Expansion Microscopy - We're going to Heaven?
Until now, what happens to us after we die was firmly in the realm of religion, with science having no good answer that involved any kind of true afterlife. Religion claims an immortal soul that lives on in Heaven or Hell. Pseudo-science makes unreliable claims about ghosts or other entities that linger temporarily after death. Science says that after death there is nothing, just a cessation of life – that is until now.
The Science
Expansion Microscopy (ExM) is a transformative technique in the field of super-resolution imaging, addressing the fundamental limitations imposed by the diffraction barrier of light on conventional microscopy. Rather than relying on costly and slow electron microscopes, ExM achieves nanoscale resolution by physically enlarging the biological specimen itself [1]. This process involves embedding the sample (e.g., cells, tissues) within a dense, swellable hydrogel matrix. Subsequent exposure to low-ionic-strength solutions, such as deionized water, triggers the volumetric expansion of the hydrogel, resulting in a uniform isotropic magnification of the embedded structures, achieving a linear expansion factor of up to twenty times.
A microscope that uses visible light is much, much faster than an electron microscope, but visible light has a resolution limit (called the diffraction limit) of around 300nm. By transforming the resolution challenge into a molecular engineering problem, ExM has allowed usage of conventional microscopes to image down to 10nm scales. This effective increase in spatial resolution is particularly valuable for detailed examination of fine biological architectures, including synaptic ultrastructure, chromatin organization, and cytoskeletal networks.
This allows scientists to pursue one of the ultimate goals of biology - obtain the human connectome. The connectome is the complete model of the brain including the neural connections, synapses and mapping to the body. Experts require a 3D image of the brain with 15nm resolution to create the connectome. This is much finer resolution than a typical light microscope could handle and would usually be the regime of electron microscopes. Indeed there have been efforts to obtain these images using an electron microscope with limited success because of the problem with imaging “wet” biology and how incredibly slow such imaging is. But with expansion microscopy, a 15-20x expansion puts that resolution easily within reach of a light microscope which allows much faster and easier imaging of say a brain. In 2025 scientists are competing to image and complete the mouse brain connectome – it is expected to be complete sometime in 2026. To get a feel for the scale of the problem consider this table:
For reference a petabyte (PB) takes about two racks of hard drives, and is roughly the size of two servers.
It seems relatively easy to obtain a fruit fly connectome using this new technology, but a mouse brain seems like it would take forever and need a rooms’ worth of storage just to hold it. But this is only a problem of money. 10 microscopes would cost roughly $5 million and could do it in less than a year. The storage would only cost about $13 million which is well within the range of a national lab or a private company.
With current technology you would need 3 million times more money to image and store a human brain. $60 trillion for a ticket into immortality. But technology is rapidly changing and it is estimated that in 5 years or so a billion dollars would be enough to make the attempt.
When we have a complete mouse connectome we will then be able to upload and simulate that mouse. We could give it a virtual maze with virtual cheese and the virtual mouse would behave exactly as the real mouse would. The good part is that we will be able to understand so much more about how a brain works. The scary part is that the uploaded brain would be unable to tell that it is a simulation.
The Religion
The afterlife has long been the purview of religion and there are many scriptures on the subject.
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 1 Thessalonians 4:14
But whether it be at his resurrection or after, I do not say; but this much I say, that there is a space between death and the resurrection of the body, and a state of the soul in happiness or in misery until the time which is appointed of God that the dead shall come forth, and be reunited, both soul and body, and be brought to stand before God, and be judged according to their works. Alma 40:21
And they who have slept in their graves shall come forth, for their graves shall be opened; and they also shall be caught up to meet him in the midst of the pillar of heaven—Doctrine and Covenants 88:97
And in this state they were to remain until the judgment day of Christ; and at that day they were to receive a greater change, and to be received into the kingdom of the Father to go no more out, but to dwell with God eternally in the heavens. 3 Nephi 28:40
If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Job 14:14
After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Hosea 6:2
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. John 14:3
For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. Luke 20:38
But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel: 2 Timothy 1:10
And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out. Helaman 3:30
I beheld that the faithful elders of this dispensation, when they depart from mortal life, continue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead. Doctrine and Covenants 138:57
The scriptures tell us that heaven is where the dead will live again. There is not much said about life in heaven, only that we will be with Him and that we will be happy.
The artificial afterlife
Will it work? Will we be able to completely capture what we deem to be ourselves and store it on hard drives? Will the simulation that we will live in be real to us? Will we be happy?
Some scientists posit that since the universe is incredibly big, incredibly old and likely has had super powerful technological civilizations somewhere, there is a high probability of us being a simulation now. Some scientists claim that it is far more likely that we are a simulation than that we are real.
Strangely, there are several works of science fiction that depict the digital afterlife, but almost none of them think it will be a utopia of happiness.
[1] Expansion Microscopy, Science
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