Are there such things as immortals

And he is still believed to be in a meditative state, rather than dead. It is all due to the way he passed away. He recommended his fellow monks to start the process of meditation and the funeral rites while he sat in the lotus position, claiming he would soon pass away. He never "woke up" from this meditation and to this day he remains in the lotus position and seems to remain immune from any signs of decay.

People believe he is in a state of hibernation or a nirvana-like state. Well, maybe meditation won't provide eternal life to all of us , but some of the benefits of meditation are:. Biohackers have a different approach to the matter of longevity. They use their knowledge of neuromediators and genes to prolong their lives and to improve their body performance. Jeanne Calment , lived for years and days.

Shigechiyo Izumi , lived for years and days. Sarah DeRemer Clark Knauss , lived for years and 97 days. Lucy Terrell Hannah , lived for years and days.

Marie Louse Febronie Chasse Meilleur , lived for years and days. Some of such centenarians who are now alive are vegetarians, some eat a lot of meat and drink wine, some are smokers, many love chocolate, and many don't like to exercise. But what they do have in common is that they are generally happy and easy-going. And we think it's something to stick to while the scientists are busy trying to unlock the secret to immortality.

What do you think will happen in the future in this field? Do you believe science can really make people live forever? We'd love to hear your opinion in the comments!

A great amount of money is being put forward for immortality research, and there are many celebrities who are involved in the contribution: Larry Ellison : one of the five richest men on Earth and one of the owners of Oracle.

Mitochondrial Mutations: components in our cells that are important for energy production. Despite our many human endeavours to escape or delay the process of ageing, it seems to be an inevitable part of life.

There is a word for it: senescence. At the cellular level, it means cells stop dividing and they eventually die. It can also apply to an entire organism where a living thing can no longer respond adequately to outside stressors , or to specific organs or tissues like leaves dying and falling from trees in autumn.

While there are ways we can slow down or speed up the rate at which senescence occurs, it is still going to happen one way or another. However, a few species can escape the ageing process completely. These small, transparent animals hang out in oceans around the world and can turn back time by reverting to an earlier stage of their life cycle.

A new jellyfish life begins with a fertilised egg, which grows into a larval stage called a planula. It remains stuck in place for some time, growing into a little colony of polyps that share feeding tubes with each other. This process is responsible for the next stages of the jellyfish life cycle: the ephyra a small jellyfish and the medusa, which is the fully-formed adult stage capable of sexual reproduction. For most other jellyfish, this stage is the end of the line.

But Turritopsis dohrnii and possibly some other jellyfish species too has a neat party trick: when it faces some kind of environmental stress, like starvation or injury, it can revert back to being a tiny blob of tissue, which then changes back into the sexually immature polyp phase of life. It is a bit like a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar, or a frog becoming a tadpole again. In a study published in the journal Nature Communications , researchers reported that humans may be able to live up to a maximum of between and years, after which, the researchers anticipate a complete loss of resilience — the body's ability to recover from things like illness or injury.

To live beyond this limit, humans would need to stop cells from aging and prevent disease. Related: What's the oldest living thing alive today? Humans may be able to live beyond their biological limits with future technological advancements involving nanotechnology. This is the manipulation of materials on a nanoscale, less than nanometers one-billionth of a meter or billionths of an inch. Machines this small could travel in the blood and possibly prevent aging by repairing the damage cells experience over time.

Nanotech could also cure certain diseases, including some types of cancer, by removing cancerous cells from the body, according to the University of Melbourne in Australia. Preventing the human body from aging still isn't enough to achieve immortality; just ask the hydra. Even though hydra don't show signs of aging, the creatures still die.

Humans don't have many predators to contend with, but we are prone to fatal accidents and vulnerable to extreme environmental events, such as those intensified by climate change. We'll need a sturdier vessel than our current bodies to ensure our survival long into the future. Technology may provide the solution for this, too. As technology advances, futurists anticipate two defining milestones.

The first is the singularity, in which we will design artificial intelligence A. The second milestone is virtual immortality, where we will be able to scan our brains and transfer ourselves to a non-biological medium, like a computer.

Researchers have already mapped the neural connections of a roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. As part of the so-called OpenWorm project, they then simulated the roundworm's brain in software replicating the neural connections, and programmed that software to direct a Lego robot, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The robot then appeared to start behaving like a roundworm.

Scientists aren't close to mapping the connections between the 86 billion neurons of the human brain roundworms have only neurons , but advances in artificial intelligence may help us get there. Once the human mind is in a computer and can be uploaded to the internet, we won't have to worry about the human body perishing. Moving the human mind out of the body would be a significant step on the road to immortality but, according to Schneider, there's a catch.