Place the person in a statuesque pose, do that thing on the second line somehow, then fossilize it using another "somehow" process.
You get an actual stone statue that's actually that person, dressed nicely and in a nice pose. (The clothes were treated in step 1 as well.)-- doctorremulac3, Apr 16 2020 Plastination https://en.wikipedi...g/wiki/PlastinationSolidified, and Widely Known To Exist. [8th of 7, Apr 16 2020] Calcification https://en.wikipedi.../wiki/CalcificationSounds painful... [neutrinos_shadow, Apr 16 2020] Progressive osseous heteroplasia https://en.wikipedi...sseous_heteroplasiaVery nasty [8th of 7, Apr 16 2020] https://en.wikipedi.../wiki/Sokushinbutsu [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 17 2020] So, plastination <link> but using a silicate - or carbonate - based process ?
Nice idea ... but so far, rather WIBNI.
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.-- 8th of 7, Apr 16 2020 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.-- doctorremulac3, Apr 16 2020 Ah... what you need then is some Nazis. Very good at that sort of stuff.-- 8th of 7, Apr 16 2020 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.-- Sgt Teacup, Apr 16 2020 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...
// correctly gendered skeleton //
Er, where does one obtain such a thing as an incorrectly gendered ... no, actually, don't answer that ...-- 8th of 7, Apr 16 2020 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.-- neutrinos_shadow, Apr 16 2020 There's a nasty genetic disease that causes excessive bone growth and deposition; fluorine can have a similar effect.
Ah yes ...<link>-- 8th of 7, Apr 16 2020 But that's just adding more bone at various places, does nothing to calcify soft tissues without deforming them which is what's needed.
That's where my idea of using a process of some kind comes in.
I may need to be a little more specific on my patent application though.-- doctorremulac3, Apr 16 2020 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.
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.-- Loris, Apr 17 2020 Thought of that, too creepy. Plus it's not really the person, it's a cast of the person.
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.
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.-- doctorremulac3, Apr 17 2020 The Sopranos ? The Corleone family ?
Depends on whos grandma...
// annoyed by the implausibility //
"We feel your pain, brother..."
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.-- 8th of 7, Apr 17 2020 //Place the person in a statuesque pose, do that thing on the second line somehow, then fossilize it using another "somehow" process.//
Ah. Sokushinbutsu. [link]-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 17 2020 Re: link.
Ew.
Like how they put sunglasses on the one dude.-- doctorremulac3, Apr 17 2020 // Sokushinbutsu //
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.
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.
The concept was successfully revived* in the mid 20th Century by British Rail, which accounts for a lot.
*The idea was revived, that is. The passengers were, of course, quite dead, and remain so.-- 8th of 7, Apr 17 2020 //it's not really the person, it's a cast of the person.//
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.-- Loris, Apr 17 2020 But fossiles have the interior reproduced too. Not sure why that makes a difference but it kind of does.
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.
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.
Oh wait, I'm supposed to be supporting this idea not criticizing it.
Never mind. Great idea. Super, really fantastic.-- doctorremulac3, Apr 18 2020 // people don't look so great when they're dead //
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.
Just look in the Yellow Pages under "Lawyers". There's a whole long list.-- 8th of 7, Apr 18 2020 random, halfbakery