Many research questions cannot be answered in the course of a single lifetime. Davide Castelvecchi, a contributing editor for Scientific American, has long-wondered what scientists would study if they could live for hundreds or thousands of years—or even indefinitely. Recently he put the question to leading investigators in their fields, reporting on their replies in "Questions for the Next Million Years," in our September 2012 issue.

A summary of the replies appears below. Which idea do you like best? Vote for one below. You can compare your answer with those of other voters here.

We'd also like to hear your ideas for other studies that would need centuries or more to carry out. Post your thoughts in the comments section below.

7 Comments

1. 1. garion501 08:35 AM 9/5/12

   Faster than Light travel,or Travel at near the speed of light

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2. 2. dicklipke 09:00 AM 9/5/12

   A person would have to lack all emotions and compassion because while making this valued study everyone else around them would continue to get old or sick and die.The lack of concern of what is happening to the environment and the planet probably would be of no concern knowing full well you will live for ever anyway.
   It would be a interesting study in its self in finding such a person or persons that would require these characteristics to even start such a study.
   
   

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3. 3. scribblerlarry 09:23 AM 9/5/12

   Presuming that you really meant "Forever", I'd study all of it, of course. And even then I'd run out of things to study before "forever" was over....

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4. 4. Gatnos 11:29 AM 9/5/12

   How can anyone vote for any of those ridiculous answers? None of them would advance humanity.
   
   I could have voted for something along the line of discovering the mathematics proving the Grand Unification theory. I could have voted for something along the lines of eradicating all diseases. I could have voted for discovering how to stop/prevent aging. Then there is the invention of the matter transporter, which can also be used to manufacture anything from food to fuel from its basic elements. For that matter, any and all of those wonderful gadgets that have captured our imagination on the Star Trek series.
   
   But then if I were to live forever, I think I would go about finding God.

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5. 5. yevoc 02:15 PM 9/5/12

   Terrible answers. None of the above. This is all I would do for thousands of years?
   
   I may be immortal, but I'm not going to collect mindless data forever. Might as well build some robot/software to handle this data collection/measuring for me while I instead become a master of all fields in order to...
   
   Grow better food with extreme efficiency
   Create faster networks/server farms with lower power consumption
   Build true artificial intelligence
   Make video games that educate as well as entertain
   Create a space elevator and/or laser-powered spacecraft
   Work on asteroid mining
   Obtain solar power from Mercury high orbit just from a do-it-yourself project (eventually high Sol orbit)
   Build safe brain implants/interfaces
   Create self-replicating (and reprogrammable) nanotechnology
   
   etc etc.
   
   The list of things to do doesn't change with immortality. You just get to do them all instead of 1 or 2 before death.

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6. 6. Cramer in reply to yevoc 05:18 PM 9/5/12

   Yevoc,
   You seemed to have misunderstood the question. The question was not what technological advances would you attempt to develop? It was "what would you study?" That is, what long-term experiment would you undertake to discover something?

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7. 7. live.the.future 06:49 PM 9/5/12

   Well given about 10^65 years or so one could observe black hole evaporation via Hawking radiation.
   
   A million years might be enough to get some sense of whether protons decay, but to be really sure you'd want about 10^35 years or so, then it should become readily apparent (assuming you can find much matter at that point, given the universe's expansion).
   
   On a shorter timescale (mere millions of years), one could observe continental drift and, hopefully, come up with some pretty darned accurate models for future drift.
   

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