Would cryogenic stasis be more effective than bio-chemical stasis if both technology's where available?

Question

what are the differences if any between the two?

Answer 1

Bio-chemical stasis would use chemicals to slow and then suspend body funcions. Cryogenic stasis would do this by lowering body temperature. As the water in the cells in our body expands when it turn to ice, thus popping the cell membrane, some sort of chemical treatment would be needed prior to that procedure.
As nither of the techiques IS actually avaliable, it's difficult to say which could be more effective. I suppose it will be down to side effects. Those would presumably be studied when (and if) such techiques are developed.

Answer 2

Yes, and here is why;

Chemical reactions will occur whether you have somehow induced a hibernation state or not. At cooler temperatures, reaction rates slow. Most reaction rates scale as temperature exponentially (though exactly how sensitive they are to temperature depends on the other factors in the exponent which in turn will vary from reaction to reaction.) So, you can slow reactions by several factors of 10 if you lower the temperature enough.

No matter what you do at a warmer temperature, chemical reactions will occur, and in the biochemical hibernation state, chances are they are not going to ones that are normally associated with life processes, so you would have a heck of a hangover when you came out (and perhaps a fatal hangover after a long enough period.)

Another edge that the cryo form has is by solidifying the reactant transport medium in the body (freezing all the liquids and mushy bits in the cells) the chemicals that would react cannot even get to one another. The main reason we don't use cryogenics now is technological; the biggest known problem being that the ice crystals that form tend to be larger than single cells, rupturing their membranes. Ouch.

For extremely long space journeys both methods have one problem. DNA damage occurs all the time from ambient radiation, even on Earth. In space this can be mitigated by enough shielding with a caveat: when you think of the lengths people go to for terrestrial radiation shielding, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamioka_Observatory#KamiokaNDE ) it is hard to imagine practical shielding on a spacecraft suitable for periods of perhaps thousands or millions of years without our internal DNA repair mechanisms functioning.

For a journey of a few years it might work, but for a long journey it would probably be best to wake the passengers periodically for a period of normal functioning. I suspect the amount of time between waking periods would need to be shorter for a biochemical hibernation period than a cryogenic.

Answer 3

Cryogenics -> something to do with preserving in ice.

Bio-chemical -> i really dont know...

Answer 4

Yes.