Cryogenics

[willawoga]

Cryogenics, the sceince of freezing people who are dead until they are brought back to life, is impossible. The problem with it is that the water inside people's cells would simply freeze and break the cell memberane, which would cause death on reviving. This means that it is impossible. If anyone can find a way around this please do so.

[ecoli]

generally, a slow freeze doesn't disrupt cell membranes. If you freeze/thaw through several cycles, the ice crystals can shear cell membranes, but this is probably the least important problem associated with cryogenics.

[Mr Skeptic]

I believe that animals that freeze and thaw themselves dehydrate themselves a bit before freezing to make up for the expansion. The formation of large crystals is also very harmful, and they have some kind of antifreeze.

 

It is possible to freeze and thaw mammalian tissue without killing it; this has been done with mouse kidneys and ovaries (resulting in pregnancy). Of course with stuff like sperm it is very easy. I'd imagine it would be much harder to do with a larger organ or a whole organism though.

[willawoga]

Well, if you dehydrate a person, even a little, when they wake up, wouldnt they not have enough water in them to be able to survive for very long?

[antimatter]

Eh, not necessarily. Can't you just pump water into them in the thawing process?

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, if you dehydrate a person, even a little, when they wake up, wouldnt they not have enough water in them to be able to survive for very long?

 

They don't wake up. A team of specialists wakes them up (in the future, when they figure out how to do it). The defrosting process is at least as hard as the freezing process. You'd want to have a very good team of doctors standing by. They'd probably have to do CPR on you as soon as you are defrosted. Being a bit or even very thirsty would be the least of your concerns.

[antimatter]

Not only that, but it would be like being in a coma, right?

You'd have to re-learn how to do everything, and you'd have lost a lot of your muscle-mass.

[Mr Skeptic]

Not only that, but it would be like being in a coma, right?

You'd have to re-learn how to do everything, and you'd have lost a lot of your muscle-mass.

 

No, you should be pretty much where you were before, or dead, or partly dead. If you forget anything it will probably be from oxygen deprivation in (part) of your brain while you are being frozen or defrosted.

[antimatter]

So I suppose that's yet another problem.

What would be teh problem with pumping O2 into the cryo-tanks?

[Mr Skeptic]

At some point your heart will be stopped. No blood circulation (due to a clot in a rather small artery) is the reason for heart attacks and strokes, because of oxygen deprivation to the heart or brain. But it would be complicated to do cpr on a partly frozen person. The body uses less oxygen when very cold, but still I think the freezing and defrosting would have to be done quite quickly to prevent damage. Or maybe do the freezing/defrosting via the circulatory system.

[willawoga]

Freezing via the circulatory system, wouldnt that freeze the patients blood? And antimatter, if you pumped pure O2 into the tanks, then there woul;d be too much O2 in the body after a while for you to survive

[antimatter]

Yes, that's teh point their blood would be frozen...

 

No, no you're missing teh point. I meant like they could moniter the O2 supply in the body and whenever it's dwindling they could pump in some more, I didn't mean constant pumping...that's just...