It’s a concept some find hard to believe; successfully freezing and resuscitating a human being. One day you’re living in the present, and the next, you wake up decades or centuries in the future. But it’s a concept nearly 180 human bodies at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona are hanging their hopes on as they wait for scientists to give them a second lease on life.
Founded in 1972 by husband and wife Fred and Linda Chamberlain, patients at Alcor are suspended upside down in vacuum-insulated dewars of liquid nitrogen (like the one pictured below), at a temperature of -196ºC, in the hope that future technology will bring them back. Alcor considers it more a probability than a hope.
The concept of cryonics, or cryopreservation, and being cryogenically frozen, was first introduced in 1962 by a physics teacher named Robert Ettinger who penned the book The Prospect of Immortality. Since then, it has captivated the attention of millions and is often depicted in science fiction books and movies. Most famously, Hollywood sci-fi movies such as Vanilla Sky and Demolition Man, and comedy films such as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, have played with concept of cryonics.
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