Time Travel: Cryogenically frozen and awoken in the future.

If somebody was frozen alive, and then he was defrosted 200 years later, it would seem to him as if he closed his eyes for seconds and found himself in the future after reopening them, right?

Can they freeze living people yet?

[Edit by Stryder]
I changed the title a little to reflect the nature of this initial post as "Time Travel" just as a title was too Ambiguous.

 

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I am not so sure about that, James R.. Frozen embryos are held in indefinite stasis in embryo banks the world over. These are live human beings who can be dethawed and grow into healthy babies.

 

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Currently, we cannot freeze and then thaw a complex organism, because as the ice crystals form they literally pierce the cell walls causing them to spill their contents.
Research is being done on how to freeze organs by looking at 2 animals (a species of Arctic fish and a frog) that can be frozen and thawed.
The fish produces and circulates a natural antifreeze in its blood, the frog is extremely well adapted to having massive quantities of glucose in its system.

 

I guess when they do it, we will have a sure way for going to the future in a matter of seconds ...

I wish it would be available when I reach 60 ...

 

"Freezing" people won't ever work: ice damages tissue.


Cryogenic freezing, on the other hand, is in development or might even be available though not for mainstream use. It "freezes" but without ice.

 

Most of the test animals I've heard of being used have extra genomes in comparison to that of a human. This suggests the reason for their survival is perhaps because there are more gene's capable of replacing any damaged sequences. (I'm speculating this of course but note that RNA/DNA wouldn't be reproduced properly by Damaged cells)

The one problem with the human body is we are warm blooded this means we naturally keep a temperature and all our body processes depend on it to a certain extent. Dealing with Fish, Reptiles and Frogs doesn't suggest that we can fix this *design flaw* after all to my knowledge they are cold blooded and therefore more inclined to be conditioned to the temperature of their environment.

As for Cryogenics of Embryo's, it's not a 100% success ratio, out of the numbers they freeze a good deal perish., more so over greater time periods. Even if they do survive as fertile for long periods, there is also the chance that the creature that emerges might suffer genetic damage.

 

Everyone travels time, every time they go to sleep at night

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If you really want to travel forward in time just accelerate to close to light speed.

 

Ooof... to speculative for me. I think the real question is how complex consciousness could survive a long period of cryogenic sustainability.

 

Yes, but it kills them. They can't unfreeze them alive. It's possible this could be done at some point in the future but this seems unlikely given how much damage freezing does to the body - all the cell walls burst. Perhaps they could in future be repaired using nanotechnology but even if this were possible there's no knowing what brain damage and other problems could result.

How would that work? Human cells are full of water.

 

I like the Lost idea with the Frozen Donkey wheel (for those who know from the finale).

 

Awesome, if the cost of those machines can be brought down a bit then the possibilities are endless!
Freeze the entire food surplus and save it for drought years, keep a huge supply of frozen organs and thaw then out when necessary, preserve organic samples gathered from other hard to reach places for study, freeze samples of endangered species until the technology emerges to clone them easily, etc, etc.

 

Interesting. Pity it doesn't give more detail on how it works.

 

That would probably be because he wouldn't want anyone stealing the technology that he spent decades developing.

 

The wikipedia article on cryonics is quite good; see in particular the sections about vitrification (freezing without forming ice crystals) and ischemiaamage caused by oxygen depravation).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics
I am pretty sure that even with successful cryonic treatment, there will be some memory loss at the very least, that is until the technology becomes very much more advanced. It may in fact be impossible to avoid some loss of function or damage in subjects of cryogenic freezing.

But perhaps there is another way. Eric Drexler, the nanotech guru, suggested that biostasis at body temperature might be possible using mature nanotech medicine; this would preserve the tissues without aging indefinitely, while the cells continue to metabolise normally. Presumably a subject in biostasis could be placed in a coma of some sort if he or she wanted to pass the time more quickly (on an interstellar spacecraft, for instance).

But I think Drexler believed that biostasis would eventually allow extended lifespans, where the subject is active and conscious. If such a thing were possible, then a subject could conceivable travel into the far future one day at a time, simply by living longer. There would be no coming back, however.

 

That's what patents are for - making the information public but disallowing people to copy it without permission.

 

Regardless, some people are paranoid enough to want to restrict access to the technology anyway.
I certainly would be if I'd spent decades developing it.

 

Very nice, but we keep hearing ideas and nothing happens until we're dead and rotten.