This is in a sense a coffin, in that it preserves your remains.
At the moment of your death, a diploid nucleus is removed from your body and placed in a microscopic chamber filled with a droplet of liquid nitrogen and surrounded by a Peltier device which cools the very small chamber to seventy Kelvin or so. The device includes two high temperature superconductors, one with a transition temperature somewhat above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (YBCO is superconductive below ninety, SmFeAs(O,F) below fifty-five) arranged so that only if the first one is superconductive but the second isn't, then the current flows to the Peltier device (i.e. logic gates and a transistor or something). All of this is a solid mass with no moving parts and creep is reduced to a minimum.
Power is provided - how? I don't know. I have various thoughts, involving varying temperatures during the day, lunar tides, continental drift movements.
A funeral is held somewhere a long way from subduction zones, faults and hot spots. A granite memorial is erected with deeply incised Pioneer-style Rosetta stone instructions and an explanation of what to do with the remains if found. This is replicated on a platinum or other durable plate within the chamber.
The human race becomes extinct, ice ages come and go, sea levels rise and fall, asteroids hit the planet and all the usual shenanigans you get through geological time.
Finally, many millions of years from now, an extraterrestrial civilisation finds the monument or a new tool-using species evolves. If there are still primates on the planet, the nucleus can be desfrosted, placed within an ovum and your identical twin is reborn geological epochs after your death and the death of your species.-- nineteenthly, Aug 12 2010 The cloning was implied. : ) Orbituary [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 12 2010] Archaelogical Storage Archaeological_20Storageditto [theircompetitor, Aug 12 2010] Noah's Ark Noah_27s_20Ark [ldischler, Aug 15 2010] Some time later, in the palace of the God-queen of the ants, Formia the Two hundred and twelve thousand, four hundred and twenty sixth… Formia: “Chancellor, we seem to be running out of workers. Our war with the alien invaders is going badly and we both know who is going to take the blame, don't we. I want a solution to this problem now or you’ll be fodder for the fungus farms come nightfall!” Chancellor: [waggling antennae submissively] “Well, holy mistress, may you reproduce forever, we do have all those humans in storage…”-- DrBob, Aug 12 2010 //placed within an ovum// 1) also provided? 2) with whose mitochondria?-- mouseposture, Aug 12 2010 But every few billion years, plate tectonics will entirely recycle the Earth's crust so this storage isn't going to last forever.-- hippo, Aug 12 2010 Another approach might be quantity over quality. Send our DNA in an armada of space capsules out towards possible "M-class" planets if they're ever found.-- RayfordSteele, Aug 12 2010 I did think about a satellite, [hippo]. I also considered the problem with the cytoplasmic bit, but the thing is, if you're going to build a device so huge it can contain an entire ovum, it'll need loads more energy, so i think you'd have to rely on primates or rabbucks not being extinct.
[RayfordSteele], i wrote a book about that in a previous incarnation.-- nineteenthly, Aug 12 2010 (+) //I did think about a satellite//
[link]-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 12 2010 Why bother waiting 'till you die? It's not like your genome improves with age.-- Loris, Aug 12 2010 // Why bother waiting 'till you die? It's not like your genome improves with age. //
Because you don't want to be around to see the result...-- RayfordSteele, Aug 12 2010 Well maybe, in a big black tetrahedron or something, but the thing is, the Moon is boring and doesn't attract attention.
Thought about writing it into another organism, but evolution would wipe it out pronto i would think.-- nineteenthly, Aug 12 2010 ...or how about on the moon?
<ponders if I has become uber-troll and been filtered from existence>
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<bummer>-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 13 2010 Ha! Handwavy!
Maybe on the Moon as well. After all, people's bodies have been known to contain more than one cell at the time of death.-- nineteenthly, Aug 13 2010 Titanium dioxide maybe, and making it into a Yin-Yang symbol.-- nineteenthly, Aug 14 2010 There's no need for an actual ovum, only the data held by the DNA.-- ldischler, Aug 15 2010 So, after all these millenia your clone is born... all alone in the universe with no mate, surrounded by curious alien scientists. Poor bugger!-- Tulaine, Aug 15 2010 After a few ice ages, do you think your chunk of granite might still be part of the crust of the planet?
More likely it will have long since slipped under a tectonic plate and it's contents obliterated as it sunk toward the hot mantle.-- Twizz, Aug 16 2010 random, halfbakery