Some bitcoin enthusiasts have used their cryptocurrency to travel around the world. Others have spent it on a trip to space. But the very earliest user of bitcoin (after its inventor Satoshi Nakamoto himself) has now spent his crypto coins on the most ambitious mission yet: to visit the future.
Hal Finney, the renowned cryptographer, coder, and bitcoin pioneer, died Thursday morning at the age of 58 after five years battling ALS. He will be remembered for a remarkable career that included working as the number-two developer on the groundbreaking encryption software PGP in the early 1990s, creating one of the first “remailers” that presaged the anonymity software Tor, and—more than a decade later—becoming one of the first programmers to work on bitcoin’s open source code; in 2008, he received the very first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto.
Now Finney has become an early adopter of a far more science fictional technology: human cryopreservation, the process of freezing human bodies so that they can be revived decades or even centuries later.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Friday August 29 2014, @05:53PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Friday August 29 2014, @06:03PM
You are right. Asfaik what happens unless someone has done some breakthrough is that the water in the body will form ice crystals and cut your body into pieces on a molecular/cellular level. So unless comes up with a way to mix that water with a super antifreeze that isn't poisonous or simple replace ALL water. Any attempt to freeze mammals (humans) will end up bad. That is unless someone makes smart enough nanobots that can repair enough cells in the body.
An alternative is if someone comes up with a way to more or less instantly freeze the whole body in one go.
For anyone with cryo desires. Put one tomato in the fridge and the other in the freezer. Wait 24 hours. Then let them heat up. Touch them and question if you really want to do this to your body? oh and pay for the pleasure.
Preservation can likely be made. BUT we don't have the technology just yet.
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Friday August 29 2014, @06:07PM
We routinely freeze and unfreeze unicellular living things.
Therefore, all you need is a good scalpel now, and a big LEGO-like reassembly manual post-defrost.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Friday August 29 2014, @07:05PM
That should be simple. We just need to number them!
Do be sure to get someone who can count higher than 3, though. That would be... problematic.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:06AM
One cell, perhaps even a few cells may work. But not complex mammals :P
(Score: 4, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Friday August 29 2014, @08:24PM
modern surgical techniques are attempting to harness cooling of the patient to prevent damage due to lack of oxygen.
The trick it seems is to cool fast enough. People falling in lakes have been recorded as surviving several hours, when they should have been dead.
The attempt to use cooled saline has been attempted I believe in animal experiments. There are trauma centres and military theatres that will no doubt get permission to try this on gunshot victims, when chance of survival is already close to zero.
My biological sense is that stopping metabolism first, is key so that the metabolic components are not damaged. So if we get to get to about 4C....
Going lower than that will require something to protect the cells from ice crystals. For microbes we use glycerol, but they are much smaller than human cells.
Mammalian physiology is complex, so the question becomes "how much damage can you cause in freezing and still revive the patient".
My sense is most of the body can repair itself, but nerves need to be kept intact (including the brain, of course!).
Getting some cryo-protective compound to every cell in the body is a real problem. But if you are already cold (4C), it might be possible to take a long time and let diffusion take over.
Finally, it might simply be better to get the genes from the frogs that have evolved this trait, and splice them in!!!
If this was ever shown to be successful (say 1 year and a day in the fridge ), I think that would be newsworthy.
This in itself, is a very strange thought...
(Score: 3) by nightsky30 on Friday August 29 2014, @09:05PM
It doesn't sound like he was cooled quickly, because he was transported, then cooled slowly after having his fluids drained.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:40AM
Perhaps one can just synthesize the frog enzymes?
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday September 17 2014, @04:09AM
I'm sure I heard somewhere they had sussed out that 'snap freezing' the body didn't form the usual ice crystals, however I can imagine them building up slowly like in frozen mixed veges.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday September 18 2014, @11:07AM
The body is too big to freeze fast enough.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday September 18 2014, @10:39PM
good point, guess it's time to break out the chainsaw. }:)
(Score: 2) by emg on Friday August 29 2014, @06:04PM
Well, no, otherwise everyone would be doing it. As one of my cryonicist friends used to say, being frozen is the second worst thing that could happen to you... at least there's a chance of coming back, vs no chance if you're buried or burned.
Dang, I remember Hal Finney's remailer from the 90s. I had no idea he'd died.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by nightsky30 on Friday August 29 2014, @06:05PM
Water tends to expand when frozen, and thus cause damage to the surrounding cellular membranes from what I understand. Though there is life out there which has been revived after many millennium:
http://www.livescience.com/174-creatures-frozen-32-000-years-alive.html [livescience.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday August 29 2014, @06:23PM
I take it nobody read the Wired article? "... Finney’s blood and other fluids were being removed from his body and slowly replaced with a collection of chemicals that Alcor calls M-22, which the company says are designed to be as minimally toxic as possible to his tissues while preventing the formation of ice crystals that would result from freezing and destroy his cell membranes." Not that I think he isn't dead or could be reanimated. Reading the story can help to clarify issues...
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday August 29 2014, @06:35PM
Multicellular organisms are powered by a a mind-bogglingly complex set of chemical reactions, which can be terminally disturbed by micrograms of the wrong substance.
The idea that someone is now replacing those precious bodily fluids with something else, hoping that someone will take the time, energy and resources to bother to figure out how to reverse that process later, is ... optimistic.
There will be Frankenstein experimenters for sure, but I'd rather not be the one who has to be revived with the consequences of having so much of my body's information replaced by a guess, even a well-educated one.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by emg on Friday August 29 2014, @07:03PM
The cryonicists I knew thought it was more likely that someone would scan and upload their brain into a computer than actually restore their body. But, given a few centuries of technological progress, neither seems too improbable.
Of course, IMHO, the most likely reason someone would invest the time to reanimate you is because they think you'd make a neat pet.
(Score: 2) by nightsky30 on Friday August 29 2014, @09:01PM
I'm not going to be anyone's pet, basilisk or otherwise.
(Score: 3) by SlimmPickens on Friday August 29 2014, @09:25PM
Asfaik what happens unless someone has done some breakthrough is that the water in the body will form ice crystals and cut your body into pieces on a molecular/cellular level.
They use a variety of cryoprotectants [wikipedia.org] however they have their own complications, even though there's a variety of frogs and snakes that can do it naturally. The main thing is to keep intact the proteins and enzymes that contain the 'settings' for each neuron, and obviously the locations of the synaptic terminals. As long a those are intact it should at least be possible to "scan in". I doubt that even those bursting problems are insurmountable though.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:11AM
Have those cryoprotectants been prooven to work?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by deimtee on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:35AM
Depends on how you define work. They do prevent ice crystal formation when present.
The real problem isn't ice crystals within cells causing them to burst. That is a myth. (Even if crystals did form in the cells the walls are flexible and could handle a less 10% volume change.)
What actually happens is ice forms between cells. As the crystals form the remaining intercellular fluid concentrates and osmosis sucks more water out of the cells, dehydrating them.
This growth of ice crystals can still disrupt and puncture cells from outside of course, but the difference is that you don't have to get the cryoprotectant into the cells, just to the fluid between them.
I don't think anybody credible expects those already frozen to be brought back this side of working molecular nanotech, (a la Drexler).
Whether you think cryonics can work basically comes down to whether you think nanotech can work.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:46AM
If one can solve the issue of an anti-freeze that humans can safely drink. One can probably make use of cryo-preservation. If frogs etc can do and some arctic fish. That's a hint that there might be a molecular path to the solution.
For those already frozen, nanotech is likely the only viable path.
(Score: 2) by nyder on Friday August 29 2014, @06:12PM
Dude died, and will be dead in the future if they thaw him. I'm guessing that most the peeps that are frozen will eventually get dumped because corporations don't care.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:32AM
They might be used for medical experiments. Consider that the technology to re-animate them hasn't been developed yet so it's kind of unavoidable.
Makes you think about the Alien: Resurrection [wikipedia.org] movie..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday August 29 2014, @08:10PM
I remember a report some time ago about the early cryo-- nasty business. The ran out of tubes, and ended up placing several "clients" in a single chamber, and then got too broke to pay the power bill. Nobody's coming back from that.
Besides, as Ted Williams, Walt Disney and Futurama know, you only need to preserve the head.
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Saturday August 30 2014, @01:24AM
You are probably referring to the chatsworth incident. It wasn't a scam, just an overly optimistic view of the future.
The guy had the best of intentions, but to minimize up-front payments he set it up so that the families of the patients had to pay the ongoing costs.
He didn't get anywhere near the number of patients he expected, and after a while most families stopped paying, and the system collapsed.
That is why all cryonics organisations now require payment in advance, not only for the suspension process, but also sufficient funds that are placed in an investment trust to maintain them indefinitely.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 30 2014, @09:33AM
Yes, that was it! But I don't see this as any kind of mistake, or accident, or excessive optimism. If you take people's money on the premise that you freeze them, and then, in the future, they are reanimated by some technology that does not yet exist, you are committing fraud, and the sort of fraud that has only been exceeded by the Catholic Churches program of Indulgences! (For those who need a review, pay us now, we put in a good word with the man upstairs, and you get to go to heaven! No customers ever asked for their money back!) Remember Benny the Dog? In another life, when we are both cats? Except I really think that anyone who has themselves frozen, their soul has already been collected by the basement cat, for the sin of wanting to live forever. And of thinking you could use bitcoin to do it. One is born every minute, so I guess that means one dies every minute, too? Scam. Whole thing makes me lose my faith in humanity. I think I will just go and freeze myself now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cosurgi on Friday August 29 2014, @09:48PM
That reminds me of a novel by Stanisław Lem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel) [wikipedia.org]
a really good read, and I recommend it. Though the cryonically freezing and thawing a body is only a start of this great story.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Saturday August 30 2014, @01:44AM
Did I miss it?
Welcoooome, to the worrrrrld of tomorooooooow!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday August 30 2014, @02:33AM
I do not understand what motive would there be in the future to thaw and reanimate tens or hundreds of thousands of frozen dead bodies (all with severe trauma) ? Humankind has a few shortages, yes, but shortage of people is not one of them. Reanimation of just one body that was frozen a century ago, using who knows what technology that was poorly documented even then, will cost many millions of today's dollars, and the chance of success will be what, 1% or 10%? No nanobot from the future will reassemble broken, dead and decomposed cells into live ones. But even if the doctors are successful, what does the society get in return? An old, deathly ill patient, most likely with damaged brain, with memories that are of no use today, with no useful skills, with no prospects, and probably not even speaking the modern language. Outside of some unlikely cases of inheritance, what would be the reason to reanimate that person if the body is currently comfortably dead?
This was well analyzed in some stories of Larry Niven [wikipedia.org], including the financial and legal side of the affair. Living people have far more political weight than dead ones, so you can be sure that policies on thawing will be developed by the living, and for the living.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Saturday August 30 2014, @03:38AM
Guess there will be a preference for those that know stuff that people find useful. Like you can ask the question on matters that didn't get written down. And then it's the people that are exceptionally intelligent. But perhaps someone has nostalgia too.
But in essence unless people are exceptionally intelligent it's not likely worth to bother.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tftp on Saturday August 30 2014, @04:16AM
Guess there will be a preference for those that know stuff that people find useful. Like you can ask the question on matters that didn't get written down.
In science pretty much everything is written down. Perhaps the research from a week before the unfortunate flattening by the bus won't be written down; but chances are that someone, more like the researcher's coworker, will continue on this, and the question will be answered a hundred years ago. And besides, what value to science the knowledge of a modern physicist would be a hundred years later? He'd wake up and shout "I know, I know, the Higgs bozon is real!" - will that surprise anyone, as they move him from one room to another on an antigravity stretcher?
One could say (just as you did) that some "people are exceptionally intelligent" and should be revived so that they can continue their service to humankind. But in many sciences 100 years is infinity. Those people, if revived as perfectly healthy humans, still would need to learn everything that was done by generations of scientists while they were cooling their heels in liquid hydrogen. Even a very smart man cannot be very useful without learning all the facts, theories and technologies that were developed during this time. It may take all the rest of their lifetime.
Of course, it's probably possible to find a few people who would be worth reviving - like musicians or artists, for example. But certainly not a bank manager, and not a farmer, and not an engineer. They may want to see the future, but the future has no interest in seeing them. The absolute best they can hope for is being loaded, right in their storage container, onto a generation ship and being fired into depths of space, toward some star. The computer will wake them up - or will try, at least - if the star has a habitable planet. If not, no lives will be lost.
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Thursday September 04 2014, @06:03PM
One could say (just as you did) that some "people are exceptionally intelligent" and should be revived so that they can continue their service to humankind.
This is the big lie of the cryopreservation people. To do the sort of thing you're hinting at we will have to revive people *and* make the younger *and* cure them of what killed them. Not going to happen.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday August 30 2014, @12:38PM
He'll be thawed in a thousand years to find systemd running the entire universe.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday September 01 2014, @05:33AM
No, that's way too optimistic. A computer running systemd would never stay up that long without either crashing, having an update cause it to forget what some vital piece of hardware is for, rebooting unexpectedly, suspending itself, or some combination of the above.
(Score: 1, Troll) by zafiro17 on Saturday August 30 2014, @02:09PM
Great - can't wait to have his frozen stiff hanging around some future tech conference/talk. I think this cryogenic stuff is a bunch of hooey.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey