[Nuclear1]

Well, 99 waves, at least.

*does the math*

99x4=396 annoying, little, quick, nimble, low-profile maniacs that must be destroyed along with the single Terran ship with more hit points in all of Silent Threat and Freespace 1.

Wow. I never realized how stupid that mission was until now.

[Nuclear1]

If you kill all the Lokis, you'd probably get Triple Ace as well

It would only say the 'ace' which you are currently receiving; i.e: if you received Ace and Double Ace in one mission, the debrief would only mention Double.

[Krackers87]

Actually thanks to modern science, humans will be able to live to 1000 in the next 20 years, or it has been predicteed so.

[Carl]

that's bullcrap. even in a perfectly sterile environment your biology limits your lifespan. the only way to get above approx. 120 years old is genetic engineering.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Krackers87
Actually thanks to modern science, humans will be able to live to 1000 in the next 20 years, or it has been predicteed so.

Even 120-150 years would already be damn near impossible to achieve, but a 1000 years? That is just utter bs. Not to mention that you would propably turn insane in that time.

[Flipside]

Actually, it's not BS exactly, a scientist did predict this, using Genetic Engineering, but personally, I think he's waaay jumping the gun and attention grabbing, we are realising we don't know nearly as much about Genetics as we thought we did 2 years ago.

[aldo_14]

Genetic repair, was it not?  Replacing cells at the same rate they 'die off' or summat......

[Kie99]

There was an experiment where they Trebled the lifespan of worms, don't know if that would work on humans though.

[karajorma]

It's not a stupid reason really. If people double their lifespan but still have kids at the same age we're going to have population problems pretty quickly.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by karajorma
It's not a stupid reason really. If people double their lifespan but still have kids at the same age we're going to have population problems pretty quickly.

My thoughts exactly

[Flipside]

Thing is, people are convinced that DNA is the be-all and end all of genetics. Some kind of 'recipe' for making biological life.

That's not strictly the truth, it's more like a recipe without values, it doesn't tell you how much of things are needed, or how long or in what conditions the egg should remain in the womb etc, none of that information is in DNA.

There is also stuff called 'Junk DNA', a rather poorly named collection of data that we aren't quite sure what it does. Giving it the name 'Junk' has scary implications, since no-one is actually sure whether they are junk or not.

Another good example is Yeast. It cannot reproduce without external genes to nudge proteins into the correct place, same with humans, the entire DNA string does not contain enough information to even map 1 millionth of the neural pathways of a newborn child, external forces play a huge role in matters.

[Ghostavo]

Originally posted by High Max
It would be nice to live on this planet for 100's of years. I'm pretty healthy and active and I never smoked and that alone can cause you to live a while. I think that in my lifetime, we will be able to achieve living at least 200 years.

You see, it's not that we break down over time. It's that we are programmed to die after a certain amount of time. It's called "the aging gene" and this gene makes it so after a certain length of time, our body slows the process of creating new and healthy cells to replace the old dying ones. Eventally, our body's cells die faster than our body is able to produce new ones. Thus when we get old, we appear ugly and weak, almost like a walking corpse.

We have to modify that aging gene. However, I heard that it can be a dangerous process. Best to wait until science has made this procedure more perfected before deciding to go through with the operation. I have heard that last year, scientists have mapped and found all the genes in the human body. If we do make it so people can live a very long time, would the government interfere and make it illegal for some stupid reason? I hope not.

DNA cannot be responsible for aging, since statistically speaking there would have to be at least one being whose DNA mutated not to have it by now. Such a thing has been dismissed for a long time now...

Now about the topic, I'd assume that vasudans lived about 120 years average... all that fish and headz must do some good

[WMCoolmon]

What about running out of space in your brain to remember everything. Do people remember everything, and if so, what happens when they try to remember more than their brain can hold?

[Hippo]

The Genome Project is pretty much the potential for a LOT, but we have no idea how to utilise it... And simplicity is key here, the more complex we are to other animals, the more likely we are to fail... I agree with Carl, that there won't be anyone living extrordinary amounts of time...

[Ghostavo]

Originally posted by High Max
Then what determines lifespan? I heard it has to do with the nervous system. Can someone tell me what factor determines the average lifespan of a species. For example, we live a lot longer than cats and dogs, why? The human body has the most complex nervous system of all life on Earth but for some odd reason, turtles, parrots, and trees can out-live us.

From what I know "natural" death has to do with the weakening of the DNA structure making it harder for it to "multiply", and not with the DNA itself.

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
What about running out of space in your brain to remember everything. Do people remember everything, and if so, what happens when they try to remember more than their brain can hold?

The brain has an incredibly high "memory space", but it has a mechanism that makes it "forget" stuff you don't use very often, that knowledge becomes lost, permanently if you never use it again. One's conscience cannot remember more than even a mere 10% than what it can hold, but even if it could, it would be very hard to try to remember diferent stuff at a rate faster than the brain could forget, beyond that, I have no idea.

The Genome Project is entering the it's second stage IIRC, this was just the beggining, the easy part if you wish. In this first stage, the DNA has only been "recorded", not seen it's function. In the future...

[Fergus]

The brain can hold something like 3 Terahurtz (urgh, I'm better off googling this)

[FireCrack]

Terahertz is a measure of frequency


Anyways, one theory for the "aging gene" is that we have a whole codswolop of junk DNA on the ends of the DNA strands. Due to inificiencies in the process 3 nucleotides are shaved off one end of the DNA in the process of cell replication, eventualy so many nucleotides are "shaved off" that it cuts into the usefull DNA and we start aging.

In younc children an ensyme replaces the lost nucleotides natruraly but as we grow older we lose this ensyme.

[FireCrack]

/me hunts down a small child and steals his talemerase

[RangerKarl]

I think he meant telomerase. Or telomeres, can never tell nowadays. It's some sorta enzyme responsible for the upkeep of nucleic acids. Or something.

[FireCrack]

Yeah, telemorase, speleed it wrong.