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2019-06-14, 11:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2016
Corpse aerogels, are they plausible or not
I recently saw a video on aerogels and how they are made. The procedure reminded me a bit of plastination, in that the original fluid is replaced with a different fluid which is then made to undergo a phase change. This got me thinking, would it be possible to turn a corpse into an aerogel?
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2019-06-15, 02:43 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2010
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2019-06-15, 03:53 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2009
- Location
- Germany
Re: Corpse aerogels, are they plausible or not
Even if, aerogels are extremely brittle. I think anything over 30 cm would be almost impossible to handle without breaking it.
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2019-06-21, 12:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
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- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
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Re: Corpse aerogels, are they plausible or not
Plastination is basically filling any cavities with plastic, as I understand it. (Going no-Google here, ignore me if I'm super wrong.) The cavities can be quite small, and can require some force to open up and be filled. So you'd need an aerogel with some decent physical attributes.
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2019-06-21, 08:17 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2019
Re: Corpse aerogels, are they plausible or not
One problem is that supercritical CO2 is a pretty badass solvent of things water isn't. You might end up with just a skeleton and goo.
You would need to find something that is similar to water but has a much lower vapour pressure. Maybe solvent exchange with formaldehyde (which would also stiffen, and 'gelify' the specimen), and then with nitrogen. This second one will probably require high pressures.
I think drying of a corpse without surface tension effects should be doable, but it might not be easy.
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2019-06-26, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2005
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- Santa Barbara, CA
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Re: Corpse aerogels, are they plausible or not
My immediate reaction is the issues of long, often interlinked/interwoven protein chains that make up much of the human body, especially the skin, sinews, and various membranes would not be replaced themselves directly and then interfere with the aerogel expansion/formation.
Kind of how bread with not just a high gluten content but that has been well worked has lots of smaller bubbles vs just letting the yeast CO2 outgas escape and not rise...with an aerogel you'd want the free outgassing version.