I think IMHO is the best place for this. And oh, BTW, I have brought this up on other message boards.
Anyways, I am watching ‘The Neutral Zone’ (ST: TNG) on BBC America as I write this. But in case you don’t know, it brings up (as a subplot) the issue of Cryogenics. Data and Worf find 3 cryogenically frozen people from the late 20th/early 21st Century on a rogue satellite. And against the Captain’s better judgment, he brings them aboard and has them revived.
Now some people think Cryogenics would never work. And I ask if it’s even necessary. I am not talking about the near future. I am thinking about the very distant future.
It is a fundamental tenet of science. Information is never truly lost. As an example of this, some scientist on the Science Channel did this experiment. He injected a random stream of iodine through a cylinder of glycerin. Then he turned it to disperse it. Then he turned it back again. And it retook its original form.
So, what if in some (very) future date they want to bring back George Washington? Or Thomas Jefferson? Or even Genghis Khan for that matter? You get the picture.
This isn’t what is meant by notion that “information is never…lost”, and regardless, details of physical information can be made inaccessible by passing beyond the lightcone of a particular reference frame (e.g. beyond the cosmic horizon or the event horizon of a black hole) without some kind of superluminal travel. We will certainly never be able to reconstruct the experiences of Genghis Khan or George Washington, although you can certainly create a simulacrum of them:
I’m not sure what you’re saying. What does cryogenics have to do with bringing back George Washington?
And Picard acts out of character in that episode. he is shown in most eps to be fascinated by archeology and history. In the ‘computer program hidden in DNA’ episode, we learn he almost became a proffessional archeologist. Yet, in Neutral Zone, he doesn’t immediately leap at the chance to revive the frozen folks as living history nor does he express interest in learning from them once they are revived.
The most we could do is produce of clone of George Washington or Genghis Khan and give him false memories so he think’s he’s the original ala the clone of Kahless the Unforgettable.
“NECESSARY”? Why would it be necessary? Is the human race on the verge of extinction? Are we losing the ability to reproduce? Will our descendants be total morons, so we’ll have to bring back leaders from the past? Why would cryogenics be necessary? Ever?
Cryogenics could potentially be useful if we ever travel to the stars. To get to another star we would need to design a mission lasting decades. I know it might be possible to travel faster, but that would have many difficulties, such as the vast amount of energy requires, the waste heat and hard radiation produced by the engines and friction with interstellar hydrogen. If we could freeze people and successfully revive them at the destination, that would eliminate many years of relatively cramped and boring ship time.
There are other potential uses for cryogenics, but that’s the first one that springs to mind.
