What is Titan good for?

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-05 21:40:54

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics

Cryonics (from Greek κρύος 'kryos-' meaning 'icy cold') is the low-temperature preservation of humans who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future.[1][2]
Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology. The stated rationale for cryonics is that people who are considered dead by current legal or medical definitions may not necessarily be dead according to the more stringent information-theoretic definition of death.[3] It is proposed that cryopreserved people might someday be recovered by using highly advanced technology.[4]
Some scientific literature supports the feasibility of cryonics.[4][5] An Open Letter supporting the idea of cryonics has been signed by 63 scientists, including Aubrey de Grey and Marvin Minsky.[6] However, many other scientists regard cryonics with skepticism.[7] As of 2013, approximately 270 people have undergone cryopreservation procedures since cryonics was first proposed in 1962.[8][9] In the United States, cryonics can only be legally performed on humans after they have been pronounced legally dead, as otherwise it would be considered murder or assisted suicide.[10]
Cryonics procedures ideally begin within minutes of cardiac arrest, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation.[11] However, the idea of cryonics also includes preservation of people long after legal death because of the possibility that brain structures that encode memory and personality may still persist and be inferable in the future. Whether sufficient brain information still exists for cryonics to successfully preserve may be intrinsically unprovable by present knowledge.[12] Therefore, most proponents of cryonics see it as an intervention with prospects for success that vary widely depending on circumstances.

So is Titan cold enough to store cryonics patients indefinitely? If dead people are stored there, you don't have to worry about the freezer breaking down. So what would happen if someone died, his body went through a cryonics procedure and then was shipped to Titan and his body was laid out exposed on the surface. Would that be a problem for later retrieval? I think Titan is way colder than the freezing point of water, I don't think there is any danger of anyone thawing here. I think a dead body essentially becomes a "rock" on Titan's surface, it is subject to the exposure to the elements as any rock would be, it might get rained on, it could possible be washed down a stream and end up at the bottom of a hydrocarbon lake. What do you think would happen?

GW Johnson · 2014-09-06 14:49:42

Parts of Antarctica are cold enough for this, and would be one hell of a lot easier to reach than Titan.

Parts of the Arctic used to be cold enough for this, but no more. Would have been even easier to reach. Don't count on Greenland's ice cap anymore. It'll work right now, but no one can say for how much longer.

GW

Terraformer · 2014-09-07 14:19:02

Cryonics, er, "patients" are usually stored in liquid nitrogen. Titan is too warm. Why not set up a tomb world somewhere further out, where nitrogen freezes out?

Keep Titan for the living.

Void · 2014-09-07 21:55:41

How about caves under the Moons surface at the poles?

I have also thought about a variation on suspended animation for star travel.

A freeze dried body would be dead, but it would also be a potential scaffold to release stem cells into. Likely nanobots would be helpful. Don't know where you store the mind though. (Or the stem cells). Of course I am talking about traveling between stars. But except for the stem cells you would not need life support. Way beyond us though. So is reviving frozen people as well.

Why not a frozen body? It's heavier. But then when you get to the star then you have to obtain water to rehydrate your corpsicle.

Last edited by Void (2014-09-07 22:01:28)

RobertDyck · 2014-09-07 23:57:08

You realize anyone frozen with cryonics is dead. Permanently dead. As in cannot be revived. The freezing process grows ice crystals in the fluids of the body. Those ice crystals slice through cell walls like a knife. That can't be repaired.

I saw a documentary about efforts in this field. The researcher showed a squirel frozen in liquid nitrogen. To show how frozen, he tapped the squirrel with a metal spoon; it was solid. He used a Richardson Ground Squirrel; people in Canada's Praries call them "gophers". The researcher then thawed the squirrel. It revived, came back to life. Initially it shivvered severaly, gaining body heat. Then it moved around a little. The squirrel suffered massive internal bleeding; it lived just 20 minutes after being revived. A ground squirrel was used because it naturally hibernates. And yet, it couldn't survive being frozen.

If you tried to revive a person frozen in liquid nitrogen, the person would probably never regain conciousness. Humans don't naturally hibernate, so don't have the ability to recover. Medical intervention to recover from hypothermia would take longer than death due to internal bleeding.

Technology has taught us several lessons. One lesson is that new technology is often incomplatible with previous preparation due to assumptions. Research has been able to put mammals into hybernation: mice, rats, rabbits. Even deer, elk, and moose; although techniques for these larger animals results in damage when revived. But that is hybernation, not frozen solid.

Mark Friedenbach · 2014-09-08 00:54:56

They are vitrified, not frozen: ice crystals do not form. You cannot repair the damage done by vitrification with today's technology. But no one is suggesting that be done. The idea is to repair the damage (and fix whatever 'killed' you too) with future technology. And no, there is no physical law preventing that from being possible.

Besides if cryonics is an experiment, being vitrified is better than being in the control group.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-08 07:41:18

Terraformer wrote:

Cryonics, er, "patients" are usually stored in liquid nitrogen. Titan is too warm. Why not set up a tomb world somewhere further out, where nitrogen freezes out?
Keep Titan for the living.

I think the liquid nitrogen simply guarantees that the bodies stay frozen, you see, so long as they are stored in liquid nitrogen, they stay at liquid nitrogen temperatures, but human bodies don't need to be that cold, Titan cold is cold enough, as anything made of water there doesn't thaw, with the possible exception of water volcanoes spewing out liquid water, I bet the water freezes pretty quickly in Titan's atmosphere though.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-08 07:49:28

Mark Friedenbach wrote:

They are vitrified, not frozen: ice crystals do not form. You cannot repair the damage done by vitrification with today's technology. But no one is suggesting that be done. The idea is to repair the damage (and fix whatever 'killed' you too) with future technology. And no, there is no physical law preventing that from being possible.
Besides if cryonics is an experiment, being vitrified is better than being in the control group.

What is important is the preservation of information, it is the positioning and connections of the cells to each other that determine identity. I think a body could be grown with human cloning or stem cells. If damage is occurred on cells due to freezing or vitrification, we still know the positioning of those cells in life, it we take other cells, stem cells and let them differentiate into various tissues and position them the same as those dead cells in the frozen body, we would be recreating that person with all his memories. I think nanotechnology could perhaps even repair those original cells, but memories and who we are is determined by the positioning and connections of those cells in our brain. So storing bodies on Titan is a way of storing that information and not having to worry about maintaining the freezers.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-09-08 07:49:47)

RobertDyck · 2014-09-08 08:29:53

Mark Friedenbach wrote:

They are vitrified, not frozen: ice crystals do not form. You cannot repair the damage done by vitrification with today's technology. But no one is suggesting that be done. The idea is to repair the damage (and fix whatever 'killed' you too) with future technology. And no, there is no physical law preventing that from being possible.
Besides if cryonics is an experiment, being vitrified is better than being in the control group.

You contract yourself. First you say they are "not frozen". Then you say they are frozen. If bodies are not frozen solid, they will rot.

I used to work for the Fresh Water Fish Marketing Corporation. Although that's their name, they were more than just marketing. That company processed fresh caught commercial fish, and processed them to produce packages suitable for grocery stores. The freezer had two sections, and outer freezer was cold, below zero. The inner freezer was -40°. There was a chart on the wall showed fish storage times at various temperatures: 0°, -10°C, -20°C, -30°C, -40°C, -50°C, -60°C. I don't remember all the numbers, but this website shows storage times down to -30°C.

The same principle applies to humans. They use liquid nitrogen because that temperature is required if you want to store humans without rot for decades. But freezing causes ice crystals.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-09-08 09:24:09

Liquid Nitrogen has a boiling point of −321 °F and it has a freezing point of −346 °F.
Titan has an average surface temperature of −290 °F
When you think about it, Titan has an average temperature that is only 31 degrees Fahrenheit greater than the boiling point of nitrogen, that is not much. The temperature of liquid nitrogen certainly is sufficient to keep things from rotting, but I believe the temperature of Titan, although warmer than boiling liquid nitrogen, is also low enough to keep things from rotting. The fact that Nitrogen boils at -321 °F means than anything immersed in that boiling liquid nitrogen can't really get above -321 °F until that liquid nitrogen boils away, this acts as a temperature regulator. I don't really think that the temperature of liquid nitrogen is really necessary, I just think it is just a convenient regulator to keep the temperature low. I think Titan will keep a human body from rotting at its natural temperature, and it has a thick atmosphere to prevent cosmic ray damage to bodies stored on its surface. I think the atmosphere of Titan would play the same role that liquid nitrogen does, it keeps things way below freezing, and as we know what causes rot is bacteria. So Robert, do you know of any Earth bacteria that could withstand the conditions on Titan so it could rot your flesh? I know of none! I think perhaps chemical reactions might happen to your body if I rains liquid ethane and methane on it, I don't know much about chemistry at these temperatures to tell.

Liquid nitrogen boils at 77 °K, as you can see by the chart above, certain regions of Titan's atmosphere reaches liquid nitrogen temperatures, and you have clouds of liquid nitrogen droplets.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-09-08 09:32:48)

Antius · 2014-10-05 04:52:09

I personally think that the best long term use for Titan is a source of nitrogen for other terraforming efforts.

The triple point of N2 is 63K and 12.5KPa. That's close to Titan surface conditions, indicating that little work would be needed to liquify the nitrogen. I did a few simple calcs using the universal law of gravitation. The L1 point for the Saturn-Titan system is 286,000km above the Titan surface.

Why not simply lower a carbon fibre tube down to the surface of Titan, and pump liquid Nitrogen through the tube to a satellite at the L1 point? The nitrogen could then be frozen into blocks and delivered to Mars, the Moon, Callisto, etc, using ion engines.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-10-23 06:31:05

I think Titan can be converted into city planet. A city radiates its own light and heat, and the power generated through fusion, could probably be used to refrigerate the surface so it stays a solid foundation on which to build on. The atmosphere could be warmed up and oxygenated, as we know refrigerators operate through the expansion and compression of gasses, the gases expand upon contact with the ground, absorbing heat, and then are compressed radiating heat into the air, and thereby keeping it warm, fusion reactors would probably be the main source of energy on Titan.

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#1 2014-09-05 21:40:54

What is Titan good for?

#2 2014-09-06 14:49:42

Re: What is Titan good for?

#3 2014-09-07 14:19:02

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#4 2014-09-07 21:55:41

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#5 2014-09-07 23:57:08

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#6 2014-09-08 00:54:56

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#7 2014-09-08 07:41:18

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#8 2014-09-08 07:49:28

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#9 2014-09-08 08:29:53

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#10 2014-09-08 09:24:09

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