Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Power of Cold

Due to the interest in Cryogenics from the previous post, I will now discuss extremely low temperatures and their applications.


First I want to talk about super low temperatures, not actual Cryogenics.  Don't worry, it isn't a history lesson.  Bose (yes the same guy with the particle named boson) and Einstein (Einsteinium, right!?) proposed after working together that at extremely cold temperatures (near absolute zero) a certain behavior of particles would happen.  This is called the Bose-Einstein condensate.  Normally, as most of you know, gases move around chaotically in all directions (this is what provides atmospheric pressure, atoms hitting your skin constantly bumping around).  However, their theory proposed atoms would move as if you were holding a bunch of pieces of string and waving them together (a uniform wave motion).

In 2001 3 scientists shared the Nobel prize in Physics, 2 from CU Boulder, CO and one from MIT for being the first to demonstrate this condensate.  Know what temperature it took to observe it?  1 billionth of 1 degree Kelvin (1 x 10^-9).  To fully understand how close that is, they gave the following analogy.  If the distance from London to Colorado were the last 1 degree K, they got within a pencil lead's thickness of absolute zero.  That's very cold!  They did it by keeping the gas within a magnetic field, amongst other things.

But, here is what is really cool about it.  Light always moves at 2.9979 x 10^8 m/s in a vacuum, but when it passes through a medium of any kind it has to 'energize' and then pass from one atom to another, so the observed speed is slower.  However, it is still moving at the 2.9979 x 10^8 m/s, it just pauses at each atom.  Hopefully that makes sense.  Now, it was so cold, that light actually passed through the condensate at the speed of a bicycle!  That is completely insane.  Scientists are now looking at ways to use this, including things such as data storage within light itself due to being able to almost suspend it.  Fascinating!

Now onto Cryonics.  As some of you may know, in the US and most other parts of the world you have to be legally dead before you are allowed to be frozen.  The temperature at which they do it prevents the body from breaking down and incurring further tissue damage (the boiling point of liquid N).  One of the first problems, was crystallization of water between cells.  Water is a polar molecule and thus has an interesting property all of you are aware of but might not understand.  Ice expands and is less dense than water (thus floats).  It is caused because the water molecules form circular type chains with space between them rather than all crunched up like liquid water.  Well, that type of thing happening in your body is obviously bad.

So, in 1990 some scientists invented something that prevents the freezing of water between cells to help preserve transplant organs.  This substance is called a vitrification fluid.  It works fine on many tissues, but the brain has more sensitive tissues, so the effects are not completely understood.  Animal brains have survived, but characteristics of personality and memory recall are unknown.  Additionally, loading the body with vitrification fluid can be bad.  In large quantities it is known to be toxic.  How toxic?  We don't know, because no one has been frozen and woken up.

Regardless, it is believed that by the time the much more complex medical issues which caused the individual to die are solved, the vitrification toxicity and/or cellular damage will be no problem.  Works for me, since I'd rather be 150 years in the future anyways :)

Comments welcome as always!

22 comments:

  1. That's some crazy stuff. I wonder how long it'll be until we start seeing cryogenics and similar things being made for consumers.

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  2. So I used to feel bad cause I never paid attention in school, but it's like I'm re-living all those days reading this. Your posts always amaze me. Keep them coming man, truly well-done.

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  3. hahah, thanks Antiquated :)

    @Axis it is available to customers, but there are only several hundred patients worldwide right now. The cost is ~300k USD for a full body freeze from Alcor. Not too bad considering life insurance would probably cover the entire cost. There's also a 500$ or so yearly 'membership' fee. I'm sure they use that to pay the upkeep on keeping you cool. I wonder what happens if you run out of money? They try to wake you? or unplug you? ouch!

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  4. I look forward to the Bose-Einstein condensate RAID array for my personal supercomputer.

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  5. The problem is the wakeup cycle. Somebody who is frozen would need to be thawed instantly... Actually, I guess that goes for the freezing process too. I don't think the brain would survive gradual cooling and heating.
    What do you think?

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  6. hah, annnnd craziness. I'm not sure how to feel about cryogenics, but here we are.

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  7. @Alexis Let me preface by saying I don't know enough about biology to give you a great answer.

    I believe the problem with large ranges of temperature is the shock to cells. The vitrification fluid is supposed to protect that shock from occurring. So, they would slowly speed up to normal molecular behavior, I believe. I guess the way you could think about it is like a sprinter. The freezing is a huge mass attached to him not allowing him to move, frozen there. The vitrification fluids protect his muscles from straining/tearing. Then the weight is slowly decreased so he starts moving, slowly at first, then back up to normal speed :)

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  8. Cant wait to wake up on the new years of the year 3000!

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  9. The analogy of london/chicago/pencil lead was nice. Now, let me get this right, it was so cold that the light when passing between molecule was passing at ~10mph or so instead of at the speed of C?

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  10. Thanks for the info man, i always end up learning something from your blog posts.

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  11. Too bad it costs so much to get frozen... it'd be cool to be dying and suddenly you're up again, in a futuristic room with smaller humans with bigger heads (cos that's where scientists think evolution is taking us) and completely healthy

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  12. @Punky, no light still travels at C always. There was a massive delay between when it moved between atoms (which is when C comes into play)

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  13. Damn man I may have to look into this, if only I had a spare $300k :D

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  14. This is a good blog post; cryogenics is really interesting.

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  15. I've seen Penn and Tellers episode on cryogenics and after that I've been skeptical about it.

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  16. I have an interesting thought to share.

    What makes people believe that 150 years from now other people will be glad to unfreeze them? The population will be much greater and the people who are being unfrozen will have to be taught everything that they missed. Seem to me like people of the future would see frozen oldtimers as a nuisance.

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  17. well put and very informative im not into so much physics but this was really informative thanks

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  18. I love your posts, cryogenics is pretty fascinating.

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  19. @ psyke I will watch that Penn and Teller. I love that show! You have to take what they say with a grain of salt sometimes, however. They did an episode on Wal-Mart hating being Bullsh!t. While their points about people not wanting to shop at mom and pop stores and Wal-Mart helping the communities by supplying jobs are true, there are some huge holes.

    One is the fact they don't make things in the US, of course that is so they can keep prices down. But this should have never happened because now every company is in a price war due to places like Wal-Mart starting it. Many thousands of manufacturing sector jobs have been lost from this.

    Another hole is that they pay their employees poorly compared to their massive profits.


    @Wayward Interesting thought, however, in 150 years I'm sure anti-aging will be to the point where you may choose your age. I can do a full write up in another post if you'd like to see how. Secondly, there are a few hundred total in the world and these people are paying for a service. Unless the companies providing that service go out of business the people will be woken up.

    Thirdly, what's the difference between being frozen after you are dead and just being dead assuming you never get woken? Not much to me.

    A more interesting question to me is how religious groups would handle it. If I'm dead for 150 years and 'in heaven,' what happens when I'm brought back? Do they consider me a new person (due to a new soul?) or the same person being brought back from heaven (a much better place)?

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  20. what an interesting blogspot, keep on posting such high quality articles.

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