X-Message-Number: 2317 Date: 29 Jun 93 16:12:40 EDT From: "A.J. Clifford" <> Subject: CRYONET Tadpole Cryonaut I want to throw an open question to the 'net. Something that I have thought about several times in recent years and yet remains quite unresolved. In 1977 my college science professor was demonstrating the properties of liquid nitrogen - immersing flowers and rubber. At one point he took a happily swimming tadpole and dropped it into the LN2 for at least 30 seconds, probably longer. Then he recovered it and dropped it back into the beaker of water. Shortly it revived and began to slowly swim around again. From all the literature I have seen it appears that there is nothing larger than an embryo (comprising animal tissue) that, so far, has been revivable from an LN2 frozen state. Provable regularly under scientific conditions. A tadpole is far more complex than an embryo and would be a much more significant event. Perhaps the tadpole did not freeze entirely through, or perhaps it was 'flash-frozen' and vitrification occured saving its cells. Can anyone shed light on this experiment? Wouldn't it be interesting to see if a tadpole could be revived after an hour or a week? If so a medium-long term experiment would prove the hypothesis that under LN2 biological decay is completely arrested. Regards AJC Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2317