What is your favourite shape? And your favourite piece of art? Your tastes define you; you may think that these tastes are unique and extremely personal, but science has a different hypothesis: some of your aesthetic tastes may be, to a certain point, universal.
Immortality has always been one of those topics in science fiction that seemed a little too fantastical to ever be true. Maybe it’s not as full of paradoxes as time travel, or riddled with hypothetical questions like extra-terrestrials, but the concept of eternal life has long been seemingly rooted in our primal fear of death. Ever since humans could write, we’ve been fascinated with the preservation of life; from the ancient myths of the Fountain of Youth to the worship of everlasting deities, this fascination has truly stood the tests of time. Now that we finally have the knowledge and technology to potentially make immortality a reality, researchers are looking for ways to bring it out of science fiction and into the real world.
13.8 billion years ago, our universe began. Then followed particles… then galaxies… then stars… then planets. One of these planets, formed 4.5 million years ago, witnessed the birth of our first human ancestors around 3.2 million years. Over these years, our brains evolved to understand emotions, communicate with others, create meaning out of trivial matters, and read online articles pondering their own existence. This seems to be an accurate summary of our existence, right?