What is the difference between cryonics and cryonics?

Warts can be removed with liquid nitrogen.

Cryonics is the scientific study or production of extremely low temperatures (below -150°C, -238°F or 123K), while cryonics is the preservation of humans at low temperatures quickly after the heart has stopped working in anticipation of future survival.

The science of low temperatures is very important to several domains of technology: During World War II, metals cooled to extremely low temperatures were found to be more durable in the field, a process called cryogenic hardening. Liquid nitrogen was then, as it is now, the most widely used cryogenic agent, as it has a temperature below -320 °F (-196 °C, 77 K). When even lower temperatures are needed, liquid helium, with a temperature below 3 K, is used.

Liquid nitrogen is a commonly used cryogenic agent.

Cryonics has many practical applications: in the preservation of food products or biological samples, blocking the flow of water in pipes so that work can be done on them, in areas where the tap is inaccessible, a coolant for extremely sensitive sensors or computers with overclocking, quenching to machine certain alloys, and cryotherapy such as wart removal. Cryonics is also an application of cryonics, but they are certainly not the same thing.

Objects are studied at much lower temperatures in cryonics.

Cryonics is popular in the futurist community as a preservation method for possible future rebirth. In common wisdom, it used to be when the heart stopped, a person was defined as dead. But modern medicine allows rebirth for those with a stopped heart, so the definition of death has generally been redefined as the cessation of brain activity. Proponents of cryonics go one step further and claim that if the pattern of our neural interconnections (which encode our personality, memories, emotions, everything) are frozen at extremely low temperatures, then they will not degrade and the person should not be defined as such. “dead” per se. With sufficiently advanced technology, the patient could be warmed to room temperature and his metabolism restarted.

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Freezing warts with liquid nitrogen often causes blisters to form at the treatment site.

There are examples of this in nature: certain frogs can freeze during the winter and come back to life during the summer. The cryonics process was developed in such a way that the expansion of ice crystals is not a problem: a process called vitrification prevents the creation of ice altogether, using flash freezing the brain is frozen into a plastic-like substance.

Whether cryonics works or not remains to be seen. But for now: make sure you know the difference between cryonics and cryonics.

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