As an example, using molecular dynamics to simulate organic macromolecules has only to date been used (with extreme difficulty) to model the smallest of protein molecules for periods of about a millisecond. Going by what I was told was the state of the art 20 years ago, I'd guess we're at least two centuries off (assuming Moore-style continuing advance, which is admittedly a major assumption) off being able to do this for a brain-size object even as a grand-challenge computing project.
And that, you will note, is simply assembling the computing power, and will at that point only allow one person to be simulated briefly and at an extremely slow pace. Whether it would be possible to construct such a model at that point depends on far less quantifiable factors. Whether microscopes will exist by then that can resolve not just locations of atoms but also their type and molecular associations, without disturbing those around and behind them enough to render the task futile, is as far as I can tell impossible to guess. Damaging your sample before you've found out all you want to know isn't usually a big problem in microscopy - you just try again with a different sample. In this case, not so easy.
I'm not really sure that approach would be any easier than repairing a dead brain, to be honest.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-01-21 07:00 pm (UTC)And that, you will note, is simply assembling the computing power, and will at that point only allow one person to be simulated briefly and at an extremely slow pace. Whether it would be possible to construct such a model at that point depends on far less quantifiable factors. Whether microscopes will exist by then that can resolve not just locations of atoms but also their type and molecular associations, without disturbing those around and behind them enough to render the task futile, is as far as I can tell impossible to guess. Damaging your sample before you've found out all you want to know isn't usually a big problem in microscopy - you just try again with a different sample. In this case, not so easy.
I'm not really sure that approach would be any easier than repairing a dead brain, to be honest.