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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: 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?