Cryogenics

[remesses]

Is this whole freeze your head after death thing viable? Will they be able to bring you back? does it really preserve you or is it all just sci-fi?
and has anyone famous done this yet?

[Loosehead]

Well I'm no expert but when cells are fozen I think the ice crystals destroy the cells so surely this cannot work. Try freezing a strawberry when it's thawed it's just mush.

As I said I don't really know so please correct me if I'm wrong.

[fo3nix]

You can freeze cells and keep the cell walls intact. You need to freeze the thing very fast. This is what Mr Birdseye did, and hence the mass of frozen foods.

remesses: I think it's a slight mixture of both. I'm sure it's theoretically possible, but whether or not it would actually work well is yet to be seen.

[ugly_bob]

certainly, it is not possible yet. In the future, if it does become viable, you may find that the freezing process used now is not correct.
I wouldn't bank on freezing yourself when you die, hoping to be reborn in the future. In fact, if we manage to develop Cryogenic technology, why not just use cloning?

[mycats]

I think the problems come when you get to the defrosting stage, rather than the freezing stage. The cells walls are basically mush when you defrost them, nice.

[saxy_jag]

Just think if it became possible, though. How would you cope with, effectively, going to sleep and then waking up several hundred or thousand years later, when everything's changed beyond recognition and the world is even more over populated than it is now?

[LazyGun]

Just to say that you can get cryo protectants for biological matter.... as an example, it is possible to freeze blood for long term storage, and then rethaw in field conditions for emergency transfusions by using a cryoprotectant... not sure how well that would work with for example a head though :)

[shaun_04]

One famous person that I know of has done it; Walt Disney.

[WaldoMcFroog]

It's not true about Walt Disney, I'm afraid:

http://www.snopes.com/disney/info/wd-ice.htm