The latest Make Podcast has a PDF download that provides some helpful instructions for freezing snails and reviving them back. The snails, I have been informed, take a rather cold view of my characterization about the instructions being 'helpful'. The PDF also has some fascinating history about a scientist called Basile Luyet who did some wild things with freezing (living) things up 50 years ago.
"I've been told that Luyet would toss two goldfish into some liquid nitrogen," Fahy says. "He would quickly withdraw Goldfish A, which would seem stiff and frozen -- but it would resume wriggling after it was placed in warm water." Luyet would then startle onlookers by removing Goldfish B and snapping it in half. This may not have been a completely fair demonstration, since Goldfish B was exposed to liquid nitrogen a little longer than Goldfish A. It's not clear whether Luyet realized that, to some extent, he had rigged his experiment, but at the very least it remains a unique ... icebreaker?
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Hmmm... interesting. But apart from the possiblity of 'bringing people back to life', what other prospects does Cryonics as a field hold?
(Seriously, with over six billion of us around, and steadily growing, I doubt that's a very wise goal to pursue. But then, I suppose that can be argued for nearly anything that is life-saving, so nearly the entire field of medical science would have to be chucked, if that were a deterring factor.)
We could put cryonics to some good use in India - like instantly freezing anyone trying to feed milk to idols.
Cryonics research (the one where they freeze people) is being pushed by the rich who want a piece of posterity. The common man, woman and snails do not have much stake in it. Except, I suppose, when we try the above experiment. There was a fascinating article in WSJ on this which talks about companies that provide cryo preservation services. It's all baloney, IMHO, but fascinating nevertheless.