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" Life is mysterious. There are amusing mysteries. Why do gentlemen prefer blondes? There are mysteries that define generations. What happened to Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa? And then there are the grand mysteries. Some have perplexed humans since we first stood on two legs, others have only recently come to mind. Is there a Fountain of Youth? Will we cure cancer? Can we achieve immortality? Can we create artificial life? Where is the soul? Is the speed of light the ultimate speed limit? Is there other intelligent life in the universe? Can we travel through time? As perplexing as these mysteries may seem, there is compelling evidence that each will be solved, most within a few decades, all in the 21st century. Our confidence stems from our belief in technology. In recent years, scientific instruments have become enormously more sensitive. At the same time there has been an explosion in computer capabilities. The net result is that scientists are seeing previously overlooked subtleties in nature. Until a few months ago, images from Mars revealed a dry planet. Recently taken high-definition photos show geologic evidence of water lurking near the surface. Astronomers who have trained their instruments to look more deeply into space have found something even more remarkable: the presence of sugar, an essential building block of life. And those looking to the fringes of space have encountered something stranger still: Pulsars are older than we thought. This strengthens the theory that these lighthouses in space were built by intelligent life. In medicine, doctors have begun treating aging as a disease. Most of the 200 forms of cancer appear to have something very preventable in common. Some believe immortality is on the horizon. And, most controversial of all, others say they have found the brain cells responsible for religious experiences\u2014the very home of the soul. Join us as we explore the eight great mysteries science will solve in the 21st century. Discovering The Fountain Of Youth The Fountain of Youth isn&amp;#039;t in Florida. It appears to be in your cells, in one specific gene to be precise. Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in California examined the genes of people in their 90s. In a remarkable 99 percent of the cases, the nonagenarians&amp;#039; genes worked flawlessly. That is, they directed a designated cell to produce the proper proteins. The aged genes actually work as well as those of newborns. If old and young genes work the same, why do we age? Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago suspect they have found the answer. It is one specific gene known as p21. It works as a sort of genetic emergency brake. When it is activated it stops the growth in cells that have been damaged by toxins or radiation, thus giving them time for repair. Igor Roninson, a professor of molecular genetics, turned on the p21 gene in human cells and studied how this affected thousands of other genes. To his surprise, they became flat, granular, and stopped growing. In other words, they got old. &amp;quot;The pattern was striking,&amp;quot; says Roninson. &amp;quot;Turning on this one gene brought about changes in numerous other genes that have already been implicated in aging and age-related diseases.&amp;quot; Roninson&amp;#039;s colleagues found that p21 selectively inhibited more than 40 genes known to be involved in DNA replication and cell division, thus immediately arresting cell growth. At the same time, it increased the activity of about 50 other genes. Genes stimulated by p21 include one associated with a component of plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer&amp;#039;s patients. Others produce various proteins and enzymes that contribute to atherosclerosis and arthritis. &amp;quot;Our research [at Scripps] ties the effects of aging into a single package by identifying a common element in aging,&amp;quot; says Dr. Richard A. Lerner. The Fountain of Youth\u2014an elixir that keeps us youthful until we die\u2014just might be real. Will We Cure Cancer? Cancer is a collection of some 200 diseases that have one feature in common: Healthy cells run amok. Prevailing wisdom holds that genes play a major role. If your parent or sibling has had cancer, you&amp;#039;re marked. Or, maybe not. This summer, the medical community learned the findings from the largest study ever conducted to determine the relative impact of genes and the environment on cancer. Surprisingly, what you eat, where you live, your occupation, and certain bad habits, including smoking and overeating, matter more than a family history of cancer. The research behind this shocker comes from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. It organized a study of 89,576 twins in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Cancer researchers like to study twins because of their genetic similarities. Using health records, they selected families in which one twin developed cancer, and then they looked at what happened to the other. Genes, it appears, really aren&amp;#039;t destiny. What matters more is smoking cigarettes, a poor diet, lack of exercise, and exposure to radiation and pollution and cancer-causing chemicals. The most striking finding is that an identical twin who avoided these risks\u2014in essence, took care of himself\u2014had about a 90 percent chance of not getting the same cancer as his twin. The study, prepared by Paul Lichtenstein of the Karolinska Institute, was recently published in the New England Journal Of Medicine. The extent to which specific cancers could be reduced varies, says Lichtenstein. Some experts say a comprehensive control effort that includes tighter restrictions on releases of industrial chemicals into the air, water and workplace could demote cancers from top killers to rare diseases. The solution to the mystery of cancer isn&amp;#039;t a pill, but rather, prevention.  Can We Achieve Immortality? Cancer cells share a curious characteristic. They are immortal. As long as they are fed, they will continue to divide. Not so for healthy cells, where a kind of timer built into the ends of chromosomes limits the number of times a cell can replicate itself. These timers are called telomeres. Think of them as the plastic caps on each end of your shoelaces that prevent the cord from unraveling. Each time a cell reproduces, a bit of the telomere is knocked off. When it is gone the cell stops dividing. With 46 chromosomes, humans have 92 of these life-span clocks. This is the cancer connection. One of the enzymes found in 90 percent of cancer cells is a compound called telomerase. It replaces the bit of telomere clipped off after each cell division. If telomerase production can be turned on in normal cells, it seems reasonable that normal cells could become immortal. Experimental work by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Genron, a California biotechnology company, has confirmed this does indeed occur. &amp;quot;Normally, cells stop dividing about their 70th generation,&amp;quot; says Dr. Jerry Shay of the University of Texas. &amp;quot;These [telomerase-activated] cells are now up to over 100 population doublings, and they show no evidence that they will slow down.&amp;quot; And, although the telomerase production has been turned on long enough for the telomeres to regrow to their original length, there is no indication that the cells have become cancerous. Interfering with telomerase production also can be used to combat cancer, by depriving cancer cells that remain after conventional treatment of their immortality. Earlier this year, lab mice with cancer successfully underwent this treatment using a synthetic anti-telomerase inhibitor. &amp;quot;Over time this will have a significant effect on the health span and eventually on life spans,&amp;quot; says Shay&amp;#039;s collaborator, Woodring Wright. Can We Create Life? Nanotechnology is a manufacturing technique in which minuscule devices are assembled atom by atom. The only reason that building devices from such small parts is being taken seriously by IBM, Xerox and other technological powerhouses is because of a phenomenon known as self-assembly. If you lay down the proper sort of base structure, you can &amp;quot;grow&amp;quot; nanotubes, nanospheres and nanotransistors for computers. At the University of Illinois, researchers are using the protein actin found in many types of human cells to create self-assembling structures. &amp;quot;Our actin-membrane capsules are in equilibrium and do not require energy to remain stable,&amp;quot; says developer Gerard Wong. Will we reach a point at which these self-assembling structures literally take on a life of their own? A team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology, the University of California at Los Angeles and Michigan State University believes the answer is yes. Inside a computer they have created &amp;quot;digital organisms.&amp;quot; They have found that these cyberbeings respond to mutations in ways closely resembling the mutations of actual organisms such as bacteria, fungi and fruit flies. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s very difficult to ask very fundamental questions about life with a living system because the living system is very complex after 4 billion years of evolution,&amp;quot; says Caltech&amp;#039;s Chris Adami. &amp;quot;Life on Earth is all due to one event a long time ago. Everything we see is related to one accident, so if we look back at this, can we learn something about life in general?&amp;quot; Adami&amp;#039;s investigation is the first in which a digital evolution experiment has been modeled after one already done with a living organism, in this case E. coli bacteria. &amp;quot;I think we have convinced biologists that artificial life is not just a pipe dream, but is answering some fundamental questions about biology,&amp;quot; he says.  Where Is The Soul? If future developments in nanotechnology enable us to create a physically perfect replica of a person, one that is alive and seems human in every way, it is inevitable that we will find ourselves asking if this artificial life-form, this lab-grown creation, has a soul. Surprisingly, this may be the first mystery science solves in the 21st century. During a series of conferences organized by the University of California at San Diego, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Vatican, neuroscientists and theologians have begun delicately probing the physical nature of the soul. Or, as one conference organizer put it: &amp;quot;Does religion require a soul? Does science allow one?&amp;quot; The first question is best left to theologians. But neuroscientists believe they have the technology to answer the second. It is an extremely sensitive instrument called a rotating triple-head single-positron emission-computed tomography scanner. &amp;quot;Many find it deeply disturbing that the most profoundly moving experience might be reducible to specific brain functions that may even be measured on advanced brain imaging studies,&amp;quot; says Andrew Newberg. A neurobiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, he and a colleague, Eugene d&amp;#039;Aquili, used the scanner to examine the brains of people meditating. Their subjects were Tibetan Buddhists who agreed to have intravenous tubes inserted into their arms. When they reached a peak meditative state they signaled Newberg to release a radioactive isotope into their veins. In the brain, cells that were more active in meditation took in more isotope, and later gave off more radiation, which the scanner recorded. Similar work is in progress using Franciscan nuns and born-again Pentecostal Christians. &amp;quot;The result, one hopes, will be a wonderful journey that will enlighten ourselves as well as the scientific study of religious experience,&amp;quot; Newberg says. Is Light The Ultimate Speed Limit? There may be a way to drive faster than nature&amp;#039;s version of the 55-mph speed limit\u2014the law that says you can&amp;#039;t travel faster than light. In the mid-1990s, Miguel Alcubierre of the University of Wales proposed building a spaceship that would shrink the space ahead of it and expand the space behind it. Simultaneously pushing the departure gate behind while drawing the arrival terminal closer in this fashion could make faster-than-light travel possible, without violating that pesky law of relativity. The difficulty is that it isn&amp;#039;t a fuel-efficient way to travel. In fact, it would take so much energy that there wouldn&amp;#039;t be enough fuel in the universe to fill the tank. The idea was abandoned. Chris Van Den Broeck of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, believes that decision might have been premature. In a paper published by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he describes a superluminary racer that might work by using a strange form of warped space that permits the creation of bubbles that have a large internal volume but a tiny surface area. Van Den Broeck has calculated that producing a bubble large enough to contain a space capsule would require only 1 gram of fuel. The problem is that this fuel is negative energy. Like space-time warps, it theoretically exists, but no one has found a way to create it. The best evidence of all comes from Lijun Wang of the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J. This summer, the prestigious journal Nature reported that Wang&amp;#039;s team had clocked a pulse of light moving through a cesium-filled chamber at faster than 186,000 miles per second. &amp;quot;Our experiment shows that the generally held notion that nothing can move faster than the speed of light is wrong,&amp;quot; he said. Sending signals faster than light could hold the key to solving the two greatest mysteries of all: alien contact and time travel.  Are We Alone In The Universe? Two recent discoveries in deep space have dramatically changed the odds that we are not alone. One involves a mysterious cloud near the center of the Milky Way. The other involves emissions from pulsars. Using the National Science Foundation&amp;#039;s 12-Meter Telescope atop Kitt Peak in Arizona, astronomers have discovered sugar in a cloud from which new stars are forming. &amp;quot;It means it is increasingly likely that the chemical precursors to life are formed in such clouds long before planets develop around the stars,&amp;quot; says Jan M. Hollis of NASA&amp;#039;s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The sugar in question is glycolaldehyde. NASA scientists describe it as a simpler molecular cousin to table sugar. Its discovery 26,000 light-years away from Earth is exciting to astrobiologists because this 8-atom molecule of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen readily combines with other molecules to form ribose. Ribose is a building block of the nucleic acid DNA, the chemical carriers of the genetic code found in all living organisms. The second puzzling discovery involves pulsars. Since 1967, astronomers have been cataloging precisely timed radio pulses that sweep through space, much like lighthouse beams. Although pulsars are considered to be a type of neutron star, the exacting timing of their energy releases has puzzled astrophysicists. Among them is Paul LaViolette of the Starburst Foundation in Alexandria, Va. At this year&amp;#039;s meeting of the American Astronomical Society, he offered evidence that pulsars are located and send signals in patterns that appear to be some sort of intelligent message\u2014exactly what remains to be seen. Equivalence is a cardinal rule of science. The laws of nature that apply on Earth apply everywhere in the cosmos. Finding the molecules that form the genetic backbone for intelligent life on Earth and signals too organized to be random, strengthens the argument that we are not alone. Can We Travel Through Time? Albert Einstein was a man ahead of his time, so far ahead we are only now able to test some of his theories. One involves the twins paradox. An astronaut travels at nearly the speed of light. His twin stays home. The space traveler returns to find his sibling an old man. What really happened, said Einstein, is that time aboard the rocket slowed, keeping the traveler young. You need to move at enormous speeds to make this happen. In a more modest experiment using two ultra-precise clocks instead of twins, the clock flown aboard the supersonic Concorde really did tick slightly slower than the same model in a lab. By &amp;quot;slightly,&amp;quot; we mean you would have to fly for 100 years to be one ten-thousandth of a second younger than someone who took the bus. The point here is that time is elastic. Although most scientists are reluctant to discuss time machines, solid theoretical work is being done. Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology suggests using wormholes. As described by Einstein, such wormholes are tunnels in space-time. A wormhole between two points could connect today with yesterday, or earlier. The theoretical possibility of traveling back in time begs the practical question: Why haven&amp;#039;t we seen time travelers at major events, like New Year&amp;#039;s Eve 1999? Again, Einstein offers the solution. While relativity theories don&amp;#039;t rule out traveling backward in time, they do place limits on when you can travel. Nature won&amp;#039;t let you travel to a date before the first time machine was built. As discussion of time travel becomes less of a scientific taboo, the chances of building a time machine improve. It isn&amp;#039;t beyond the realm of reason that by the end of the 21st century we could be entertaining guests from the 22nd. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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