Suspended animation

Suspended animation is the slowing without termination of life processes by external means. Outside science fiction, the technique as applied to humans is hypothetical. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold is used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use of this process had led to the developing science of cryonics.

Placing astronautsin suspended animation has been proposed as one way for an individual to reach the end of an interplanetary or interstellar journey, avoiding the necessity for a gigantic generation ship; occasionally the two concepts have been combined, with generations of "caretakers" supervising a large population of frozen passengers.

An article in the April 22, 2005 issue of the scientific journal Science, reports success towards inducing suspended animation in mice. The findings are significant, as mice do not hibernate in nature. The breakthrough was achieved when the lab of Mark Roth placed mice in a chamber containing 80 ppmhydrogen sulfide, and the test was conducted for 6 hours. The mice's core body temperature dropped to 13 degrees Celsius and metabolism, as assayed by carbon dioxideproduction and oxygenuse, decreased 10-fold.

Recently there has been a breakthrough at University of Pittsburgh's Safar Center for Resuscitation Research: in July 2005 scientists announced they had managed to bring dogs back to life with no brain damage, by draining the blood out of the dead bodies, and putting an ice cold solution into their circulatory systems, which in turn keeps the bodies alive in stasis. After an amazing 3 hours of being "clinically dead", the dogs were revived, by an electric shock to their hearts. The heart started pumping the blood around the frozen body, and the dogs were brought back to life in perfect condition. This has been the latest development in the effort to cheat death. Scientists hope to begin human testing in 6 months, and have already begun discussions with hospitals to use "suspended animation" if everything else fails. Safar Research also pioneered modern CPR techniques.

The worry is that a few of the revived dogs had severe nervous and movement coordination damage, causing them to be mentally disabled, and demonstrating behavior that was deemed "zombie" like in the media. This has been pushed further by the media which named them "Zombie Dogs"the situation does have its issues, with the worry that humans can be revived with severe brain damage, Safar Research believes that the process is merely another way to give "more time" to the operation table, as vital repairs can be made when patients are in stasis: emergency operations fail frequently simply because the lack of time, not the lack of expertise.

Suspended Animation in Fiction

Suspended animation is also a common device in fiction used to transport individuals from one time period to another, often by accident, to wait for a cure, or to offer a kind of immortality. Among the characters or works that utilize suspended animation are:

• Edward Bellamy's 1887novel Looking Backward
• Robert A. Heinlein's 1957novel The Door into Summer
• Anne McCaffery's and Jody Lynn Nye's 1990novel, The Death of Sleep
• Terry Brooks' character Allanon(as well as other druids) uses suspended animation to extend his life in Brooks' Shannaraseries of books.
• Woody Allen's movie Sleeper
• 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which three scientistsare placed in suspended animation for a spaceflightof a few years' duration, the ship being tended by two living astronauts
• Alien, its sequels and related works set in the Alien universe, in which the characters enter "hypersleep" to survive sublight travel across interstellar distances.
• The 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, in which three astronauts are revived from suspended animation 2000 years in the future.
• Red Dwarf, which had one character surviving a radioactive crisis by spending three million years in stasis
• Futurama's main character Fry accidently traps himself in a cryogenic state, and is released 1000 years later, where hilarity ensues.
• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Space Seed" and Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Neutral Zone" and Star Trek: Voyager episode "The 37's", in which individuals from the 20th century are revived three and four centuries later, respectively
• Stargate SG-1, various episodes, including a dying man waiting for a young person to come along, a subterfuge, hypersleep like Alien, and waiting for a cure.
• Stargate Atlantis, in which the Wraith, a few Ancients and one human survive for 10,000 years due to suspended animation.
• Captain America, who survived the end of World War II and was revived by The Avengersin the 1960s
• Sonic Adventure 2and Sonic Heroesgames' opening stories include Shadow the Hedgehogbeing released from suspended animation.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender, The young hero Aang is trapped for a century in an iceberg.
• Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard), who blasted off into space in 1987, and was trapped into suspended animation only to be revived in 2091.

Suspended Animation is also a name of first solo albumby Dream Theaterguitarist John Petrucci.

See also

For some ?real life? starting points:

• Cryonics
• Cryptobiosis
• Hibernationit:Animazione sospesa

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended+animation Wikipedia article Suspended animation.