Decius wrote:

This article isn't too clear, but I seriously doubt they successfully reanimated a truly frozen hampster. If the water inside the hampster freezes, it breaks the cell membranes, creating hampster mush. A simple example involves placing fresh strawberries in a zip lock bag and then freezing them. Take the frozen berries out, allow them to thaw a bit, and you've got an awesome spread for toast.

Cryonicists have fluids that they have successfully injected into people that enable them to freeze those people without destroying their cells. Their hope is that through some as yet uninvented technology those people's memories can be restored, either into a machine, or a vat grown body, or maybe the original body could be restored around them with nanotechnology. Its a long shot, but death is certain. In my view, any option which is less certain than death may be worth a shot. However, I have yet to bite the bullet and buy the requisite life insurance policies. Its not cheap. Most of my friends think I'm crazy for contemplating this.

Toward the end of the article it says:

By the time Lovelock left Mill Hill in the early 1960s the freezing and successful reanimation of hamsters using microwave diathermy was almost routine. But there were limitations to the technique. For a start, the temperatures involved never went further than a few degrees below the freezing point of water and only for an hour or so at a time; although in some cases more than 80% of the water in the skin and 60% of the water in the brain had changed to ice, the animals were never 100% frozen.

You'll have to make a trek out to the pet store and show your friends how foolish they were for laughing at you. They don't have to know they're not "truely" frozen. It would be a great party trick.

RE: Damn Interesting » Reanimated Rodents and The Meaning of Life