h a l f b a k e r yPoof of concept
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So, plastination <link> but using a silicate - or carbonate - based process ? |
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Nice idea ... but so far, rather WIBNI. |
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Obviously it works for real fossils, but the mineralization process is not exactly quick, and it doesn't preserve soft tissues. Quite what chemistry could be used is not immediately obvious. |
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The proven "somehow" process has been well tested and
applied through history. It brought us electricity, put a man
on the Moon and... put some other men on the Moon too. |
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Ah... what you need then is some Nazis. Very good at that sort of stuff. |
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Talk to the people at BodyWorlds™. They know a thing or two about plastination. Some of their circulatory- and nervous-system models are even superimposed on the correctly gendered skeleton. |
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It's going to be a bit disheartening to set up your petrification experiment and then come back ten million years later to find that it hasn't quite worked... |
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// correctly gendered skeleton // |
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Er, where does one obtain such a thing as an incorrectly gendered ... no, actually, don't answer that ... |
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You could infect your "volunteer" before death with a
calcification disease (too much Vitamin D and not enough
Vitamin K seems to do the trick...) to start the process. |
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There's a nasty genetic disease that causes excessive bone growth and deposition; fluorine can have a similar effect. |
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But that's just adding more bone at various places, does
nothing to calcify soft
tissues without deforming them which is what's needed. |
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That's where my idea of using a process of some kind comes
in. |
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I may need to be a little more specific on my patent
application though. |
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I once saw a horror film where there was some mad artist
with
a habit of making statues using what I think was meant to
be a
derivative of the lost wax process.
But if I remember correctly the film-makers didn't have a
good
handle on how the seminal process worked (and didn't
bother
to ask). So the victim was still alive in the investment
when
molten metal was poured in - essentially as in full-mould
casting. I was more annoyed by the implausibility than
anything. |
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Anyway, if you were willing to dissolve, rot and/or burn
the
flesh out first, you might be able to cast stone into such a
form. |
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Thought of that, too creepy. Plus it's not really the
person, it's a cast of the person. |
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Now you might say a fossil in't the animal that died
millions of years ago either, and you'd be right, but... uh.
Hmm. |
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Ok, let me put it this way. The family's not going to pay
for a process where hot molten anything is poured onto
grandma. |
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The Sopranos ? The Corleone family ? |
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Depends on whos grandma... |
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// annoyed by the implausibility // |
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"We feel your pain, brother..." |
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Ceramic moulds for metal casting have to be baked dry, then heated to near the temperature of the metal before investment, othrwise steam explosions shatter them. This can be remarkably loud and expensive. Any trace of the core remaining in the mould is going to cause disastrous problems. |
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//Place the person in a statuesque pose, do that thing on the second line somehow, then fossilize it using another "somehow" process.// |
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Ah.
Sokushinbutsu.
[link] |
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Like how they put sunglasses on the one dude. |
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A Western version was successfully developed in the 19th century, called the Railway Waiting Room. A combination of low temperatures, starvation, dehydration and low humidity caused numerous railway passengers to first enter a state of apathetic immobility, then suspended animation indistinguishable from death. |
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The London Necropolis Railway was initially conceived to exploit this exact phenomenon, but somewhere along the way it got repurposed to merely transport coffins in a boringly conventional way. |
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The concept was successfully revived* in the mid 20th Century by British Rail, which accounts for a lot. |
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*The idea was revived, that is. The passengers were, of course, quite dead, and remain so. |
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//it's not really the person, it's a cast of the person.// |
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That may be true, but then so is fossilisation.
And it has the advantage of not requiring unknown
processes, occurring over perhaps a geological period of
time. |
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But fossiles have the interior reproduced too. Not
sure why that makes a difference but it kind of
does. |
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We already have death masks, which frankly are
pretty disturbing. Something about just turning
somebody into rock just makes it appealing. Just
need to figure out how to do it is all. |
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By the way, another problem is that people don't
look so great when they're dead. None of us would
particularly want that last look on our face turned
into stone for eternity. This ideas problems don't
end with the fact that
there's no practical way to do it. Then you start
getting into they reasons why you might not want
to do it. |
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Oh wait, I'm supposed to be supporting this idea
not criticizing it. |
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Never mind. Great idea. Super, really fantastic. |
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// people don't look so great when they're dead // |
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We disagree. There are many humans who would look a great deal better (and be much more useful) if they were dead. As they are, they're just using up perfectly good oxygen which would be much better allocated to pimps, drug dealers, thieves and child molesters. |
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Just look in the Yellow Pages under "Lawyers". There's a whole long list. |
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