How would you like to live forever?
If a child prodigy in Belgium has his way, then that could eventually be the case.
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Laurent Simons, an 11-year-old from Ostend in Belgium, recently made headlines by earning a physics degree from the University of Antwerp.
The university confirmed the graduation of Simons, according to Newsweek, saying he graduated with the highest distinction of 85%.
Speaking to a newspaper in the Netherlands, Simons says (sorry, we couldn’t resist the pun) he has one goal for humans: Immortality.
“I want to be able to replace as many body parts as possible with mechanical parts,” Simons told Amsterdam-based De Telegraaf. “I’ve mapped out (a) path to get there. You can see it as a big puzzle. Quantum physics — the study of the smallest particles — is the first piece of the puzzle.”
Simons, who had been studying for his bachelor’s degree in physics since March 2020, will start to take classes toward his master’s degree at the university following the summer, according to a university spokesperson.
Simons became the second-youngest college graduate in the world behind Michael Kearney, who received an anthropology degree from the University of South Alabama at age 10 in 1994.
Simons tried to become the youngest, but he dropped out of Eindhoven University in the Netherlands in 2019 at age 9 because university officials refused to let him graduate before his 10th birthday.