Could we 3D bio-print a human? (Picture: Erin Aniker)

Imagine a world where you can be with the father who you have lost to cancer, or a beloved child who never had a chance at life.

Imagine that you have not died and gone to Heaven.

Imagine that you experience the hope offered by religion but firmly based on science, where there is no fear of death.

Welcome to the world of quantum archaeology, the controversial science of resurrecting the dead, including their memories, by means of future science, maths and technology.


Quantum archaeology takes its name from quantum computers expected to do near-infinite calculations, including those of detailed histories and memories of everyone who has died, or so the theory goes.



There is also a weirder branch that proposes that quantum data would be stored in parallel universes, but that’s a whole other article in itself.

Mike Perry, a member of the Society for Universal Immortalism, thinks an approximate nine-square-mile-wide memory bank could likely hold all the data of every person who has ever lived.

But is it possible? Walter’s law states: ‘Any idea described in sci-fi will, on a long enough timescale, be made real by science.’

There are certainly ways of recreating the embodiment of you, which would be a virtually accurate representation.

And it would be a lot easier to resurrect the recent dead, by cloning or 3D bio-printing their body.

For instance, we could 3D bio-print a human from the person’s stem cells then, like Dr Frankenstein, apply EKG shocks and CPR, to resurrect them.

And yes, this could even be possible with a structure as complex as the brain.

Alternatively, their data could be downloaded into a hologram or AI, by quantum computing the most-likely pattern of neurons from their online footprint. This was explored in the Black Mirror episode, Be Right Back.

Or you could go down the transhumanism route, of merging your body with AI while alive, to become immortal.

But quantum archaeology, by its very name, would also mean we would bring back the long dead.

Would we want to do it even if we could?

After all, with overpopulation one of the main threats to the planet, who would want to bring back more people, apart from those in the throes of grief?

It poses many ethical dilemmas and philosophical arguments.

If it were to happen, would it be just the wealthy who were given the option?

What would happen if people like Hitler found a way back?

Would we have the ultimate class system, where the dead are reprogrammed to be slaves to the living?

Or would we be ruled by robot overlords, make this argument redundant anyway?

Would there be a system where ‘bad’ people are eliminated for ever and replaced by the saints of history? And who decides this?

After all, one person’s saint is another’s sinner.

At the moment, this is all conjecture. But, in the future, it could be an argument you’re discussing with your late great-great-great-grandmother.



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