This new experiment seems much more suited to examining the speed of neutrinos. Can't wait to hear the results.

One would assume that his concept does have an asteroid/sun insertion engine. It would only be the interstellar portion that would be engine-less.

I think you are probably right with respect to "It is a future in which humans as we know them do not exist anymore." If the singularity occurs, and I don't see any reason that it wont, then the only way that humankind can remain relevant is to augment ourselves. Otherwise we'll never be able to keep up with the computers. Actually, even then I doubt we'll keep up with them. They'll advance so rapidly we'd be doing well to even understand them. Even if that weren't the case we would still compete among ourselves. Those that don't augment will be at a significant disadvantage compared to those that do. If you want to remain competitive you would have little choice.

Frankly we don't know much about consciousness. We can look at the electrochemical mechanics of neurons in the brain and see how impulses are triggered and the effects of those impulses as they work together to produce behaviors, memory, and language, but it would be fair to say that we haven't got a clue about how that arrangement leads to a consciousness.

Because of that, i think it's premature and a bit naive to assume that something that we create to replace a neuron will be capable of reproducing consciousness.

Cell turnover is pretty low in the brain. While there are some stem cells in the brain that replace lost cells it's nowhere near the number of cells that are lost. That said, there's no way to know that I'm the same me that I was five minutes ago let alone 5 years, but it does seems to be the case. I have much less confidence that the same would be true if my brain cells were slowly replaced by artificial representations.

I don't mean any disrespect, but no he didn't. He died due to organ failure from his stem cells not being able to replace damaged cells as quickly as they were being damaged. Nobody dies from "old age" per se.

I read an article recently that talked about how eggs/sperm/embryos aren't actually protected from the genetic and cellular damage that afflicts the rest of the body with age, but rather have strong repair responses that are turned on at conception. The researchers managed to find a way to turn the same responses on in adult cells leading to an apparent reduction in age of the cell culture. Now, doing this in a cell culture is one thing. An entire living organism is another thing altogether. Buts still, this seems like a fairly significant breakthrough.

I think that you're right that 5-10 years is optimistic, but we (as a society) have made quite a few significant advancements in the last few years. It wasn't that long ago that researchers really thought that the huge quantities of so called junk DNA in the human genome had little purpose. Now we know that at least a large fraction of it plays major roles in controlling how genes are expressed. It's really only a matter of time before we know enough to start making some real changes.

You're talking about activities that would take on the order of thousands of years, not a couple hundred. Also, I like to travel, but there's no way I'd be interested in sailing to every port, or walking every trail in the world. It would be incredibly monotonous. Yes there is variety in those tasks but not enough to maintain interest. I think you'd discover that yourself pretty quickly.

It's possible that may work. Or, you may simply feel more and more detached from reality as more and more of your brain is replaced by silicon. Feeling more and more as though you are watching life happen rather than being the master of it. Eventually losing your connection with it entirely.

Nothing would have changed to anyone around you though. You would still act like yourself, but it would be the new silicon brain controlling your body. Not the true "you" anymore.

Actually Kevorkian built it, and it went up for auction recently: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jHMdC7FZppUvB8bNOrk9iShcQS-g?docId=f44540c68e6d4e0ea15bd979f28f3755

Why are you so certain that the computer you would still be the actual you? Seems MUCH more likely that there would be a good likeness of you in a computer but the real you, your consciousness, would be dead.

No it won't be cheap, but it's a different scale of expense than what your suggesting. We're talking about a cost of probably something around $100 billion. While that's many times the current NASA budget, it's still only a small fraction of the total Federal budget. It would be less than $1000 per tax payer per year. Not to downplay the value of $1000, but i'd certainly be willing to give that if it meant "boldly going" to places like Mars, Europa, etc.

The benefit of this idea is that we may be able to use similar computer models to look for materials with other valuable properties. Rather than just happen upon a useful material, such as teflon, (or maybe just entertaining, such as silly putty) we can look for something that specifically suits the end purpose. No, we probably wouldn't find teflon by accident when looking for alternative refrigerants, but we might find it (or something far better) when specifically looking for a tough and slippery material.

The way I look at it is that we're moving on from semi-randomly combining things, hoping to get something that suits our purpose, to being able to determine ahead of time what will work. It's like the difference between alchemy and chemistry.

How about not at all?