frozen xenonauts

From: Spike Jones (spike66@attglobal.net)
Date: Sat Jul 07 2001 - 00:37:32 MDT


> > Eugene Leitl wrote:
> >
> > > Uh. XeF6 is reactive as hell (it hydrolyzes to XeO3 in presence of water).
> >
> > Spike Jones wrote: XeF6 hydrolyzes to XeO3?
>
> "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" ... just assumed that XeF6 plus water equalled
> XeO3 plus some hydrofluoric acid or whatever. A quick look at Google
> confirms:
>
> XeF6 + 3 H20 = XeO3 + 6HF

Dooooh! OK, google is god.

Nowthen, hows about thinking this over: if a body were to be
frozen verrrry slowly it would need to hover at 0 degrees for a long
time, a temperature at which there is still a lot of cell degeneration.
But what if the corpse is at enormous pressure, reducing the
temperature at which freezing takes place? Would that help
slow the degeneration? Could we use the old rule of thumb
of half the reaction rate for each 10 degrees?

Someone said something about the body may not be able to
withstand enormous pressures. Perhaps bones would break, etc.
Recall that the volume of a bone does not actually decrease when
broken, so I wouldnt think the bone would care what pressure
the body was seeing. Same with the heart.

If we used the notion of a corpse or perhaps very nearly dead
person immersed in a gas and slowly frozen, then xenon would
not be the right stuff, since its critical temperature is way up at
16 degrees. We want something neutral like argon, with a low
critical temperature, so that it remains a gas during the phase
transition of the body from liquid to solid.

Question: is there any reason to think that there would be
advantages to freezing over a period of up to several days? Would
there be any advantage if the freezing could take place at say
-40 instead of 0? Could we arrange an artificial heart to keep
pumping blood slowly and force the lungs to continue breathing
for a few days after they stopped in order to bring blood gas
concentrations to some desired value? spike



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