Chapter 69: The Coming Cleanup

For Li Mengyan's sentimentality, Du Jin can't say anything to comfort, after all, he has not experienced the real military life, and he doesn't know how to talk about the friendship between comrades-in-arms, I'm afraid it will backfire, compared to Li Mengyan's focus, Du Jin is very interested in the frozen dormancy of this world.

In the present world, cryodormancy technology has a certain foundation, but only the basics, and the experiment is limited to small mammals such as mice, as for humans, there is still a very large distance to reach this technical level, as far as the reality is concerned, the current development of cryobiology is still difficult to achieve the preservation of complete individuals like in science fiction movies, more or the cell level of monomers, such as embryos, stem cells, mammalian cells, antibodies, tissue sections and rodent organs.

When the tissue cools, the water from the cell enters the space outside the cell, so the cell that is cooling is actually contracting rather than exploding. Secondly, the volume of ice is only 9% larger than that of water, while cells are more elastic, so they can safely withstand increases or decreases in volume, as well as the presence of a certain amount of ice inside the cell. Third, cryobiology has learned to fill cells, tissues, or entire bodies with cryoprotectants, substances that minimize the formation of ice crystals during freezing. Coupled with the optimal controlled cooling scheme, scientists decades ago succeeded in mastering the technique of freezing (vitrification, to be precise) and thawing embryos and entire organs, only for the entire human body, the instantaneous lethality of this technique is almost 99.9%.

From a technical point of view, cryonics is a way to put an organism in pause – into a state of suspended animation – in order to bring it back to life in the future. To achieve this "pause", freezing techniques require the organism to be cooled to very low temperatures. Note that freezing is not the only possible method, just one of them. Perhaps in the future science will discover ways to induce long-term suspended animation without the need to cool the body, but not yet, cryogenic technology is currently the only viable commercial method.

Why do we need to freeze? The answer is simple. Because our body has an unpleasant characteristic. They're dead, and no one likes it, but most people prefer to hide their unpleasantness with all sorts of excuses about why they need to accept it. However, some brave people refuse to do so. Instead, they acknowledge the problem and try to use science and technology to eradicate it, or at least mitigate it. Cryonics is one of the tools invented by these brave people for the benefit of humanity. Other tools that you may be more familiar with are – defibrillators, heart-lung machines, pacemakers, organ transplants, vaccines, and antibiotics. They all stem from the same motivation – to increase everyone's chances of survival.

Of course, at the current level of scientific and technological development, there is no guarantee that anyone cryopreserved today will be able to be resurrected in the future (or, according to cryoscience, resurrected). It is intellectually dishonest to claim that cryogenic technology guarantees anything. However, unlike any other technology, cryonics does offer a chance of resuscitation, it may be small, but the non-zero chance is still better than zero, especially when it is applied to an infinitely valuable asset – a person's life, which, by the way, can be seen not only as life insurance, but also as the "ambulance of the future". This trait may not be relevant to most of us, because we are still healthy, but for some people, the question of life and death is even more pressing – those who only live for a few weeks or months. They already knew that modern medical technology would not be able to save them, so their only hope for survival was medicine in the distant future, and cryosurgery was their only chance to benefit from it.

There are two mainstream reference techniques for cryogenic hibernation:

Slow cooling usually adopts a "two-step method", that is, the first step is to cool the biological sample to -80°C at a slower cooling rate for a period of time, and then the second step is to put the biological sample that has been in a -80°C state directly into the liquid nitrogen tank (-196°C) for long-term cryogenic storage. The essence of the slow cooling method is to use a slower cooling rate, so that the water in the cells gradually detached from the cells during the cooling process, so as to reduce the probability of ice crystal formation in the cells, so as to improve the survival rate of the cells. Its advantage is that the concentration of the cryoprotectant used is low, only about 3%-20%, but it is easy to cause cold damage and osmotic imbalance.

Rapid cooling preservation, that is, the vitrification method, is the process of using a high concentration of frozen diluent to cool down at a very fast rate, so that there is not enough time to form ice crystal nuclei in the solution and directly transform into formless glass-like solids. The advantage of this method is that it does not use a programmed cryometer, which is easy and fast to operate, and reduces damage, but because a large number of cryoprotectants need to be added during the cooling process, up to 40-60% v/v, these cryoprotectants often have a certain toxicity to kill internal cells, and because of the vitrification process, in order to ensure that the entire biological sample can be quickly cooled both inside and outside, it is necessary to reduce the size of the sample and increase the contact area with the outside ultra-low temperature environment (such as liquid nitrogen). Therefore, for the time being, this is only applicable to the storage of small-size, small-metered biological samples, and only UL units.

It's just that in terms of the current progress of experiments, the former will inevitably let the cells die before the cells go to sleep, and the latter will let the cells quickly "euthanize", in short, the gap with the mature and large-scale use of dormancy technology is not generally large, it is a gap that may not necessarily be crossed in several eras, of course, this is only a large-scale use, M country, polar bear, Xia country and other countries, its technical background can already touch the threshold of this technology that can send a very small number of people to the future.

And at this moment, Du Jin found a somewhat blurry halo from the observation window in the cabin suddenly appeared, which was particularly conspicuous in the mostly black space, Li Mengyan followed Du Jin's line of sight and also noticed the halo, and she naturally recognized what it was:

"Subspace Leap? Could it be the Federation's Emergency Response Force? But in such a short period of time..........."

Li Mengyan thought about it for a while, and then guessed the identity of this unknown ship:

"This is the recovery force of the Unity Church, damn it, let Ren Chao drive out of this area immediately."

After that, Li Mengyan rushed towards the direction of the bridge, Du Jin didn't react at first, but fortunately, Li Mengyan had previously reduced unnecessary attention, otherwise her identity would not be able to withstand the investigation, so she removed the exoskeleton armor on her body in advance, and Du Jin did not have so many concerns, of course, this has a lot to do with his lack of awareness in this regard, in short, although the armor on Du Jin's body was not damaged a lot, it was more than enough to catch up with Li Mengyan, and after running to her side, Du Jin asked:

"Mengyan, did you find any problems just now? Why did you run all of a sudden? ”

Li Mengyan didn't stop, but replied with a slight breath:

"At that time, the clean-up force of the United Church was dedicated to the recovery of blood seals and the removal of those in the know, and the warship we were on was the closest to the "Eden", with their "mistakenly kill a hundred and not let go of a single person", we will inevitably be attacked, and we must let this ship get out of its attack range as soon as possible! ”

"But? We're so close to the Ganymede colony, and they dare to attack us directly? Not afraid of causing diplomatic trouble? ”

Du Jin asked a little incredulously, at this time the two happened to meet Xiang Yuan, who had just come down from the bridge, he looked at Li Mengyan who was panting, and hurriedly stepped forward to support her, and asked by the way:

"Less....... Captain Lee, what's wrong with you? ”

Li Mengyan gently blocked Xiang Yuan's hand and said to him:

"Quick! Take me to the bridge! I have one thing I have to say! ”

Listening to his commander's anxious tone, Xiang Yuan didn't care about the surprised expressions of several crew members around him, and immediately took Li Mengyan and Du Jin to the elevator directly to the bridge, and used his authority to take the two of them in, and after entering the elevator, Li Mengyan answered Du Jin's question just now:

"These church lackeys are dressed in the skin of the Federal Investigation Force, and having trouble is also a headache for those officers and soldiers of the Federation, and it will not affect them, even if they are discovered, do you think Du Jin, the governor of the Callista colony, will risk breaking with the Federation and tens of thousands of believers within himself to avenge a small warship?"

Du Jin realized that he had underestimated the degree of infiltration of the United Church into the Federation and the weakness of his understanding of politics, and according to Li Mengyan's explanation, he really realized how big the enemy he was about to face, and this realization made him have a profound impact on his future behaviors, of course, these are all later words.

And Xiang Yuan also realized what Li Mengyan was referring to, he knew very well the cruelty and courage of these clean-up troops, they used the original Pioneer warship, after being infected by the blood seal, after these churches' subordinates Ralph withdrew, they were almost destroyed in front of the outpost of the Border Legion, although the warship that destroyed them was destroyed by the countermeasures cannon fodder of the outpost in the next second, but for these crazy believers who dared to hold a meeting at will, Xiang Yuan suddenly shuddered.

The elevator quickly arrived at the position of the bridge, and after Ren Chao received the news from Xiang Yuan in advance, he rushed to this side, but he was followed by a strange young woman, and Xiang Yuan on the side naturally knew that the woman was the inspector sent by the Callisto Colonial Command.