch on our simulation. Our computer-person got a scratch. This is usualy treated by desinfecting and sealing the wound.  How do we program that? We tell our computer that our simulation-person has organs, organs are made of tissues, tissues of cells, etc…. We also tell our computer that the cells need special condition to survive and if we don’t clean the wound, it will get infected.

Even the most advanced technologies that we have today, will not be able to simulate our blood, our brain, our movements, our diseases, our antibodies, our DNA etc… ALL AT ONCE. It will pass so much time until this will be possible but, still, this is something that science people must take into consideration.

Doing experiments on volunteer subjects will be history when we will atomicaly projecty the human body  into a computer, that will be able to process this volume of information.

Religious and political aspects of this project

Some people might think that we are going so much forward trying to know how God created us, and how we work (read also  World Most Ambitious Projects ). We are not saying they are right or not. Of course, this knowledges, could mean alot in case of wars, and we don’t want to develop something that could destroy us. This is one of the main fear for science – to create something that is a threat to humanity.