Michio Kaku: This is Your Brain on a Laser Beam | Big Think

Isaac Asimov was my favorite science fiction writer, and his favorite science fiction story talked about an era far in the future when our bodies would be in pods and we would mentally control beings, beings of pure energy that would go flying around the universe. And, of course, it was science fiction, but here's the idea: mind without body. Pure consciousness roaming across the universe faster than any rocket ship.

It turns out that that's actually a physical possibility. First of all, the Obama administration and the European Union are pushing the Brain Project to delineate all the pathways of the human brain. This means that one day we might have a CD ROM called Brain 2.0. That is, every single neuron encoded on a memory disc; your personality, your memories, who you are, the essence of your soul, would be incorporated in this disc as pure information.

Even if you die, your consciousness, in some sense, may live on. Now, you as an organic being will have died. That means that your neurons will turn to dust. But the configuration of neurons that made your thinking process possible can be put on a disc, in which case, in some sense, you become immortal. Not only immortal, but this could be the most efficient way to explore the galaxy, just like Isaac Asimov predicted in his short story.

Let's say I take your—not your genome but your connectome—and put it on a laser beam. In fact, in the book, I actually calculate how big a laser beam will be required to put your consciousness as pure photons—shine it into the heavens. You're now shooting consciousness into outer space at the speed of light. Forget booster rockets. Forget asteroid collisions. Forget radiation dangers and weightlessness and lack of oxygen. Forget all that. You are riding on a laser beam at the speed of light, and then at the end, there's a relay station.

A relay station which takes the laser beam and then puts it into a surrogate. That is, all the neural networks encoded into the laser beam can be manifested as a robot on the other side of the galaxy. So, in other words, it's like staying at a hotel. If you're a businessman, you go from hotel to hotel and relax. The same way, you'd be on a laser beam going from relay station to relay station, and when you go to the relay station, you take the robot body of a superhuman. You become Superman on the other end of the rainbow.

So, is this a physical possibility? Yes. When might we have it? Well, let's be honest. It would take perhaps a hundred years or so before we have a complete understanding of the connectome—that is, all the neuropathways of the brain. Perhaps another century beyond that before we have relay stations on which we could then shoot our consciousness into outer space. Is it mathematically and physically possible? The answer is yes.