Global warming has the Siberian permafrost melting, and when the ice disappears, strange
things have started to come to the surface.
Now something that’s been asleep and buried in the ice for thousands of years has come
back to life!
What did researchers find, and will this discovery lead to the possibility of humans being frozen
and brought back to life thousands of years later?
Back when wooly mammoths still roamed the planet, there was another creature that just
might be the toughest, tiniest animal that you’ve never heard of.
Say hello to Bdelloid rotifers - It is a microscopic, multicellular creature that has a complex
anatomy, is one of the planet's most radiation resistant animals, can survive starvation,
low oxygen, years of dehydration, and it can live in extremely acidic environments.
So why haven’t you heard about it until now?
It might be because this creature had been previously unknown and frozen in Siberian
permafrost for 24,000 years!
And it’s still alive!
Not only that, but after being thawed, the tiny creature went on about its business eating
and reproducing like nothing ever happened.
So how is this possible?
Well, scientists still don’t understand how this tiny animal is able to shield its
cells and organs from catastrophic conditions like being frozen, and its ability to patch
up broken DNA, but they are trying to figure it out.
But this is not the only time something ancient frozen in the ice has come back to life.
In 2018, Russian scientists’ found two tiny roundworms buried in permafrost in two different
places that were estimated to be between 32,000 and 42,000 years old!
Once the temperature was warm enough, the worms sprang back to life and started moving
around and eating.
If really true, it means these are the two oldest known living creatures on the planet.
Now scientists are busy trying to unlock these micro-animals' secret biological codes so
that we might be able to preserve other animal cells, tissues, and organs on Earth and beyond.
And this is why scientists have sent both rotifers and tardigrades into outer space.
Speaking of tardigrades, this is another micro-animal that is super tough.
In case you’re new to this little creature, they are odd- looking microscopic extremophiles
that are also called ‘water bears’ or ‘moss piglets’.
They can survive zero oxygen, radioactive and cosmic radiation, boiling water, high
pressures, subzero temperatures, and even the vacuum of space for years in cryptobiosis:
a state of extreme inactivity where all metabolic processes stop.
Just how tough are they?
Frozen moss was collected in Antarctica back in 1983, and tardigrades were found in the
moss, removed, and stored at minus 20 degrees celsius.
But in May 2014, Japanese scientists thawed out one of these tardigrades.
Two weeks went by and the animal started to move, eat, and it laid 19 eggs, of which 14
healthy water bears hatched without any problems or defects.
We’re talking about a creature that has been frozen for over 30 years in ice.
Now that’s incredible.
But this isn’t the only time scientists have revived something that’s been frozen
and sleeping for thousands of years in ice.
In 2014, scientists discovered an ancient virus that was taken from a layer of permafrost
30 meters [100-feet] deep, and had been laying dormant for more than 30,000 years.
But the big surprise was when French scientists thawed the virus and it started moving.
And this virus is big enough that you can see it under a microscope unlike other viruses.
Not only that, but it was still infectious!
But hold on, there’s nothing to worry about.
This giant virus can’t hurt humans or other animals, but it did attack and wipe out some
single-celled amoebas.
Of course, just because this ancient virus isn’t deadly, that doesn't mean there isn’t
something still hidden under the frozen tundra that could be unfrozen and infect humans.
And some scientists believe it's only a matter of time until the melting Siberian permafrost
unleashes an ancient deadly virus or plague.
And it’s not just ancient tiny microscopic creatures that can survive extreme cold.
There are other modern day animals that can handle subarctic temperatures, like the wood
frog [Rana sylvatica] that can survive cold weather by freezing up to 70% of its body
including its brain and eyes, and the frog’s heart and breathing completely stops.
But when spring comes around, the animal unfreezes and its body returns to normal.
How does it do this?
Turns out that wood frogs have germinating proteins that drain most of the water out
of their cells, and their liver produces glucose, like a sugary syrup that fills the cells and
acts like an antifreeze.
You see, that is why humans and most other creatures can’t survive the freezing cold.
The expansion of water inside the cells of an animal, as the water freezes, causes the
cells to expand and rupture.
Now, we know that humans can’t survive extreme cold without some serious heavy winter clothing.
But would it be possible in the future to freeze a human being, and then maybe 100 or
even a 1000 years later, reanimate them and bring them back to a normal state?
We’ve all seen the stuff in science fiction movies where a person is cryogenically frozen
for a long ride in space, and at least in science fiction, this cryosleep also stops
the aging process.
But how much of this stuff is really possible?
There are companies that are in the business of freezing your body, or cryogenically preserve
it in the event you perish from some incurable disease.
The idea is to freeze a person's body, and then when medical technology becomes more
advanced, reanimate the person and cure the disease.
Alcor is located in Scottsdale, Arizona and so far they have over 180 people cryogenically
frozen until medical science becomes so advanced that doctors may be able to revive and cure
them.
But there are two more places where you can be frozen with enough cash in hand: The Cryonics
Institute in Michigan, USA, and Russia’s KrioRus where the frozen bodies of at least
50 people are cryogenically frozen.
The oldest of these frozen humans is a 73-year-old psychologist named James Bedford that has
been frozen for over 50 years now.
He is famous for being the first person to have their body legally cryopreserved after
he passed away from kidney cancer in 1967.
In 1991, Alcor decided to rehouse Bedord and check on his condition.
When they cut open his metal capsule, they were surprised to find that his body was still
in good condition.
He was then wrapped in a new sleeping bag, immersed back into liquid nitrogen, and placed
in a new aluminum pod.
Famous baseball player Ted Williams has also been kept frozen in liquid nitrogen in hopes
he’ll be resurrected one day.
But there are skeptics to this process that say once a person is deceased, that is it...it’s
over.
And except for human embryos, no human being has ever been revived from a cryogenically
frozen state.
Now, you might be wondering how these facilities can freeze you and stop the aging process
without your cells completely freezing, rupturing, and causing irreversible damage.
If you hire a company to freeze you, and when the time comes, their cryonicists quickly
drain all of your blood, then perfuse your body with a mixture of antifreeze and organ-preserving
chemicals called cryoprotective agents.
You are then vitrified; where you are placed briefly in a solution that dehydrates your
body, then you are lowered into a below-freezing chamber filled with liquid nitrogen at -200
degrees celsius [-328°F].
This doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.
And if you decide you want to be cryogenically frozen, it will cost you around $200,000 with
Alcor, only $28,000 with the Cryonics Institute, and no one is sure what the Russian KrioRus
charges, but it’s probably prices for the wealthy only.
Some call these places expensive funeral homes, and believe it will never be possible to resurrect
a frozen human being because the brain would be destroyed once frozen.
But advanced medical science might have something to say about that.
In 2017, a young American scientist named Robert McIntyre from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology successfully froze and then revived the mammalian brain of a New Zealand
white rabbit.
When thawed, the rabbit's brain was found to have all its synapses, cell membranes and
intracellular structures intact.
There are also other companies out there who are watching to see what happens next.
Because if it’s possible to successfully freeze a human, and then reanimate them at
will, the uses for space travel will be huge.
One of those corporations is Space Works Enterprises that is working with NASA to build a stasis
chamber that could induce a state of torpor, or metabolic inactivity medically for astronauts
traveling long distances.
The sci-fi technology behind the chamber is based on using Therapeutic Hypothermia where
the body's temperature would be lowered to 32 degrees celsius [89.6°F] and you would
be sedated so you wouldn’t realize you were being frozen to sleep.
This nearly sends your metabolic rate into suspended animation, and that sounds dangerous,
but it actually counteracts potential injury to bodily tissues that could result from hypoxia.
This chamber will also prevent the harmful effects of microgravity exposure, keep killer
space radiation out, and astronauts would get nourishment intravenously.
This would allow the ship to take on less supplies.
It would also have positive effects on mental stability; astronauts on a 6-7 month journey
in a small enclosed ship on its way to Mars might get on each other's nerves real fast.
But there are a lot of things that will need to advance in medical science before we get
to the stage of waking up cryogenically frozen humans, and using the tech for space travel,
including nanotechnology that would be needed to repair tissues at the molecular level.
And even the biggest skeptics say that the chances of resurrecting a cryogenically frozen
human is low, but it is not impossible.
It would seem that cryosleep might actually become a reality.
If man is able to overcome this challenge, it would not only allow for long space travel,
but also a step in saving and preserving life and intelligence as we know it.