One cold one, comin' up!

Turns out this whole cryogenic freezing (or more correctly, 'cryopreservation') thing is well under way, and much farther along than I would have imagined. Some scientists in the aptly-named 'Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research' froze dogs and then revived them three hours later. They did this by draining their blood and switching it with a really cold salt solution. This makes them clinically dead (no heartbeat, no brain activity) but three hours later their blood was replaced and they were given an electric shock, which revived them. The full story here.

The short-term purpose of this experiment is not to freeze dudes for years while they travel heroically to distant stars and blah blah blah... It has been proven countless times that being frozen, or nearly frozen, helps a lot when you have to receive complicated surgery or survive a really nasty wound while in a battlefield. By being able to safely replace the blood and put the body in a state of suspended animation, doctors can repair all the broken veins and whatnot without their patient dying on them by bleeding to death.

Good stuff, if you ask me...