On 12/18/2014 10:57 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Water expands when it freezes;
Yes.
> Until a method of preserving the exquisite micro (and possibly also
nano-scale)
structures of the brain are developed freezing an organ destroys it.
Freezing will certainly destroy the functionality of my brain no doubt about it, but
there is a far more important question, will it scramble the information on how the
atoms in my brain were arranged before it was frozen so profoundly that even advanced
nanotechnology can't recover it? Even functionality has been preserved in the case of
human embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen and they contain millions of cells; granted that
still vastly smaller than a human brain but still it gives some reason for optimism.
> Certain species can freeze and thaw back out and be fine, but they have
evolved
blood containing anti-freeze in it
And Alcor will infuse my brain with a cocktail of anti-freeze agents, the same sort of
agents that are used to protect human embryos from minus 320 degree temperatures, except
that Alcor will use much higher concentrations so my brain will not freeze but will
undergo a glass transition process and vitrify.
> (which is highly toxic to humans by the way).
Yes when anti-freeze agents are used in high concentrations (as Alcor does) they are
highly toxic largely because they denature proteins, that is to say they change the way
the sequence of amino acids fold up to form the protein, and the shape a protein folds
up into determines how it functions. However the sequence of amino acids does not change
so although the protein no longer works the information on what the shape the protein
was in before it was denatured was not destroyed.
> I do not see how the trillions of ruptured cells (from the micro-shards of ice)
With cryoprotectants that shards of ice business isn't much a problem but severe
dehydration of cells is real and would totally destroy functionality, but as I said
resorting functionality to that frozen block of protoplasm isn't my concern, preserving
the information in it is.
> constituting the resulting thawed mush of what once had been a
functioning system
with trillions of parts can be put back together.
First of all I'm not interested in what happens during thawing, I'm only interested in
what happens during freezing because I'm only interested in preserving information. The
key question is will my brain enter a turbulent state when it is frozen or will the flow
be laminar. If it's turbulent then small changes in initial conditions will result in
large changes in outcome and I'm dead meat, even nanotechnology couldn't put Humpty
Dumpty back together again; but if it's laminar figuring out what things were like
before they were frozen would be pretty straightforward.
Fluid flow stops being smoothly Laminar and starts to become chaotically turbulent when
a system has a Reynolds number between 2300 and 4000, although you might get some non
chaotic vortices if it is bigger than 30. We can find the approximate Reynolds number by
using the formula LDV/N. L is the characteristic size we're interested in, we're
interested in cells so L is about 10^-6 meter. D is the density of water, 10^3
kilograms/cubic meter. V is the velocity of the flow, during freezing it's probably
less than 10^-3 meters per second but let's be conservative, I'll give you 3 orders of
magnitude and call V 1 meter per second. N is the viscosity of water, at room
temperature N is 0.001 newton-second/meter^2, it would be less than that when things get
cold and even less when water is mixed with glycerol as it is in cryonics but let's be
conservative again and ignore those factors. If you plug these numbers into the formula
you get a Reynolds number of about 1. 1 is a lot less than 2300 so it looks like any
mixing caused by freezing would probably be laminar not turbulent, so you can still
deduce the position where things are supposed to be.
Actually to my mind the most serious obstacles to the success of my program are not
scientific at all, they are these:
1) Will my brain really be frozen soon after my death?
And what shape will it be in? Any alzheimers in your family? Is there an escape clause
in your contract if you die by head trauma, brain tumor,....?
2) Will my brain remain frozen until the age of nanotechnology?
3) When it becomes possible to retrieve the information in my frozen brain will anybody
think I'm worth the trouble to actually do it?
And what will they do with it if they can recover it? Will they spend billions to provide
you an android body? Give you your own TV show like Max Headroom?
Brent
"The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth
of spiritualism is to furnish an additional argument against
suicide. Better to live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made
to talk twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a seance!"
--- Thomas H. Huxley
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