• Question: Is "death" physically possible? I mean, we can't communicate with anyone or make any visible impact when we die, but is it really possible not to exist?

    Asked by libslytherin to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      I think so. As far as our bodies are concerned, life is when cells grow and electrical signals tell various parts to move. If there is no growth of cells, they decay to their component chemicals. If there are no electrical signals from the brain we are just a body, so ‘we’ don’t exist.

    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      It’s very hard to define death. At what point is somebody considered dead? When you can’t tell their brain is working? When it doesn’t have any chance of working again? When their heart stops?

      I think it is an arbitrary line, and that much of the billions of things that are alive in our body will remain living when we are considered dead.

      Our component parts will continue to exist, and will one day become part of another life (and even further along, part of another star).

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