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Why not simply digitize someone's DNA and store it in the "Cloud" forever? Wouldn't reconstructing this at some point in the future be akin to eternal life or at least a reprieve from early death due to a subsequently curable disease? This seems like a much better alternative to freezing one's body and hoping the electricity doesn't go off.
Any thoughts?
The cryogenic energy facility stores power from renewables or off-peak generation by chilling air into liquid form. When the liquid air warms up it expands and can drive a turbine to make electricity. The 5MW plant near Manchester can power up to 5,000 homes for around three hours. The company behind the scheme, Highview Power Storage, believes that the technology has great potential to be scaled up for long-term use with green energy sources.
Peaks and troughs
Electricity demand varies, influenced by factors like time of day and season. The National Grid is prepared for surges in demand, with power stations on stand-by ready to crank up the power. However, dealing with these peaks and troughs will become increasingly difficult as coal-fired power stations close down and more intermittent renewable energy like wind and solar comes online. In 2015 renewables provided almost a quarter of UK electricity. The intermittent nature of green sources has seen researchers focus on trying to improve energy storage. Pumped hydropower can provide large amounts of energy for long durations, and lithium-ion batteries can respond to demand in milliseconds making them ideal for portable electronic devices and electric vehicles.
Cryogenic cold storage
But hydropower depends on specific geographies as water has to be pumped uphill, and batteries currently cannot be scaled in a cost effective way to store energy for a town or city. "Our technology is a bit like a locatable version of a pumped hydro system. Anywhere that needs large scale long-duration storage, that might be to help integrate an offshore wind farm, a system like ours can help achieve that," Gareth Brett from Highview Power explained, during a visit to the Manchester cryogenic site. "5MW is a bit small for this technology; anything from 10MW and up is the sort of scale we're talking about. "We've already designed a plant that can do 200MW /1200MWh, that's enough to keep a city going for 6 hours."
Cryogenic storage works by using renewable or off-peak electricity to cool air down to -190 degrees C, which turns it into a liquid. It's then stored in an insulated tank, similar to a large thermos flask. To release the stored energy, the liquid air is exposed to ambient conditions causing it to expand back into a gas. The volume increase is huge, about 700 times, which is used to drive a turbine to generate electricity. Highview Power's demonstrator plant is next to Pilsworth landfill gas generation site. The large insulated tanks sit across the road from a collection of gas engines. These engines burn methane gas produced from decomposing rubbish to generate electricity. The waste heat from this process is captured and used to increase the efficiency of the cryogenic process.
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Storing one's DNA in "the Cloud," wouldn't be much different than freezing one's sperm. It wouldn't really be you, only a copy of you. The goal of those who seek out cryogenics, is to be able to be brought back to life again at a later date. All you are doing with keeping their DNA is creating replicas.Why not simply digitize someone's DNA and store it in the "Cloud" forever? Wouldn't reconstructing this at some point in the future be akin to eternal life or at least a reprieve from early death due to a subsequently curable disease? This seems like a much better alternative to freezing one's body and hoping the electricity doesn't go off.
Any thoughts?
How many line of code does a single strand of DNA have ? I'm no geneticist, but it's a lot I don't see us 3d printing an entire human ever, things like the brain are far too complex, but organs like the heart are a possibility.Why not simply digitize someone's DNA and store it in the "Cloud" forever? Wouldn't reconstructing this at some point in the future be akin to eternal life or at least a reprieve from early death due to a subsequently curable disease? This seems like a much better alternative to freezing one's body and hoping the electricity doesn't go off.
Any thoughts?
