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1. •  
     CommentAuthorDanieru
   • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2006 edited

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   The latest research on water - still one of the least understood of all liquids despite a century of intensive study – seems to support the possibility that cells, tissues and even the entire human body could be cyropreserved without formation of damaging ice crystals, according to University of Helsinki researcher Anatoli Bogdan, Ph.D....
   
   ....In medicine, cryopreservation involves preserving organs and tissues for transplantation or other uses. Only certain kinds of cells and tissues, including sperm and embryos, currently can be frozen and successfully rewarmed. A major problem hindering wider use of cyropreservation is formation of ice crystals, which damage cell structures.
   
   Cyropreservation may be most familiar, however, as the controversial idea that humans, stricken with incurable diseases, might be frozen and then revived years or decades later when cures are available....
   
   ...."It may seem fantastic, but the fact that in aqueous solution, [the] water component can be slowly supercooled to the glassy state and warmed back without the crystallization implies that, in principle, if the suitable cyroprotectant is created, cells in plants and living matter could withstand a large supercooling and survive," Bogdan explained. In present cyropreservation, the cells being preserved are often damaged due to freezing of water either on cooling or subsequent warming to room temperature. - link

   
   I remember reading a short story called 'The Homunculus' (sorry, can't remember the author) in which a future world began to crumble as humanity wished for better times.
   
   In order to wait out the uninspired present which enveloped their world humans paid to have themselves frozen inside one of the giant 'Humunculi' now built on the planet's surface. When the brighter future came they would be awoken, to share in the glories of the new world. Thing is, the more people escaped from the dreary present the less chance the future had of ever arriving. The Humunculi became the sarcophagi of the species. Mankind preserved itself out of existence.
   
   Although this allegory appears unlikely it surely says a lot about how we view of present, our futures and, in combination, our potential.
   
   By attempting to stop time are we merely delaying the inevitable decay which all life must suffer?
2. • CommentAuthorwhat?
   • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2006 edited

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   Lovely idea. Can you have a giant homonculs? I remember a wonderful episode in the new Outer Limits series. A soldier is awoken from cryosleep by the hippies that have inherited an idyllic post-apocaliptic world. They need him to operate the planetary defense system to destroy an incoming asteroid. At the last moment he sees the asteroid change course, it's a ship. He is restrained and the ship destroyed. Seems it was full of preserved soldiers ready to take over the world.
   He is explaining his disappointment to his beautiful hippy mentor. The thing that made him sad was that he believed that humanity would never develope interstellar travel. Whereupon his mentor took his head in her hands, shook his mind free from his body and flew with him out through the solar system, towards the stars. Neat.
3. •  
     CommentAuthorDanieru
   • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2006 edited

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   Outer Limits... I loved the 'come back' episode with Beau Bridges evolving Martian Aliens in his stable. Sci-Fi wins all battles hands down for me, not a genre, more a way of thinking.
4. • CommentAuthorwhat?
   • CommentTimeJun 23rd 2006 edited

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   'Boys, grow giant mushrooms in your cellar!'....Ray Bradbury has the best titles. Of course the mushrooms turn out to be the vanguarde of the invasion.
   'The Wonderful World of Griswald Tractors', a novel length plot compressed into a short short story, cant remember who wrote it....