Re: starship-design: Suspended animation.

[Zenon Kulpa <zkulpa@zmit1.ippt.gov.pl>]

> From owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Fri Jan  7 22:33:57 2000
> From: KellySt@aol.com
> 
> In a message dated 1/7/00 9:09:03 AM, zkulpa@zmit1.ippt.gov.pl writes:
> 
> >> From owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Fri Jan  7 01:18:59 2000
> >> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 00:20:50 +0000
> >> 
> >> Some cold water fish  have a natural anti-frezze so it you develop that
> >> for humans and keep the body at say 10 F, you may slow down 
> >> the chemical aging of the cells.
> >> 
> >Some frogs do exactly that. They freeze in the ice,
> >and thaw back without damage.
> 
> Pretty rare in mammals thou. best I've heard was ground squirls that could
> survive their body droping to below room temp.
>   
Yes, with mammals it may prove much harder, as their cell metabolism
is optimized to work at certain fixed temperature
(or rather narrow range of temperatures).
Going outside the range limits, even for a while 
(during freezing/thawing process) is therefore bound to
make much serious damage (simple by "desynchronizing"
various parallel biochemical processes) than in cold-blood animals.

-- Zenon Kulpa