Nov
14
Brett Y asked:
This is a question I have been wondering about. Has an estimate been placed on the amount of time a corps can reside inside of sealed, microbe-free environment, frozen in cryo-stasis? Would it at all be possible that human beings, perhaps dead or alive, could exist for as long as one millions years without any threat of physical decay?
This is a question I have been wondering about. Has an estimate been placed on the amount of time a corps can reside inside of sealed, microbe-free environment, frozen in cryo-stasis? Would it at all be possible that human beings, perhaps dead or alive, could exist for as long as one millions years without any threat of physical decay?
The reason I am asking is simply that scientists theorize it may be possible to freeze a person in cryo for an extended period of time, say a hundred years, and revive those people back to life. If, then, supposing no harm came to the cryogenic units that contained these human specimens, Could these frozen specimens last a million years under the same conditions and still be potentially brought back to life?
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3 Responses to “Can human cadavers survive for millions of years in cryogenics?”
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In theory…. The problem is, they’ve never successfully thawed a specimen. Also, there is a great deal of energy involved in freezing a human cadaver, and keeping it in a microbe free envirionment, let alone for a million years.
Theoritically yes, practicaly no
The problem associated with cryogenics is not about preserving,but maintaining the viability of body tissues. Many tissues contains a lot of water, and as we all know, water expands when it freezes. So cells are inevitably damaged when they are freezed.
Nevertheless, a lot of tissues can be maintained alive, if they are freezed at low temperatures under conditions of low pressures, initially,to reduce their water content by sublimation, and afterwards at normal pressures.The problem ,evidently, is that a body cannot be submitted to the same treatment, nor can it be cooled very rapidly(This reduces the physical damage done to the cells).
When cells are freezed, and restored back to life at normal temperatures, the damage is seemingly more chemical than physical, as we have hydrolytic enzymes that are released into the cytoplasm. These enzymes are released, as the lysosomes bags are damaged by the cryogenic process.
So the prospect of having a person saying hello after a millions of years under cryogenics conditions is impossible, even if his/her body is physically intact.