Cryogenic-ally Frozen?

Question

Is it possible to be frozen till the future like "Fry" in Futurama?

Answer 1

The theory exists and indeed several companies actually offer this service. They offer the options of just having your head frozen or your whole body.

There are a number of problems/issues involved, however:-
* no-one has ever been successfully "unfrozen" from a cryogenic state
* the process requires very rapid freezing after replacing body fluid (which is mainly water) with another liquid which doesn't expand when frozen - as this would cause all the cells of your body to rupture. How they propose to reverse the process on defrosting remains somewhat unclear, although no doubt the glossy brochures from the cryo companies make it all sound perfectly simple.
* Legal considerations require that a subject is already pronounced dead before the procedure is carried out. This has the disadvantage that when you are defrosted, you will still be dead because you died before being frozen. Therefore any revival process must also include some form of intensive medical treatment to bring you back to life. Very few patients have ever been revived having been pronounced dead even without being frozen in the meantime.
* you are relying on a cryogenic company maintaining your frozen body in perfect condition until you get unfrozen (and you have no way of making sure that they do so). If the company ceases to trade, suffers a power failure or is in any way negligent then there will be nothing you can do about it - even if your surviving relatives sue the company, it isn't going to be much help to you. I recall that one company suffered some sort of major power outage a year or two ago and then basically ended up with dozens of defrosting, rotting corpses and the only thing they could do was cremate or bury them!

Answer 2

Not yet.

Most of the concept is fairly sound, but there is one key problem: Water expands when its frozen. The vast majority of our bodies is made of water... and when it freezes, all that water crystalises and expands, puncturing our cells from the inside.

That is to say if we were frozen solid and then thawed out... all our body would be leaking its inner juices all over the place and into one another and the entire functionality would have broken down.


Cryo-freezing will only become possible once we can figure out a way to freeze people SO quickly that the water doesn't have a chance to expand... i.e. the energy is sapped from it so suddenly that the molecules just stay in place. Can't be done yet.

Answer 3

Cryogenics is a branch of physics concerned with very low temperatures: how to produce the lowest temperatures possible (below minus 30oC), and what effects these low temperatures have on organisms or materials. The prefix cryo is derived from the Greek word kryos, meaning "cold."

The person considered by most to be the originator of modern experimental science, Francis Bacon, died as a result of a spontaneous experiment he was conducting on the effects of low temperatures. In 1623, while traveling on a cold and snowy day, Bacon decided to "experiment" to see whether snow would delay the putrefaction of flesh. He stuffed a fowl with snow to observe the effects. In the process, he caught a sudden chill. Over the years, this turned into acute bronchitis, which contributed to his death in 1626.

Although some animals are able to lower their body temperatures during hibernation, most animals, like people, cannot tolerate freezing temperatures within their body tissues. Normally, when an organism is exposed to below-freezing temperatures, ice forms in smaller blood vessels and either bursts the blood vessels or stretches them beyond the point where they can function normally. In addition, ice in the blood vessels "captures" the water content, making it impossible for the blood cells to survive. Other types of cells are also damaged during freezing. Frostbite is a common malady caused by cold temperatures; frozen skin and blood cells are damaged from the dehydration due to freezing.

Scientists have discovered, however, that some varieties of frogs and turtles can actually survive being frozen. When these animals sense ice on the outsides of their bodies, their livers produce extra glucose (blood sugar), which floods into their cells to protect the cell from freezing and from damage. This also holds the cell's shape so it doesn't collapse upon itself. Nucleating proteins "guide" water out of the cells, allowing the water to go in between the cells and the organs. This allows the water to freeze, but in small pieces, without "spears" that could puncture the cell membrane.

Scientists know of only one mammal, the Arctic ground squirrel, that seems to be able to tolerate ice crystals in its bloodstream during a physiological state that falls somewhere between hibernation and freezing.

Scientists are studying the "cryoprotectants" of these animals to see whether they have application for the freezing of human organs for transplants. So far they have been successful in freezing only single cells (e.g., sperm cells) and corneas for transplants.

Answer 4

highly theoretically yes.. provided you could ensure that the freezing happened very rapidly and would result in only very small ice crystals as the formation of larger crystals would results in cell damage. If all the tissues could be permiated with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) without toxic effects .. then.. maybe

Answer 5

Yes its possible and has actually been performed with 5 people frozen so far.

Answer 6

I believe scientists have been working on this for some time now.

Answer 7

Not yet. Freezing destroys cells.

Answer 8

lol i dont think we can go that far just yet, but we can frezze things like sperm and eggs to produce babies at a later date.

Answer 9

Maybe some day but not yet.

Answer 10

i think so