| 08:39.56 | *** join/#cyrannus Liquid_Ink (79d0a1bb@gateway/web/freenode/ip.121.208.161.187) |
| 10:04.58 | *** join/#cyrannus ImpyDroid (~yaaic@95.140.92.12) |
| 10:15.17 | *** join/#cyrannus Ghelae (519cb251@gateway/web/freenode/ip.81.156.178.81) |
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| 10:15.27 | Ghelae | Hello. |
| 10:16.13 | Liquid_Ink | Hello! |
| 10:16.31 | Liquid_Ink | How exactly would I go about preserving a human body? |
| 10:16.44 | Liquid_Ink | As in a corpse. |
| 10:18.15 | Ghelae | Mummificiation is of course the traditional method. Immersion in some kind of liquid preservative, e.g. formaldehyde, is famously used for scientific (usually non-human) specimens. |
| 10:19.30 | Ghelae | Most generally, you need to prevent microorganisms from decomposing the body, hence removing water or replacing it with something toxic is the most important part. |
| 10:20.46 | Ghelae | Freezing also does the trick. Ideally you'd do it quickly enough for the water to turn into glass rather than crystalline ice, but if that were easy we'd already be using it regularly. |
| 10:21.15 | Ghelae | I say "we"; I mean cryonics. |
| 10:23.23 | Ghelae | Currently, freezing people is not a good way to preserve their body for future resurrection because of the cell damage caused by ice crystal growth. And so if you want to preserve the body down to a cellular level, freezing isn't the way to go (although supercooling to vitrify should work). |
| 10:24.03 | Ghelae | In that case, I'd go for the water replacement method, e.g. immersing the body in formaldehyde. |
| 10:25.32 | Ghelae | In either case, if you need to make the body look like it's died more recently than it has without having been preserved, you just reverse the process: melt the water-glass, or remove the non-water. |
| 10:25.53 | Ghelae | The former would show the fewest signs of tampering. |
| 10:26.10 | Liquid_Ink | I should probably explain the context of this question |
| 10:27.40 | Liquid_Ink | But it's really creepy |
| 10:29.31 | Liquid_Ink | I want to write a horror story in which a guy goes totally insane after his girlfriend dies and continues the physical aspects of their relationship with her corpse. So he wants to keep it in decent condition. |
| 10:30.14 | Liquid_Ink | Ah, horror writing. The profession that forces you to ask your sciency friends for tips on necrophilia. |
| 10:30.19 | Ghelae | Presumably he doesn't want it frozen, then. |
| 10:32.10 | Ghelae | Replacing all of the bodily fluids with formaldehyde is also not a good idea. |
| 10:32.44 | Liquid_Ink | I'll be back in five. |
| 10:38.22 | *** join/#cyrannus Liquid_Ink (79d0a1bb@gateway/web/freenode/ip.121.208.161.187) |
| 10:38.51 | Ghelae | Welcome back. |
| 10:39.40 | Ghelae | In regards to my previous comment, however, dessication is presumably an even worse idea if you want the flesh to remain fleshy. |
| 10:39.57 | Liquid_Ink | What's desiccation? |
| 10:40.05 | Ghelae | Drying out. |
| 10:40.16 | Ghelae | i.e. how traditional mummification works. |
| 10:41.30 | Ghelae | So although I doubt it would be easy and might even need some equipment made specifically for that purpose, what you'd need to do is replace the blood with some other liquid. Possibly vodka? |
| 10:42.02 | Liquid_Ink | Vodka? |
| 10:42.34 | Ghelae | Well, ethanol. I'm assuming a strong vodka is both easily accessible and alcoholic enough to kill off most bacteria. |
| 10:43.12 | Ghelae | But if pure ethanol can be acquired or produced, that should be even better at preventing decay. |
| 10:43.22 | Ghelae | What's really difficult is that you don't just need to empty the blood vessels of water, but replace all other bodily fluids too. |
| 10:51.39 | Liquid_Ink | Well, this a milestone in creepy things I've had to research for writing. |
| 11:08.43 | Liquid_Ink | So replace bodily fluids with ethanol. Anything else? |
| 11:10.22 | Ghelae | If you do that rigorously enough (and you may need to add more ethanol in every once in a while because it'll evaporate away), I don't think there's anything else you'd need to do. Perhaps add something that absorbs water but not ethanol just to be on the same side. |
| 11:12.49 | Liquid_Ink | You're so nonchalant about the question. |
| 11:15.35 | Ghelae | I'm used to you asking strange questions for your story-writing now. |
| 11:16.09 | Ghelae | I'd also recommend storing the body in alcohol when not in use |
| 11:16.38 | Ghelae | Just like, well, storing a dead animal in a jar of formaldehyde. |
| 11:17.03 | Ghelae | That would take the part of adding for ethanol every once in a while. |
| 11:17.06 | Ghelae | more* |
| 11:17.11 | Liquid_Ink | I haven't asked anything this weird before have I? |
| 11:17.21 | Ghelae | I don't think so, but I can't remember. |
| 11:17.46 | Ghelae | Quite a few things about dealing with dead bodies in possibly-illegal ways, however. |
| 11:19.15 | Liquid_Ink | Oh yeah I remember |
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| 14:13.39 | *** join/#cyrannus Wormy_ (021ac815@gateway/web/freenode/ip.2.26.200.21) |
| 14:36.29 | Ghelae | Wormy_: Yet another idea of how lightsabers might be made to work in the real world: http://backreaction.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/how-does-lightsaber-work-here-is-my.html |
| 14:41.00 | Wormy_ | Oh wow, makes it sound more like a lightsaber in shape than the plasma-sword solution |
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| 18:51.04 | Wormy_away | I hate it when people lob about words like "unsustainable" as an attack on modern life. |
| 18:53.41 | *** join/#cyrannus The_Randomness (~chatzilla@2601:441:0:6:429:275d:4a25:929e) |
| 18:53.59 | Wormy_away | They sound like harsh arguments but have no substance. Yes, our lives and civilisation is unsustainable, but who wants to live in a world where we minimalise our resources and growth to postpone the inevitable, instead of changing our lives and innovating our existing society to solve problems it will always face. |
| 18:54.26 | The_Randomness | eh? |
| 18:54.32 | The_Randomness | What did I walk into? |
| 18:54.34 | Wormy_away | [18:51] <Wormy_away> I hate it when people lob about words like "unsustainable" as an attack on modern life.# |
| 18:54.53 | The_Randomness | ah |
| 18:55.05 | Wormy_away | I'm getting into a rant about the frequent pessismism one finds on the internet |
| 18:55.35 | The_Randomness | You would not believe how grating the casual pessimism I see on the Internet has become |
| 18:56.23 | The_Randomness | Most of the time it's horribly uninformed and generally comes from edgy teenagers |
| 18:57.08 | Wormy_ | I was watching this video which suggests how capitalism could improve itself and most of the commenters are onlt interested in bashing capitalism. I admit I don't know a great deal on the subject but I can tell many of these arguments have no substance and are just regurgitated pessimism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh_hRS15n_8 |
| 18:59.09 | The_Randomness | I won't even bother looking, Youtube comments are idiotic enough as they are, I don't want to see a gathering of idiots who think that they're intellectuals in the comments. |
| 19:27.02 | Wormy_ | The_Randomness: On a lighter note, Ghelae showed me this earlier http://backreaction.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/how-does-lightsaber-work-here-is-my.html |
| 19:28.46 | The_Randomness | Interesting |
| 19:29.46 | The_Randomness | Still pretty flimsy (especially considering the sort of energies needed to produce monopoles, if they exist), but better than most of what I've seen. |
| 19:33.49 | Wormy_ | The plasma saber is slightly more plausible but the end result doesn't look much like a lightsaber, and the other one I'm aware of simply requires infinite energy |
| 19:40.17 | The_Randomness | yeah |
| 19:43.13 | Wormy_ | Tazer sword https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F-VVjqarZE |
| 22:00.29 | Wormy_ | Ghelae: Developments in using biology for engineering http://phys.org/news/2016-01-scientists-bacterium-artificial-photosynthesis.html |
| 22:57.22 | Ghelae | Well, that's a nice start. They're basically nanocyborg bacteria when you think about it. :P Yes, it does seem like the 21st century is going to see huge developments in bioengineering. |
| 22:57.29 | *** join/#cyrannus Liquid_Ink (79d0a1bb@gateway/web/freenode/ip.121.208.161.187) |
| 22:58.01 | Ghelae | Hello. |
| 22:59.15 | Liquid_Ink | Hey |
| 23:05.08 | Ghelae | News of the day: a new idea for lightsabers http://backreaction.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/how-does-lightsaber-work-here-is-my.html and nanocyborg bacteria http://phys.org/news/2016-01-scientists-bacterium-artificial-photosynthesis.html |
| 23:05.59 | Ghelae | Just so you know what we've been discussing over the past 12 hours. |