I just read a new that said something in the lines of “A 46,000-year-old worm found in Siberian permafrost was brought back to life, and started having babies”. How does this happen? Why is it so hard to do this with humans and other animals? Thanks in advance!
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Theoretically, anything living could be frozen and later thawed to no apparent ill effect. So long as the ice that forms inside them does so “correctly”, ie, freezing without forming sharp ice crystals that can burst cells. Freezing like this is easier to do the faster and more completely you freeze something, and as smaller things can freeze faster than larger things.
So, in the case of this worm, it got frozen inside the ice fast enough to not be damaged and was thus preserved entirely.
This is doable with larger creatures as well. By injecting special chemicals that prevent ice crystals from forming, small rodents (such as hamsters and rats) have been frozen solid and later thawed to no apparent ill effect. Even larger creatures, such as humans, are too big to have the chemical diffuse throughout our bodies enough to prevent ice crystal formation, so this wouldn’t work on us.
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