Hi everybody,

I'm doing research for a sci-fi series and I have a few questions I can't seem to find answers to. Hopefully, some one will know.

In the series, the main characters are cyborgs. They bodies are fully cybernetic, but their brains are biological, the brains with which they were born. Now to keep them from going senile thousands of years in the future, their minds should be enhanced with some sort of nano technology to keep the neural connections sharp and efficient. I'm not quite sure how a brain wuld begin to work after being active for about 1,400 years, but I'm guessing there will be much more usage of procedural memory.

Because this is supposed to take place in the really far future, I'm guessing that they will probably be using a sort of miniature fusion reactor for power that fuses hydrogen and generates radiation. The heat is kept back by magnets and the radiation is absorbed by some sort of photovoltaic film that converts the radiation into electricity. From the ouside ther reactor should be cooled by liquid nitrogen or liquid hydrogen.

Does everything sound all right so far?

So here comes the question. The delicate electronics and the organic brain needs to be protected from deep space radiation because obviously the cyborgs are meant for deep space travel.

To do that, I'm thinking an electromgnetic field would be in order, but how should it be generated and how strong should it be to repell most radiation and yet not harm the orgarnic brain and the nanities inside of it?

Does everything sound all right so far?

What do they do for food???

Because this is an entertainment show, it doesn't necessarily have to be 100% scientifically accurate, but here is what I'm thinking:

The brain needs them to eat. They would definitely have teeth, mouth and enzymes silmilar in composition to salaiva. They would eat foods that would be considered pretty bad for most people to eat on a regular basis. A lot of meat, a lot of sweets, foods that would qualify as junk food and this kind of stuff. Their accelerated brains would need more sugar and more protein to keep nourished.

From there on in, the food would travel through an esophagus-like structure down to a device that would liquify the food and break it down into chemicals. The body would send the chemicals the brain needs to the brain and break down the rest to use for nano bots that will be used to repair and maintain the boby. The nano bots would be engeneerd to combine their atoms into a single structure making repairs a breeze.

Of course their taste buds would be preserved so their brain still releases dopamine to encourage them to eat and do things that are good for the body and the brain. The rest of the body would also be wired so they can feel pain, hunger, sexual arousal or when they repair themselves or mate they feel good. Of course the pain would be controlled. It can be dulled to almost nothing by choice.

First off, as far as power goes I would get rid of the nuclear fusion reactor and make them zero point energy powered, that way they never have to refuel and you don't have to deal with all that radiation inside of them.

For radiation shielding, you could have a combination of systems. Theoretically, the best shielding against the worst kind of radiation (cosmic rays, which tear through biological stuff like tissue paper), is a volume of electrons lol, which is not practical right now but maybe in the future they have some kind of magnetic electron trap or something (and you have basically infinite amounts of electrical energy from the zero point energy generator, so why not? :)). The second best shield are protons (hydrogen nuclei), which are impractical today because hydrogen is not very dense, even at cryogenic temperatures. But this will be solved in the future with the production of metallic hydrogen (which exists in the core of Jupiter and was synthesized at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) which is about 10 times denser than regular solid hydrogen.

As far as food goes, I don't see why they would need to eat in the conventional sense. They could just have a "nutrient canister" stored inside their body which has the exact nutrients they need to run their brain. The nanobots could monitor the nutrient levels and release them in precise quanities. For refilling they could just carry around spare canisters, or they could have some kind of "atomic extraction" device with them, which could be fed basically anything and would extract out the needed atoms, like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc. Then the raw materials could be fed into their bodies and a zero point energy powered "molecular constructor" could create the desired nutrients. Anyways lol, I think I've extrapolated a little too far so I'll stop there. :)

An impossible idea BECAUSE

Biological matter and inorganic matter are incompatible..

The metal ions will send the biological brain totally insane.

There are no know metals that will do the job you require, even gold will be toxic with enough time.

Radiation can always be blocked by a sufficiently thick protective suit of armor of lead.

Very thick, though. So it'd be a tad uncomfortable. :bugeye:

1. Its an entertainment show so it doesn't have to be 100% correct.

2. I don't see how inorganic particles would be incompatible if you were to use something like graphite as the basis for the alloy. Something like graphite nano-tubing maybe. Metal would be too heavy. They would weigh a ton. They have to approximate human weight for their size.

3. I highly disagree that having nanities in the brain would do something negative to them if the functions of the nanities were limited to restoring or re-enforcing mylon.

Remember, this is taling place well over a thousand years in the future so I'm sure the complex problem of how to mainitain the brain would be solved by then.

They wouldn't need to eat in the convetional sense, but as I said, they should have some human-like behaviors and after a while a human brain in a machine body would want a steak really, really badly or something like that. This is more to keep their behavior human like and have a nutrient system like that in reserve.

However how would the electron trap and the zero point field work? I've heard very little about and from what I heard, you would actually need to rip space and time apart. How would you imagine this working?

Why not just replace the old biological brain and just go totally artificial? Why have limited thought and mental capacity? Removing all physical attachments and simple existing as data running in any form of intelligent construct has vast advantages. For one space travel is very cheap and quick: just upload your self to a station in another star system at the speed of light.

There are major problem with that and its not really practical.

1. By downloading the memories of the brain you have created a duplicate. It will not be the same person and that defeats the point. How can you be looking at potential immortality if you are not even sure you are the original person?

2. Human mental capacities are not really limited. We are a little slow to learn, but overall with the help from nanities that will re-enforce neural connections and extra storage space attached to the brain, its pretty well set. Besides, we can make a super-complex nervous system with additional sense translated into a form the brain will understand.

3. Uploading yourself to a station is not as easy as it sounds especially if the station is light years away. To upload yourself quickly, you would need to use random quantum particles that move faster then light on average. This causes some losses of quality and peices of data are lost. In case of data, thats OK because you can just send about twice the signal you need.

But in the case of a person's mind, you could arrive with half your memories missing and shooting a person's mind even to Alpha Centauri at the speed of light is a really long shot. A gravity wave here, a drfit there and the beam carrying your conscious is shot out of the galaxy.