• Question: is there anyway possible that if you froze yourself living you would be able to come back to life in the future?

    Asked by matt959 to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Louise W, Marcus on 15 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Marcus Wilson

      Marcus Wilson answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      so lots of people have done this (Walt Disney for one) in liquid nitrogen (-196oC), but beacuse we are so big you dont freeze quick enough and big ice crystals form and break up your cells as they are freezing, so at the moment its not a very good idea.

      we use liquid nitrogen to freeze small things like cells all they time to preserve them, but we have to do this very carefully or they break up too.

    • Photo: Louise Walkin

      Louise Walkin answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Yes, I think someone would have to come up with a way to freeze and preserve us without causing any damage to parts of us whilst we are in the freezing process. I’m not sure I would like to have it happen to me although it would be quite cool to be thawed out and see what the world is like in 100 years time! 🙂

    • Photo: Joanna Giles

      Joanna Giles answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi! As marcus said, there are some people cryogenically frozen in the hope of coming back to life! But these people were dead before being frozen, it’s illegal to freeze live people 🙂 and I think it’s a rumour that Walt Disney was frozen – sadly! 🙁

    • Photo: Louise Stanley

      Louise Stanley answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Its not quite freezing but sometimes Doctors deliberately reduce patient’s temperature to induce hypothermia during surgery, particularly when operating on the heart and brain. This decreases the metabolism of tissues and the need for oxygen.

    • Photo: Adam Paige

      Adam Paige answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      We have people at the University of Bedfordshire who have been trying to do that…but not with humans but rather fish. Freezing fish embryoes is a great way to try and help conservation. So many species are at risk of extinction, but if we can freeze some embryoes we could potentially bring them back to life in the future. Freezing them is easy, but thawing them alive is much harder. Avoiding ice crystals bursting the cells is key. So our researchers try different chemical treatments and different approaches to freezing and thawing to see which is best for the cells. Lots of work is still needed to make this a straightforward and simple process though.

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