Future Technology for Analyzing Near-Death Experiences

There was an interesting story in the news recently about a man who claims to have had a near-death experience after his heart stopped for 45 minutes. Such cases have been reported since at least the 1970's, and more than a thousand cases are described at this site. But during the past 40 years the debate on this particular topic has not changed very much. Many people continue to say that the phenomenon of near-death experiences is an indication of some afterlife. But many skeptics continue to say that such experiences are just hallucinations caused by drugs, some surge of brain electricity, or some surge of chemicals in a dying brain.

Those who argue for a paranormal interpretation of near-death experiences argue that the experiences tend to have common characteristics, not the random characteristics one might expect to see in hallucinations. Some of these common characteristics are said to be a sense of floating above the body, travel through a tunnel, a life review, an encounter with dead relatives, and an encounter with a being of light. But skeptics argue that such narrative elements have been widely publicized, so perhaps some kind of wish-fulfillment mechanism of the brain sometimes kicks in near death, using elements stored in the memory.

This argument has been going back and forth for decades, but perhaps within a few decades new technology will throw new light on the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I can imagine such a technology.

Consider the operation of a commercial web site. A typical large web site has a thing called an audit trail. An audit trail is a set of logs that record exactly what was happening with the web site during any time period. There are typically two main parts of such an audit trail: a web server log that records each and every time some external user accessed a page of the web site, and a database log listing each and every database operation that occurred during a particular time period.

With this audit trail, it is then possible to analyze exactly what happened if the web site ever crashes. The support team can then track down the cause of the crash, and try to fix it.

Now we can imagine, with sufficiently advanced technology, a kind of audit trail for the human body. This would be a series of chronological records showing over a time period many different states of the human body. This audit trail would be a record of heart rate and brain waves, but it would also have more much more detailed information. It would show the ebb and flow of particular chemicals in the brain. It would show which parts of the brain were becoming active during particular moments of time. This more detailed information would require some technological breakthroughs, perhaps some technology for sniffing remote traces of chemicals (a Star Trek fan might call this “tricorder” technology).

Modern jetliners all have a “black box” (also called a flight recorder) that records all states of the different parts of the plane. (The boxes are actually orange-colored, to make them easier to find.) To find out what happened when a plane crashes, it is merely necessary to retrieve this black box. We can imagine a similar type of device for the human body – a little black box that precisely records all changes in vital signals, brain electricity, body chemistry, and so forth.

An aircraft "black box"

Such a “body black box” would be mainly useful for analyzing the effectiveness and safety of different medical techniques. Today doctors may give a drug to a dying patient, who then may die some time later. The doctors are left to guess whether it was wise to give the patient that particular drug – maybe the drug gave the patient some extra time, or maybe it quickened his death. But with this “body black box” it would be much easier to find out if the drug did any good. Once the patient died, a doctor could remove the “body black box,” and plug it into a machine that would analyze the audit trail stored in the box. The doctor might then get a report giving a probability estimate on whether the drug was helpful or hurtful. The report might say: “Based on this patient's audit trail, there is a 40% chance that the calcium disulphate injection hastened his death.”

This type of “body black box” would also be useful in helping to resolve the question of whether near-death experiences are mere hallucinations. If a patient claimed to have had a near-death experience, his “body black box” could be analyzed. Looking at the chemical, biological, and electrical audit trail, scientists might look for some unusual trace that might give clues as to a natural explanation for near-death experiences – perhaps a surge of electricity in a particular brain area, or a surge of some particular chemical. If no such clue was ever found, it might lend credence to the theory of a paranormal explanation for near-death experiences.

The ultimate tool for analyzing near-death experiences might be a consciousness recorder. This would be a device that would somehow kind of videotape every single thought, sensation, and emotion that was passing through the brain. If such a consciousness recorder were turned on for a person near death, it might somehow be able to record exactly what the person experienced in a near-death experience. But such a recording would not necessarily silence skeptics. They might review the tape from the consciousness recorder, compare some parts of it to old photographs, and then make skeptical comments such as: “Aha! That wasn't really your dead grandma you saw in that vision – your grandma's nose was shorter than that woman's nose.”

A Pauper's Cosmic Dream: A Science Fiction Story

Daniel Duncan had always had the dream of traveling to a distant planet. The problem was that he didn't have the type of background that fitted in with that dream. His family was dirt poor, and couldn't afford to give Daniel a fancy education. So after finishing high school, Daniel got a low paying menial job. But during the evenings and weekends, he would spend most of his time reading about astronautics and astronomy.

Daniel loved learning about the interstellar mission that was being prepared by the Society of Nations. Mankind's first starship was being built in orbit, a starship that would travel to the nearest star system. The system consisted of three stars, including Alpha Centauri B.

Daniel learned that a leader of the mission lived not far him, a man named Bill Ross. Daniel knocked on the door of Bill. He talked the man into letting him inside, claiming it was a matter of great urgency.

“So tell me, what's so important?” said Bill.

“It's the interstellar mission you're involved with,” said Daniel. “I've got to go on it. I've just got to.”

“What happened, young man?” asked Bill. “Have you got into some kind of trouble you're trying to evade?”

“No, no, it's not like that at all,” said Daniel. “It's like this – since when I was a small boy, whenever I looked up at the stars, I've felt this burning urge to find out what's up there in the sky. I've always dreamed of going on a mission to another planet.”

“Ah, youthful enthusiasm,” said Bill. “If only we could bottle it. You got a resume?”

Daniel took a resume out of his pocket. Bill chuckled when looking at it.

“Is this some kind of joke?” asked Bill. “Did one of my co-workers send you, just to pull my leg? This resume couldn't get you a job cleaning bathrooms on the Staten Island Ferry.”

“I know, I don't have the scientific credentials,” said Daniel. “But isn't there some way I can go on the mission? I'll do anything. I've just got to get on that ship.”

“Come to think of it, there might be a way,” said Bill. “We have one spot still open on the starship, but it's the worst job there is. It's a job we call 'Chore Boy.' You've got to do all the worst jobs on the ship, like collecting human feces and then extracting water from it. It doesn't require much skill, just the ability to cheerfully do some of the lowest and dullest jobs imaginable. You've also got to basically act like a kind of slave, running around the ship and fetching crew members anything they might want or need.”

“I'll take it!” said Daniel, overjoyed.

So Daniel was put on the great interstellar starship, which blasted off towards the nearest star system. For ten years the ship traveled through the great interstellar void. For ten years, Daniel performed his lowly tasks. Everyone called him Chore Boy, and no one called him by his name. If a crew member wanted some food, he would call out Chore Boy, get me some food, and Daniel would have to rapidly fetch it. But Daniel didn't mind. He was fulfilling his dream of traveling to the stars.

Finally the great starship approached Alpha Centauri B. The ship's captain made an announcement.

“We've detected an Earth-like planet ahead,” said the Captain. “There's only one problem. To get to it, we'll have to travel through an asteroid belt. It's going to be dangerous.”

As the starship traveled through the asteroid belt, a very small asteroid struck the ship. All of the air sucked out of the ship. All of the crew members died except for Daniel. He was the only one who had put on a spacesuit fast enough.

Daniel thought to himself: what can I do now? He didn't know how to navigate the starship.

But luckily the ship was an autopilot, so it reached orbit around the planet all by itself. Daniel knew he had to act fast. His spacesuit only had one more hour of oxygen. He knew that the starship had a landing craft designed for sending astronauts down to the planet. He went into the landing craft.

Luckily the landing craft had a computer that responded to voice commands. Daniel ordered the landing craft to blast off from the starship, and head towards the planet. The landing craft landed on the planet.

“How much oxygen is left?” Daniel asked the computer.

“Thirty minutes,” said the computer.

Daniel knew this was the moment of truth, He had to leave the landing craft. If the planet did not have a suitable atmosphere with lots of oxygen, he would die instantly.

Daniel opened the door to the landing craft, and took a whiff. The air smelled a little strange, but it was good breathable air. Joyfully Daniel punched the air with his fist.

Exiting the landing craft, he began walking on the surface of the planet. He walked for miles, and saw nothing but grass and some strange vegetation.

I'll probably starve to death, thought Daniel. But at least I made my dream come true.

But then he saw something in the distance, miles away, in the blueish tinge of the far horizon. At first it looked like a mountain range. But as he drew closer he saw it was not a mountain range. It was a city! The planet had intelligent life. Daniel knew that in the city ahead there would probably be water and food that would allow him to survive.

Walking towards the city, Daniel wondered what type of strange alien beings he would find in the city ahead. Daniel thought to himself: how strange that the first ambassador of the human race to another planet is me, Daniel, the lowly Chore Boy.

Which Great Scientific Mysteries Are Likely to Be Solved in the Next 50 Years?

As discussed in this blog post, there are many great mysteries that baffle scientists and philosophers. But what are the chances that these mysteries will be solved in your lifetime? Let us look at particular mysteries, and estimate the chance that we will have a solution within the next fifty years.

The Mystery of the Big Bang

The main mystery involving the Big Bang is what caused it. We are extremely unlikely to ever resolve this mystery in the next fifty years. When we look to the edges of the universe, billions of light-years away, we are looking back in time. But no matter how powerful our telescopes might be, we can never look back to the first 380,000 years of the universe's history. In the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter was so densely packed that photons of light could not travel for more than the shortest length before colliding into a proton or electron. This basically means that light from the earliest stage of the universe is effectively blocked, and we are forbidden from looking back to the first 380,000 years of the universe's history.

We can study the cosmic background radiation, dating from this time about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. We have already launched two satellites to do this, the most recent being the Planck satellite. But the observations made by that satellite have offered no new breakthroughs. The chance that we will find the answer to the cause of the Big Bang by studying the cosmic background radiation further is almost negligible.

I estimate that there is less than 1 chance in 100 that scientists will solve this mystery in the next 50 years. Super-fast computers will be of no help in solving this mystery. 

 

The Mystery of Dark Energy

Dark energy is the mysterious energy that is believed to make up about 68% of the universe's mass-energy. Scientists have no clear idea of what it is, although they have a vague suspicion that it may have to do with virtual particles created in the vacuum of space.

The hugely expensive Large Hadron Collider has not got us any closer to unraveling the mystery of dark energy. Next year the LHC will begin new activity that will greatly increase the energy of its collisions. It is still very unlikely that this will produce anything helping to solve the mystery of dark energy.

As discussed here, there are plans for a 60-mile long successor to the Large Hadron Collider, one that will be completed in 2035. There is not much reason to be hopeful that this will solve the mystery of dark energy, although it may shed some light on it.

Super-fast computers will be of little help in solving this mystery. I estimate that there is less than 1 chance in 10 that scientists will solve the dark energy mystery in the next 50 years.

The Mystery of Dark Matter

Dark matter is believed to be a mysterious type of matter that makes up more of the universe than ordinary matter. The problem with dark matter is that it cannot be directly observed through ordinary methods. So it is very unlikely that we will understand it very well any time in the next few decades. About the most we can hope for are some type of observations that clearly nail down the fact that it really exists.

I estimate that there is less than 1 chance in 3 that scientists will solve the dark matter mystery in the next 50 years, in the sense of getting a clear idea of what type of particles it is made of. 

 

The Origin of Life

Very little progress has been made in discovering exactly how life originated on Earth billions of years ago. There was a ray of hope when Stanley Miller did his famous experiments back in the 1950's, but since then progress has been very slow.

The prospect of vast strides in supercomputers offers some hope that some progress may be made in helping to solve this mystery. Conceivably vastly improved supercomputers might do some kind of simulation involving billions or trillions of chemical combinations, a simulation that might throw new light on the mystery of the origin of life and the origin of the genetic code. We can also imagine that there might be robotized chemistry laboratories that might help to resolve the issue.

I can optimistically estimate that there might be as much as 1 chance in 3 that this mystery will be solved in the next fifty years.

The Mystery of Existence

The mystery of existence is the age-old mystery of why there exists something rather than nothing. It is a perplexing problem, because nothing seems more natural and plausible than simplicity, and the simplest possible state of existence is complete nonexistence – no God, no matter, no energy, no universe, just absolutely nothing, forever and ever. So why didn't such a perfectly simple state of existence (complete eternal nonexistence) occur?

I see no real chance that any new scientific observations can solve this problem, and it isn't likely that supercomputers will help us solve it. There is some chance that we might be able to resolve this mystery by increasing our intelligence, and increasing our ability for philosophical reasoning. We might then be able to understand some reason for existence that we failed to grasp before.

But that would require a major increase in human intelligence, which is probably a long way off (the assurances of singularity enthusiasts notwithstanding). I therefore estimate that there is less than 1 chance in 10 that we will resolve the mystery of existence in the next fifty years.

The Mystery of Whether We Are Alone in the Universe

There are two ways in which this mystery might be resolved: negatively or positively. We would resolve this mystery negatively if we were to somehow prove that we are alone in the universe. We would resolve this mystery positively if we somehow found out that we are not alone in the universe.

There is zero chance that we will resolve this mystery negatively in the next fifty years, and zero chance that we ever resolve this mystery negatively. This is because the universe is too big. Our galaxy has billions of stars, and there are billions of galaxies. Even if we somehow create spaceships capable of traveling instantaneously (something most unlikely), it would still take millions of years to survey all the planets in our galaxy, determining that none had intelligent life. By the time such a job were finished, we still could not say we are alone in the galaxy, because during those millions of years intelligent life could have still have evolved on planets when we were not checking them. And that's just the difficulty of determining that we are alone in the galaxy – the job of determining we are alone in the universe would be billions of times more difficult.

When it comes to the possibility of resolving this mystery positively (determining that we are not alone in the universe), we have an entirely different situation. We have a decent chance of doing that in the next fifty years. All we would need to do would be to pick up a radio transmission from another civilization.

This is one area where advances in supercomputers might help. Such advances may allow us to scan millions of frequencies for radio signals more efficiently.

I therefore optimistically estimate that there is about 1 chance in 2 that we will resolve the mystery of whether we are alone in the universe in the next fifty years.

The Mystery of Cosmic Fine-Tuning

The mystery of cosmic fine-tuning is the mystery of why the universe seems to be so exquisitely calibrated to allow the existence of intelligent creatures such as us. Anyone doubting that there seems to be such fine-tuning should read this post and this post.

It is most unlikely that we will discover any final answer to this mystery in the next fifty years, as unlikely as you becoming a lottery millionaire. Despite the misguided enthusiasm of multiverse enthusiasts (who imagine a huge collection of universes, each with different characteristics), there is basically zero prospect of ever being able to confirm such an idea – unless you wish to imagine some machine for transporting a man or a robot into different universes, an idea even more implausible than a machine for sending a man back in time.

The Mystery of Consciousness

The mystery of consciousness is the mystery of how consciousness arises from matter, something that seems to be entirely different from consciousness. Philosophers have long pondered this question. We currently have no understanding of how this occurs. There are various exotic theories, such as Roger Penrose's theory involving quantum effects in microtubules.

Some think that solving the mystery of consciousness is just a matter of increasing the resolution of brain scanners. Some optimists think that if we can only scan neurons with ever more detail, and understand more precisely the exact chemistry and physics of brain actions, we will one day understand the mystery of how the brain produces consciousness. Others think that no matter how much progress we make in understanding the brain, we will never be able to understand exactly how consciousness is produced by it. They point out that we can never imagine seeing some high-magnification photograph from an electron microscope or a diagram of a chemical reaction or a printout of brain electricity, and then really understanding how consciousness could arise from that.

Because such reasoning seems powerful, I estimate that there is no more than 1 chance in 5 that we will solve the mystery of consciousness in the next fifty years.

Conclusion

Most of the great mysteries of nature are not things we should expect to see solved in our lifetimes. Get used to living in a mysterious universe, for it is most unlikely that more than one or two of the deepest mysteries will be cleared up in your lifetime. There will be fantastic advances in computing power and robotics in your lifetime, but that will do us very little good in solving most of the great mysteries that face us.

As far as how we can best spend our money to help solve age-old mysteries, the technology with the best chance of producing results is probably not hugely expensive particle colliders costing many billions, but instead relatively inexpensive radio telescopes that can be constructed with only millions of dollars. Besides offering the hope of solving the age-old mystery of whether we are alone in the universe, such devices might allow us to receive radio signals from beings vastly older than us. Conceivably they might give us the answer to cosmic mysteries that might take us many thousands of years to solve on our own.

Could Another Civilized Species Have Arisen on Earth Before Humanity?

A fascinating question to consider is: could some other civilized species have appeared on our planet long before the current race of humans appeared? I refer to the possibility that civilized intelligent life may have arisen on this planet many millions of years ago, such as 10 million years ago, 20 millions years ago, or 30 million years ago.

Most people will immediately dismiss such a possibility, using reasoning such as this: Of course, mankind must be the first civilized species to have appeared on our planet. If there had been some previous civilized species, they would have left many traces of their existence which we would have detected long ago.

Such an argument at first seems very powerful, but it is by no means conclusive, for several reasons I will now list.

Evidence of a previous civilization might have been slowly wiped out by eons of erosion, decay, biological processes, and previous geological upheavals. Life After People was a fascinating recent television series that dealt with the question of how soon the structures of human civilization would break down and disintegrate if man were to suddenly disappear. The answer often given by the series was: surprisingly soon. This television series was constantly stating that large human structures such as skyscrapers and bridges will break down and crumble over centuries or thousands of years, if there is no one around to maintain them. A simple example is a bridge. Given a few centuries with no maintenance, sunlight will cause paint on the bridge to flake and peel, rust will cause the steel to weaken, and the bridge will then collapse. Another example is roads. Given many years of no maintenance, and many years of freezing temperatures, cracks can form in roads, which winter ice will then widen. Given thousands of years with no maintenance, the road will disintegrate. 

 A rusting remnant of a vanished civilization

Then there are long-term geological processes, which tend to break down and cover up existing structures. Examples are earthquakes, glaciers, sedimentation, volcanoes, asteroid collisions, flooding, and continental drift. Acting over millions of years, such processes may have completely buried evidence of a civilized species that may have existed before our species.

But wouldn't there be many fossils of such a species, if it had existed? Not if the species buried its dead without coffins. When bodies are buried without coffins, the bones will normally disintegrate within a few thousand years. It usually requires a freak geological occurrence (such as being surrounded by tar or amber) for a bone to be preserved for millions of year.

A previous civilized species on our planet may have become extinct before it became industrialized. If you think about the possibility of a civilized species existing on our planet long before the current race of humans, you may think of it having all the trappings of modern industrial civilization. But a civilized species could have arisen on this planet millions of years ago, and become extinct long before reaching the industrial age. Wars, plagues, natural disasters or climate change (such as the onset of an ice age) may have made such a civilized species extinct. If a civilization perished long before reaching the industrial age, it might have left relatively few traces of itself. Cultures such as the ancient Romans and the Egyptians (with their tendency towards gigantic engineering projects) are less common than cultures which leave smaller traces of their existence. 
 

Evidence of a previous civilization may have been quickly wiped out by a planet-wide war or natural catastrophe. There are several possibilities for a planet-wide catastrophe that could have entirely wiped out traces of a previous civilized species. One is a global nuclear war. Imagine nuclear war involving the explosion of, say, 50,000 200-megaton bombs. That might have been sufficient to instantly remove almost all traces of a previous civilized species. If such an event had occurred millions of years ago, we might have no evidence of it today. Another possibility is that an asteroid might have struck the planet, causing a planet-wide upheaval that buried all traces of a previous civilized species. Another possibility is a gigantic volcanic eruption like the one that supposedly occurred out of Yellowstone Park in the United States about 640,000 years ago, burying land 1000 miles away in ten feet of ash. If there had been a particularly bad eruption millions of years ago, it might have buried all evidence of a previous civilization under many meters of dust and ash.

A previous civilized species on our planet may have been wiped out by interstellar visitors, who then removed all traces of it. One very unlikely but interesting possibility is that visitors from another planet may have wiped out a previous civilized species on our planet, and then removed all traces of it. Imagine if millions of years ago some civilized species had arisen on our planet. Such a species may have received interstellar visitors who judged it very harshly. The interstellar visitors may have thought that the civilization on Earth was too evil or too stupid or too much of a threat. The interstellar visitors might then have completely destroyed the civilized species on our planet, and wiped out all traces of it (which could have been done through the use of robots). Such visitors may have thought: “This species is an evolutionary failure, so let's get rid of it and all of its works – we'll clean the slate, and give this planet another chance to produce an intelligent species.”

A previous civilized species on our planet may have migrated to somewhere else, and removed all traces of its earthly existence. Imagine if a civilized species had arisen millions of years ago, and had developed interstellar travel. Such a species might have migrated to other planets. But surely, one may say, such a species would have left behind many monuments on our planet, to commemorate its previous existence on our planet. This would not necessarily be true, however. If such a species were to evolve to some higher state of existence, it might look back with contempt at its original state when it existed on only one planet, thinking of such a state as being utterly primitive. Such a species might have no interest in preserving the monuments of its younger days. Just as you might throw out a scrapbook of your elementary school achievements, a species that had reached some interstellar level might want to erase all evidence of its youthful existence on our planet, and restore Earth to a purely natural state. Thousands of years after developing interstellar travel, such a species might have developed some refined new standard of beauty for architecture, and might then have regarded all of the buildings it had erected on our planet as primitive and ugly, no more worthy of preservation than some grass huts built by a primitive tribe. Such a species might then have decided to remove all of the traces it had left on our planet, and to restore the planet to its natural beauty, leaving it as a kind of giant park.

We probably are the first civilized species to arise on this planet, but in light of all of these possibilities (and others that can be imagined), we really can't be sure whether civilization first arose on our planet several thousand years ago or millions of years ago.