Scientist Predicts Immortality Might Be Possible In The Near Future

How does this work? Kurzweil explains in an essay he wrote for Wired that once we reach old age, our bodies spontaneously reach a state in which they just start breaking down. This happens regardless of lifestyle.

Kurzweil compares it to the rusting of a car in that “metabolism creates waste in and around cells and damages structures through oxidation. When we’re young, our bodies are able to remove this waste and repair the damage efficiently. But as we get older, most of our cells reproduce over and over, and errors accumulate. Eventually, the damage starts piling up faster than the body can fix it.”

This is where the nanobots come in. According to an article from Columbia One, in the near future, humans might have nanobots flowing through our bloodstreams. These nanobots will repair cellular damage and link us to the cloud. 

The article reports that this will allow humans to increase their life expectancy for “more than a year every year, thus allowing humans to become essentially immortal."

At this time, nanobots solving the riddle of human aging is just one theory amongst many. However, Kurzweil has been known for making other accurate predictions about the future. 

In his book written in 1990, The Age of Intelligent Machines, Kurzweil predicted that by 2009, we’d all be using portable, personal computers and that most reading would be done on screens. As we can all attest to, this prediction was spot on.

Will Kurzweil's predictions about nanobots stalling human aging be as accurate? Only time will tell.