this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
814 points (99.2% liked)

Science Memes

10008 readers
2758 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Sister Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Cryoprotectants also do this pretty efficiently -- they prevent crystallization, which leads to "vitreous" ice, which has more or less the same structure as liquid water and so doesn't expand much. I think they do use that when freezing people, but the problem is that even if you fill the blood vessels with pure ethylene glycol, it diffuses very slowly, and it takes hours to get into cells which are far from large blood vessels. They dont diffuse the cryoprotectant in that thoroughly, though, because that'd take so long the body would have started to decay too much.

Edit: oops, the article talks about vitrifying agents. They make it sound like they're not effective, but as I said above, they're very effective if you can get them in every nook and cranny of every cell, which is a losing battle.