Q&ACIAN MCCARTHY, CORK, IRELAND
WHEN WE START
UPLOADING OUR BR AINS
TO COMPUTERS, WILL
OUR SENSE OF SELF BE
UPLOADED TOO?
Our sense of self emerges from the
activity of a poorly understood
network of neurons, glial cells and
blood vessels in the brain, which
together produce the electrical and
chemical processes that give us our
thoughts and consciousness. One
day, it might be possible to scan all
of this activity with perfect fidelity- this would be a hugely intensive
process, involving recording the
activity of every cell and chemical
at an atomic level. This digital scan
could be turned into a computer
simulation, essentially allowing you
to go on living a er death. In
theory, the simulated version of your
brain would believe that its sense of
self had been successfully uploaded,
transferred from a biological body to
an artificial one.
However, it’s not quite as simple as
that. If scientists can develop a way
to perfectly scan the brain without
destroying it (which isn’t a given),
then your original brain (and sense of
self) would still exist, trapped in a
body that will eventually fail. Your
digital self might come to the
realisation that it’s a copy, triggering
an existential crisis.
And what if someone decides to
make a hundred copies of this digital
self? Now there are a hundred digital
versions of ‘you’, each with its own
sense of self. Is each of these selves
equally valid? Does the second sense
of self know that it’s the original copy,
and thus expect a higher status? Could
the separate selves decide to share
their experiences and become a
super-intelligent ‘hive mind’?
We don’t yet know the answers,
but one way to limit any potential
complications might be to become
immortal piece by piece. We
naturally change as we age, so if you
slowly replaced failing biological
tissue with computerised
prostheses, then by the time all of
your body and brain had been
replaced, your sense of self will have
been transferred without leaving
behind a biological remnant. Just
watch out for the delete key... a
digital brain is much easier to wipe
than an organic one!PBEDWARD SEYMOUR, HOVEHOW MANY
STATES OF
MATTER ARE
THERE?
There are now as many as
eight: the number creeps up
as science advances.
Schoolkids are taught about
three physical states: solid,
liquid and gas. A fourth is hot,
charged gas (plasma), which
consists of positively charged
ions and free electrons. In
1995, scientists created a new
state called ‘Bose-Einstein
condensate’ by cooling gas to
within a few degrees of
absolute zero (-273°C), at
which point molecular motion
almost stops and the atoms
behave en masse like a single
atom. Earlier this year,
researchers reported another
new state for certain metals,
where atoms exist as both
solid and liquid at the same
time. Two other states are
space-related: ‘quark-gluon
plasma’, which made up the
Universe up to a few
milliseconds a er the Big
Bang, and ‘degenerate
ma er’, a highly compressed
state that’s found in stars.EDMERLIN BATCHELOR, NORWICHCOULD ‘DARK MATTER’ JUST
BE DEAD STARS AND
PLANETS FLOATING IN THE
DEPTHS OF SPACE?
Some astronomers have indeed theorised that dark ma er might
just be ordinary ma er that we cannot see, rather than an exotic,
as-yet-undiscovered particle. This ordinary ma er could include
black holes, neutron stars, brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, very faint
red dwarfs and even solitary planets. These objects, collectively
known as MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects),
emit very li le light, but they can be detected if they pass in front
of or near a background object (via the way that their gravity
bends the light from the more distant object). However, studies to
date have concluded that MACHOs can only account for a tiny
fraction of the missing mass in the Universe. So the nature of dark
ma er remains a mystery.AGuComputer model of dark
matter (red) in a particular
section of the Universe.
Light ( grey lines) between
galaxies (pink) has been
distorted by the
gravitational pull of dark
matter – without it, the
lines would be straight