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The idea of being able to time travel has fascinated humans for centuries, but we’ve never been able to figure out how to do it. We could, however, theoretically “go backward in time” at some point in the next five years, according to one scientist.
Computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil believes in something called longevity escape velocity. Longevity escape velocity is when life expectancy increases by more than a year every year.
Kurzweil, a former Google engineer, is of the belief that longevity escape velocity will be achieved by the year 2029. He cites rapid medical advancements that we have seen take place recently as the reason why.
“We got the COVID vaccine out in ten months,” Kurzweil said in an interview with venture capital and private equity firm Bessemer Venture Partners earlier this year. “It took two days to create it. Because we sequenced through several billion different mRNA sequences in two days. There’s many other advances happening. We’re starting to see simulated biology being used and that’s one of the reasons that we’re going to make so much progress in the next five years.”
“So right now you go through a year and use up a year of your longevity,” Ray Kurzweil continued. “However, research is advancing and it’s curing various diseases. You’re actually getting back on average about four months a year. So you lose a year of longevity. You get back about four months because of scientific research. However, scientific research is also on an exponential curve. By 2029, you’ll get back a full year. So you lose a year, but you get back a year.
“Past 2029, you’ll get back more than a year. Go backwards in time. Once you can get back at least a year, you’ve reached longevity escape velocity.”
That, unfortunately, doesn’t necessarily mean that people will live forever. There are still an untold number of things, like accidents and diseases that could kill us.
“We’re constantly replacing a lot of our body all the time,” he said. “In fact, most of our body is constantly dying and recreating. And as we go through more and more scientific progress, we’ll extend that. Forever. So once you’re past longevity escape velocity, you go through a year, you’re not a year older and you’re not more likely to die.
“You can be less likely to die. Doesn’t guarantee that you won’t have an accident, but that’s really where we’re headed.”
None of this, of course, means Ray Kurzweil is will correct in predicting humans achieving longevity escape velocity by the year 2029. Though he did correctly predict things like the proliferation of cell phones, laptops, WiFi, and cloud computing, as well as a computer defeating a chess champion by the year 1998 (it happened in 1997).