You probably don’t want a literally spherical tank; it might roll away and hit something or bother someone. Trading a few % of efficiency for a flattened, ridged bottom might be a good idea.
If you’re going to rely on social taboos against disturbing graves, you probably have to keep bodies/tank down to 30, if not an even lower number. A group of family and friends who are buried together in the same crypt are eccentric; a community of essentially unrelated people who are buried together in the same crypt are a cult, and lose a lot of the respect that they would otherwise get from mainstream culture.
Does having a grave with no human/infrastructural maintenance mean that you can’t slap a generator on it somewhere? What would having a small solar panel or a petroleum mini-tank do for the chances of repairing minor cracks in the vacuum, or of reducing heat infiltration?
If you’re going to rely on social taboos against disturbing graves, you probably have to keep bodies/tank down to 30, if not an even lower number. A group of family and friends who are buried together in the same crypt are eccentric; a community of essentially unrelated people who are buried together in the same crypt are a cult, and lose a lot of the respect that they would otherwise get from mainstream culture.
I’m pretty sure this is mistaken—people generally don’t wreck graveyards, even though large numbers of people are buried there.
Right, but the graveyard is thought of as a place where many individuals are separately buried. It’s OK, if slightly mischievous, to enter a graveyard, tell spooky stories there, maybe even make out—but you would never do any of those things inside a grave.
If we build a cryoyard in which there are many individual cryotanks nearby, that will probably be fine, and might cut down on security costs. But if we put all the bodies in the same cryotank, then we run a nontrivial risk of setting off people’s creepy cult alarms, and the taboo against disturbing graves-of-people-who-are-not-markedly-unholy may or may not hold.
Yes, and in the very worst case scenario, the weirdness factor would make some teenagers more likely to try to go and vandalize them as a dare. Weird cult having strange frozen crypts is almost asking for that to happen. Unfortunately, this is real life, so we can’t even have the satisfaction of this sort of thing triggering the terrible monsters that sleep beneath the cursed ground. (Why yes, I have watched too many bad horror movies. Whatever gave you that impression?)
If you were developing a simulation of a Universe for entertainment purposes, how long would you let the inhabitants think they were at the top level of reality before introducing firm evidence that something was seriously off?
Also, it’s plausible that any species which can simulate complex universes has a longer attention span than we do.
Consider the range of human art. It’s plausible that simulators would have at least as wide a range, and I can see purist simulators (watchmaker Gods) and interventionists.
I’d do it over and over again, in all sorts of different ways, record the hilarious results, and after each such session reset the simulation back to an earlier, untampered saved state.
I’ve thought hard about this, but I see no way to get anything to be reliable enough, with the exception of a radioisotope thermal generator.
Repairing the vacuum can be done with getters and adsorbers (they just absorb gas molecules chemically), which is a no-moving parts solution. The insulation layer could be full of little sorbs.
Sure, for starters, but it’s hard to say what will and won’t be permafrost in 100 years, what with the non-trivial risk of catastrophic climate change and all. If the tank is built right, I think rolling, although unlikely, would still be one of the top 5 most likely failure modes; it is an easy enough flaw to fix.
Even municipal water towers, e.g., aren’t perfect spheres, and nobody expects those to fall off their columns and plow through downtown Suburb Beach.
You’re right to worry about global warming. But permafrost is soil, not ice. Permafrost means “always frozen soil”.
I suspect that there are regions of northern Canada where even a +20 degree warming would not get rid of the permafrost. Though the cost of getting to these places may be prohibitive? Anyone live in Canada and know about Nunavut?
I can verify that these places are accessible, and that the permafrost extends quite a bit farther south than one might expect. I used to live just south of the Yukon territory.
There are regular long-haul trucks that go up there all year round; if you go in winter, you can use an ice road to get to the very cold and remote places. Given the regular volume of traffic, I’d say the cost is not prohibitive. I can get precise figures if you’d like.
That’s pretty cool. As I said, −70C is thermodynamically very useful. A phase change heat-pipe could capture that cold from the winter, meaning that throughout the summer your system still only sees an outside temperature of −70C.
Good idea! A few refinements:
You probably don’t want a literally spherical tank; it might roll away and hit something or bother someone. Trading a few % of efficiency for a flattened, ridged bottom might be a good idea.
If you’re going to rely on social taboos against disturbing graves, you probably have to keep bodies/tank down to 30, if not an even lower number. A group of family and friends who are buried together in the same crypt are eccentric; a community of essentially unrelated people who are buried together in the same crypt are a cult, and lose a lot of the respect that they would otherwise get from mainstream culture.
Does having a grave with no human/infrastructural maintenance mean that you can’t slap a generator on it somewhere? What would having a small solar panel or a petroleum mini-tank do for the chances of repairing minor cracks in the vacuum, or of reducing heat infiltration?
I’m pretty sure this is mistaken—people generally don’t wreck graveyards, even though large numbers of people are buried there.
Right, but the graveyard is thought of as a place where many individuals are separately buried. It’s OK, if slightly mischievous, to enter a graveyard, tell spooky stories there, maybe even make out—but you would never do any of those things inside a grave.
If we build a cryoyard in which there are many individual cryotanks nearby, that will probably be fine, and might cut down on security costs. But if we put all the bodies in the same cryotank, then we run a nontrivial risk of setting off people’s creepy cult alarms, and the taboo against disturbing graves-of-people-who-are-not-markedly-unholy may or may not hold.
Yes, and in the very worst case scenario, the weirdness factor would make some teenagers more likely to try to go and vandalize them as a dare. Weird cult having strange frozen crypts is almost asking for that to happen. Unfortunately, this is real life, so we can’t even have the satisfaction of this sort of thing triggering the terrible monsters that sleep beneath the cursed ground. (Why yes, I have watched too many bad horror movies. Whatever gave you that impression?)
If you were developing a simulation of a Universe for entertainment purposes, how long would you let the inhabitants think they were at the top level of reality before introducing firm evidence that something was seriously off?
Just curious.
Depends on how long the backstory is.
Also, it’s plausible that any species which can simulate complex universes has a longer attention span than we do.
Consider the range of human art. It’s plausible that simulators would have at least as wide a range, and I can see purist simulators (watchmaker Gods) and interventionists.
I’d do it over and over again, in all sorts of different ways, record the hilarious results, and after each such session reset the simulation back to an earlier, untampered saved state.
I’ve long suspected that we live in the original universe’s blooper reel.
This doesn’t match my intuitions at all, but I’m not an expert on normal people.
Is there any way the plausible range of reactions to big cryonics facilities can be tested?
Let’s ask our neighbors!
I’ve thought hard about this, but I see no way to get anything to be reliable enough, with the exception of a radioisotope thermal generator.
Repairing the vacuum can be done with getters and adsorbers (they just absorb gas molecules chemically), which is a no-moving parts solution. The insulation layer could be full of little sorbs.
[grin] I wasn’t sure if those were sci-fi or not.
Sure, for starters, but it’s hard to say what will and won’t be permafrost in 100 years, what with the non-trivial risk of catastrophic climate change and all. If the tank is built right, I think rolling, although unlikely, would still be one of the top 5 most likely failure modes; it is an easy enough flaw to fix.
Even municipal water towers, e.g., aren’t perfect spheres, and nobody expects those to fall off their columns and plow through downtown Suburb Beach.
Far from being sci-fi, they are quite common (if we’re talking about the same thing): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#History Common enough that they’re the main reason NASA has been targeted by green groups, even.
Cool!
You’re right to worry about global warming. But permafrost is soil, not ice. Permafrost means “always frozen soil”.
I suspect that there are regions of northern Canada where even a +20 degree warming would not get rid of the permafrost. Though the cost of getting to these places may be prohibitive? Anyone live in Canada and know about Nunavut?
I can verify that these places are accessible, and that the permafrost extends quite a bit farther south than one might expect. I used to live just south of the Yukon territory.
There are regular long-haul trucks that go up there all year round; if you go in winter, you can use an ice road to get to the very cold and remote places. Given the regular volume of traffic, I’d say the cost is not prohibitive. I can get precise figures if you’d like.
Thanks. Do you know what places have the coldest winter temperature?
Hits on google for “coldest place on earth” seem unanimous that it’s somewhere in Antarctica. Here’s an interesting newspaper article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/antarctica/6121866/Scientists-identify-coldest-place-on-earth.html
This sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
That’s pretty cool. As I said, −70C is thermodynamically very useful. A phase change heat-pipe could capture that cold from the winter, meaning that throughout the summer your system still only sees an outside temperature of −70C.
This place is much colder...
http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/inside-lng-tank.jpg
If you could only get permission to use it...
I agree. The ideal is just one person.
I should have made clear: the tanks would be buried under the ground, probably in the Canadian permafrost. No rolling.