X-Message-Number: 3656
Date: 10 Jan 95 15:01:14 EST
From: yvan Bozzonetti <>
Subject: CRYONICS : U.K. ghost.

Sorry to come back once more on the ghost subject, the following letter 
will tell how the same subjects seen here with disdain (at to say the 
least) may be perceived in another way elswhere. My first idea on the 
subject came from a David Jones' Daedalus column in Nature. I have written 
to him about may idea, without reference to cryonics, here is its answer:

Start of quote:
<< Dear Mr. Bozzonetti,

	Many thanks for your letter of 21st November 1994, which the Editor 
of Nature has passed on to me. Thank you for the flattering remarks you 
make about my Daedalus column. You refer to the column for 17th November, 
which muses on the temperature of the spirit world. You comment that if 
that world has a greater number of dimensions than the material world, then 
anything entering it would gain in degrees of freedom, and would therefore 
cool down.

	That is a very clever idea, and I wish I had thought of it myself! 
You remark that any additional degrees of freedom must give rise to 
cooling, including degrees of freedom associated with the onset of 
nonlinear quantum effects. You point out that if an object the size of a 
bacterium crept a few microns per year, it would acquire quantum properties 
-- in effect its de Broglie wavelength would become comparable to its 
length. You observe that rock-salt creeps at about this rate, and invite me 
to consider the possibility of a salt-particle laser which should operate 
with noticeable cooling. Again, this is a highly cunning piece of physical 
reasoning, and I thank you very much for drawing my attention to it. I will 
gladly add it to the strange mental soup from wich the Daedalus column is 
weekly distilled.

	Thank you again for a very perceptive and stimulating letter. It is 
always good to receive creative scientific discussions from knowledgeable 
readers!

		Sincerely yours,

				David Jones

>> End of quote.

	Yes I know, good scientists at a high level tend to be very polite 
and support anybody they perceive as honest. On the other hand even in 
polite form it is always posible to say no, that is not the case here. I 
muse why my "science is seen as absolute zero on cryonet and as not too bad 
at Nature office. Yes, I have not send to that publication a scientific 
paper on the subject and will not try. It would not be even half backed. It 
seem neverthless than the basic ideas are not seen as strange for a 
professional scientist. Is it because of the exceptional creativity of Pr. 
Jones? may be... Is it because physicists are more open minded than the 
mean homo cryonicus? I fear the cryonists from the 23th century will find 
in their fridge a 20 th century population sample far from what they could 
hope for.

	If a special effort must be undertaken towards a particular 
category of citizens, it must not be targetted to the gays, durg users and 
other "special" people. Physicists, mathematicians and high level teachers 
seem far more worthwile.

	Y.B.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3656