Cyrogenics: The Human Popsicle

[Queso]

Chirogenic freezing (I don't know the correct spelling)

Has there been any success bringing people back to life?

 

I used to be convinced when I was younger that this is what I wanted to do, but recently I've heard nothing about it at all...

 

p.s. i'm not an atheist, just a guy living without a religion for himself. :)

[bumab]

I think they are still struggling with freezing people fast enough to avoid ice crystals forming and cutting the cell membrane to pieces. I'm pretty sure the difficulty is the innards- it's easy to freeze your skin that fast, but people are to thick to freeze fast enough to get the middle of ya freezing that fast.

[Queso]

What about absolute zero? I know, just like the speed of light, we can't get to the exact temperature of it, but why not have a cylender with a liquid that can get almost that cold, and just dump the body in there?

i know nothing about this so forgive me if this is absurd.

would something that cold be devastating to a body? is there any liquid that can remain that cold and not freeze? or is the objective to freeze the liquid around the body entirely?

[bumab]

I think that's to cold, you get super liquids and such. I'm not sure how to do it, you've just got to get the temperature throughout the whole body real cold real quick.

 

Of course, that's just the freezing. I don't know anything about reanimation.

[Buffy]

I remember seeing somewhere that it takes motion to actually freeze stuff. We don't notice that the fridge is vibrating from the motor, but I remember something about that its possible to get a liquid--including water--way below its freezing temperature without it becoming a solid and then if you bump it it will instantly freeze....

 

Brrrrr,

Buffy

[bumab]

I thought it was a crystalization thing. You can supercool water, like you can superheat it. But you drop in a seed crystal, and the ice has something to build from. To supercool or superheat something, you need a REALLY clean container, so there's no seed crystals from the beginning.

[Queso]

wow i would love to try that, but i doubt there's any possible way i could do this at home. i don't have anything to get a motionless pool of liquid cool enough, nor the environment to make something like that perfectly still...that would just blow my mind, for example, to drop a lego man from about 5 feet above it, and say goodbye.

[Buffy]

I thought it was a crystalization thing.

I think you're right, but that any motion will start the crystalization process. In any case, I remember that the difficulty in doing the supercooling was you *had* to totally isolate the container from any motion or vibration whatsoever. Being superclean probably is the case too.

 

Chatter,

Buffy

[bumab]

You can superheat water in the microwave really easily... maybe, with careful set up, you go do something like that in the freezer.

 

you can supersaturate water with sugar, and one crystal will solidify the whole thing (when you drop it in) thats cool

[Queso]

As buffy stated earlier, the freezer hums its unnoticed vibrations that we can barely detect, and the water would know for sure. ice trays, for example...those things freeze. and opening and closing the freezer door would totally eliminate your objective anyway. freezer, out of the question.

[bumab]

maybe dry ice in a cooler could create a cold enough zone where you could supercool water...

[Queso]

the dry ice would pressurize the cooler and probably meddle with the air molecules floating around inside the cooler, as well as the "smoke" from the dry ice.

i've made many dry ice bombs in my day, always ALWAYS a blast :)

 

anyway, all i'm saying is that there would be unwanted tension and movement on the water, slight enough to ruin this experiment.

[bumab]

me too :)

[Fishteacher73]

Generally any glaas or ceramic is smooth enough (as long as there are not any scratches on it) to allow something to super-heat. That is why you usually have to put "boiling stones/sticks" in glassware that you heat over a burner in science class. Most glassware used in a lab setting should be reasonably scratcg free.

 

As for cyrogenics..As stated earlier the main problem is the formation of ice crystals that essential shred the cellular structure. They have succeded both in super cooling a rat and reviving it (I believe it was "dead" for about thirty minutes..I'll see if i can find a source and post it up in a sec.). There is also a species of toad (In Sweden, if I recall) that actual;ly freezes durring the winter and thaws out in the spring. They have done studies and found that the frog has a protien in its blood system that acts as an anit-freeze, causing the freezing temp. of the body's fluids to be much lower.

 

Another study about frozen frogs:

http://www.sru.edu/pages/10428.asp

[Queso]

I've also heard of some fish freezing in lakes, and thawing out like nothing ever happened. Totally amazing.

[Fishteacher73]

I tried to drop some fish sticks into one of my tanks...They just sank :) . But the other fish nibbled ion them, so would that be considered fragmented reanimation?

[Fishteacher73]

This thread began in another and it seemed we had an interesting discussion going, so I figured I would weed it out and start one that others would recognize as a cryogenics discussion.

 

So:

1. What do we think about the science of cryogenics in humans?

 

2. What science is there out there that illustrates this process already?

 

3. What hurdles are needed to be overcome before it become a viable process?

 

4. Are there other theories asisde from using natural methods?

 

5. Is partial cryogenics a viable option (Such as freezing just the head)?