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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: 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.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(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.