谷歌新研究：人类活500岁不是梦

Google has invested in taxi firms, smart thermostats and even artificial intelligence but it is also setting its sights on immortality - or at least increasing our lives five-fold.

谷歌的投资项目不但囊括出租车公司、智能恒温器甚至人工智能程序，他们还开始研究“长生不老”，或者说，如何能让我们的寿命至少延长五倍。

In an interview with Bloomberg, Google Ventures' president Bill Maris said he thinks it's possible to live to 500 years old.

谷歌风投的执行董事比尔·马里斯在接受彭博通讯社的采访时说：“人类是有可能活到500岁的。”

And this will be helped by medical breakthroughs as well as a rise in biomechanics.

这一目标的实现将借助于医学方面的突破和生物力学的崛起。

He has already ploughed money into genetics firms and cancer diagnostic startups and said: 'We have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision. I just hope to live long enough not to die.'

马里斯已经投资了研究基因遗传的公司和肿瘤诊断公司，他说：“我们能通过生命科学的方法实现任何你能想象到的事情。我只希望能活得更久，不想死去。”

Mr Maris founded Google Ventures in 2009 and oversees all of the fund’s global activities.

2009年，马里斯建立了谷歌风投，并监管着全球的投资活动。

He studied neuroscience at Middlebury College and conducted neurobiology research at Duke University.

马里斯曾在米德尔伯利学院学习神经科学专业，并在杜克大学进行神经生物学研究。

Elsewhere he has advised Aurolab in the development of a hydrophobic acrylic lens for cataract blindness, and helped develop Google’s Calico project.

马里斯还在Aurolab公司为白内障盲开发防水丙烯酸眼球水晶体的过程中提供建议，同时推动谷歌Calico项目的发展。

Calico is a research and development company set up in 2013 by Google and Apple to tackle 'ageing and associated diseases.'

2013年，谷歌和苹果公司建立了Calico研究与开发公司，致力于研究“衰老与相关疾病”。

Google co-founder Larry Page said the project would focus on 'health, wellbeing and longevity' and last September Calico partnered with AbbVie to open a research centre into neurodegeneration and cancer.

谷歌的共同创始人拉里·佩奇 说，这个项目专注于“健康、幸福与长寿”。去年9月，Calico与艾博维公司合作开办了一个神经退化与癌症研究中心。

Although these firms are focused on extending life naturally, there is also a group that believes machines will be the key to extending out lives beyond 120 - an age that has been quoted as the 'real absolute limit to human lifespan'.

这些公司专注于用自然的方式延长人类寿命，但还有一群人相信机械是将寿命延长至120岁以上的关键，因为120岁可以说是“人类最长寿命的绝对极限”。

Google's director of engineering, and colleague of Mr Maris, Ray Kurzweil has previously said that in just over 30 years humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal - an event called singularity.

谷歌技术总监雷·库兹韦尔曾预言，在未来30年，人类能够把他们的大脑上传至电脑从而实现永生，这个过程称为“奇点”。

At the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York last year, Mr Kurzweil claimed that the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100.

去年，在纽约举行的全球未来2045国际会议上，库兹韦尔称，最快在2100年，机械肢体将代替人类的生物肢体。

Vocabulary

biomechanics：生物力学

audacity：大胆无畏

cataract：白内障

neurodegeneration：神经退化