O.K. I realize I’ve been starting a lot of threads lately but I’m just so full of questions. Well here’s one I’m trying to work out right now : Is it actually possible to revive someone who has been frozen, be them alive a la Futurama or dead a la Walt Disney? I know it’s probably impossible to answer since one can’t predict the future, but from what we know now, would the person be “resuscitatable”?
As usual, all theories are welcome:)
If you can freeze all atoms (and all sub-particles) so that they don’t move anymore then it would be possible. It’s the same as stopping time for that organism.
The problem is that the freezing and defreezing can’t be done in the average fridge. You need very low temperatures to accomplish that. Defreezing is another matter… I don’t know how you can defreeze someone without damaging any tissue. At any case, no water may touch that person during the the period starting with the freezing and ending with the defreezing. Water expands when it turns into ice, damaging tissue on it’s way. Then again, most of our cells is filled with precious H2O…
yeah, It would be extremely hard to get that to work. The best I can think of is maybe slowly switching out the h2o in our bodies with some other chemical that wouldnt expand and whatnot(at least not so much) as water does. What chemical that would be, no idea.
Peter, you got a couple of the problems(no water contact at all), and obviously the place would have to be teperature controlled. Im wondering, what about advances in technology? Would you have to defreeze the subject every 50 years as the hibernation technolugy grew…
Yeah, so anyway, thats my 2 cents…
I would say no, because its not possible to replace the water in individual cells, since they need it to live. If you replaced the water, the cells would die. freezing people just seems like an easy way to get rid of people you don’t like.
shhhush man, youll give away our secret convorsation(read every other letter, flip backwards)…
the tigger is in the trap…pooh bear hates the honey…
JP
well, im wondering if there are any such chemicals that our bodies could accept for water, just long enough until we could be frozen?..If not, Im inventing one right now
The things is… how are ya gonna get the water out and your fluid in without disturbing the cells?
like…well…hmmm
You could go into a water devoid room. Instead, it would be kept humid with this gas(the fluid). You would drink only this fluid, and other foods made only with this fluid. Sure, youd get a little water, but eventually youd be able to get the h2o levels in your body too drop to a point where they wouldnt cause any major problems upon your defrosting. Right?
Ugh. thast why Im not a chemical engineer, or professional person freezer…
peace
Drew
Like everyone said, freezing is bad. Ice crystals will rip cells apart.
Best solution, findout how Bears and other animals hybernate. If you can find the chemical that causes hybernation, then you’re well on your way on stopping death.
For example, we humans when we sleep our bodies produce chemical that stops us moving. When we wake our bodies quickly get rid of this chemical. If you ever wondered why it is hard to get going in the mornings, its because your body is getting rid of this chemical. Good Luck in your quest.
I’m pretty sure bears age as they hibernate. By the time you wake up in the “future”, you’ll look like Nicole Richie
@ozo: Im saying, there are chemicals that dont freexe in the same jagged way that water does. Some dont freeze at all. youd likely have to replace the blood with such a chemical as well…I know there are some that can do that…
If I’m not mistaking one technique to make a moster too look under the TEM (transmission electron microscope, a verry fancy magnifying glass) is to get all the water out and change it with glycerol I think and other components problem is your cell is really really dead if you do that but it is fixated. Another way to make a monster is to to drop the temperature verry fast (chuck it in liquid N2) I forgot the name (edit: cryo-TEM) of the technique but what happens then is that your water becomes amorphous ice so no fancy cristals and yet again its all fixated and allmost ready to go under the TEM. The point is that your cell isn’t busted.
BUT the problem would be to be able to rise the temperature of your cell fast enough to melt the amorphous ice without cristalizing it into ice and without boiling it either.
So if you can do that then its possible.
Oh and another problem if you chuck human into N2 he explodes cuzz the interior doesn’t freeze fast enough and makes cristals who make the volume expand but the exterior would allready be somewhat frozenhard so KABLOIIIII pieces of frozen human everywhere.
Maybe if you’d put a human in a verrrrry strong magnetic field everything (the molecules) would stop moving, but cuzz your brain works with electricity and a magnetic field induces a electric courant (doesn’t have to be AC courant I think cuzz the change of the field when turning it on would be big enough) and it could fry the hell out of your brain.
But who knows…
@free_ality I’m a biotechnician to be (lets hope): If you would change water by another molecule you’d really badly mess everything up. H2O is needed as a solvent to make everything work in the cell. So unless you find a solvent that is as big as H20 and as polar it wont go. And if it is as polar it will probably make hydrogen bond thus inducing bigger solid state then fluid…
oh…I have an extremely vague(think white blanket in a blizzard) idea of what you mean. Ah well, looks Like I wont be freezing myself tonight afterall…
OR…instead of being frozen for the future, instead, a brain of a person could be taken out of the body, preserved in a chamber of oxygen rich liquid, along with everything else a brain would need, and then, because nerves both send and recieve messages via electricty, wires could replace those nerves and you could have a mechanical body and live FOREVER!!!
chirpchirp…chirpchirp
FadieZ to stop ageing, findout how the body keeps time and block it. If you findout which are the organs that keep time, block them and you will live forever.
I heard a University study that blocked different organs in worm from talking to each other, and they doubled the life of the worm to the equivalent of 150 human years.
Snelleeddy and Free_ality, interesting approach. Does have merit. Cells are programmed by nature to break apart after death, if you can stop that, then you will preserve the body.
Exactly what I meant.
About Organ Blockage:
The only thing is, what organs would you block? There arent specific aging organs. Certain organs just wear down over time. The body starts to wear out. How do you stop that? By not having the constant use of everyday life. Technically, I dont think anyone will be able to live forever(stasis isnt real life), but maybe we can extend it…
The worm is (probably) called C. elegans, a bit of respect cuzz its the most studied wurm on earth:p. And if I’m not mistaking they did a bunch of things with it. But they mainly overexpressed telomerase. Telomerase pastes useless pieces of DNA at the end part of the DNA. This cuzz in replication we allways loose a couple of bases from our DNA. When the ends become too short the cell goes into apoptosis (fancy word for death) and dies. But with telomerase the ends never become to short.
Problem is cuzz the cell loses sight of “time”(length of the end part of their DNA) it won’t selfdestruct thus inducing a mayor increase of mutations and well cancer. So unless you want more cancer then their allready is the controlled death of cells is GOOD.
In fact if you could be certain every cell died when it was supposed too you wouldn’t age and live forever.
cheers
keep on thinkin who knows we might win the Nobel prize
Cells are programmed by nature to break apart after death, if you can stop that, then you will preserve the body.
there’s such a thing as artificial blood… http://health.howstuffworks.com/artificial-blood.htm
But with telomerase the ends never become to short.
thats pretty much amazing. Never heard of that. If you could use that, stasis wouldnt require such a thing as a heavy freezing. We’d be able to keep the person actually living, yet never ageing…
Thats what im talking about.
Ok, a silly question, isnt human DNA more complex than worm DNA? Which would make telomerase more difficult with humans? And, is there technically a limit to a DNA strand? Could you add lots of end cells or wutever, or would it have to be in small increments…
Dna isn’t more complex. Humans do have more chromosomes (23 pairs and 6 for the wurm) but that doesn’t mather (a lobster has like more then 100 pairs)
The problem is mutation, what good is there in keeping a cell alive and multipliing if it a freaking tumor. So there probably is a self inducing mechanism attached too telomerase but that can probably be knocked out. But unless you can make shure you don’t get any mutations in yur DNA (live in a lead house at the bottom of the ocean, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t do annything thats fun) knocking out celldeath is creating cancer…
@Jeepster: the human genome is bigger then that of the wurm but that doesn’t mather. What matters is the length of each idividaul ending of a chromosome, if it becomes to short yur toast.