No one can say with certainty
what happens after we die.
And it's the one unknown all of us will face.
So what if our existence wasn't temporary?
What if there was life after death?
According to a study in the year 2013,
And some people,
like professor Robert Lanza,
have proposed a theory that death
is just a figment of our imagination.
The theory states that death has
no actual boundaries that define it,
and therefore,
it just isn't real in the sense
you've been trained to accept.
We perceive the sky as blue,
but if the cells in our brain changed
to make us think the sky was green,
our perception of reality
could all be faulty programming.
So is the sky blue,
or is it all just in our heads?
If our final moments on Earth
are all just an illusion,
At what point do you stop living and become dead?
First, remember that death is a process,
not an absolute.
And for 95% of people,
the process starts when
the heart stops beating.
After that,
your breathing stops and your muscles lose tension.
It's just a matter of time
before your brain shuts down,
but you're not on the other side yet.
A study called AWARE,
Awareness During Resuscitation,
looked at thousands of survivors of cardiac arrest who had been pronounced dead.
Some of the people interviewed recalled
the exact moments of their death,
and they reported seeing and hearing
the events leading to their resuscitations.
How is that possible?
Well, it turns out that
That means you might hear the doctor declaring you dead.
Nine percent of people who had
a near-death experience described
floating above their body
tethered by an invisible string.
While you might hear everything going on,
your body would remain dead without oxygen or blood pumping to your organs.
While rigor mortis sets in and your muscles begin to stiffen,
other cells would just be getting to work.
Over the next 12 hours,
your body would start to shut down fully.
And during this time,
some genes stimulate inflammatory cells
called glial cells to clean
the inside of your brain.
These cells would continue to expand
and thrive while your body grows colder
and your other systems shut down.
These "zombie genes" would grow arm-like appendages and develop
while the genes in your brain disintegrate.
But once you're dead,
Before the development of infrared photography,
seances were common among family
and friends who wanted to speak
to their dead loved ones.
Now, we have the technology to prove a fake spiritual encounter.
But since we don't have definitive proof of life after death,
it's understandable that many people
find peace in the thought of talking
to their dearly departed.
I mean, if we could prove that something
else was waiting for us
after we leave our bodies,
our perceptions of this life might grow dim.
But the end of our lives may not be a spiritual experience at all.
Instead of seeing a white light,
you might see ones and zeroes.
Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google,
predicts that we could upload
digital copies of our brains online.
If your consciousness was uploaded
into the cloud,
your mind would live on as long as the server lasts.
So you might to think of paying for some backup storage.
If we could prove there is life after death,
you might view yourself and your life
with a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation for what you have now.
But what if you didn't have the time
to appreciate your life on Earth?
What if you only lived for 24 hours?
Well, that's a story for another WHAT IF.