Why do people in Cryogenic sleep not wear clothes?
In a lot of science-fiction stories, there are people who hibernate of sorts in cryosleep. Basically something like the person's body is stored in a container which is then chilled at really really low temperatures so that they can wake up at a much later date. Disregarding whether the person could have actually survived, why do they go to cryogenic sleep without clothes?
In most scenes where a person wakes up from cryogenic sleep, they are depicted without clothing. Is this because the clothing could be destroyed by the extremely low temperatures or some other reason? If it can preserve a human body so that he/she can wake up at a later date, it should be possible to preserve clothing right?
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1 answer
The main function of clothing is to hinder the flow of heat. The last thing you want to do when putting people into cryogenic sleep is to hinder the flow of heat. Quite the opposite: You want to have perfect control of the temperature on the skin.
So, you say, why not put on some special clothing that conducts heat well? Well, the insulation effect is not just coming from the clothes material itself, it also comes from the air it encloses. When you enter the cryogenic tank with your special tank clothes, it is almost certain that somewhere there will be a pocket of air that's caught in the clothes and not driven out by the cryogenic fluid. And that will insulate you.
OK, but what if you find a way to reliably get all air reliably moved out completely, so your suit is completely filled with cryogenic fluid? Well, the most efficient heat transport mechanism is convection, and that is what the cryogenic chambers will use as well. The clothes will prevent that convection to reach your skin, and therefore the cryogenic substance in between clothes and body itself will act as thermal insulation. Note that on normal use, also the air acts as insulation only because it is held by the clothes.
Well, OK, so let's make an elastic metal body suit that's actually "vacuumed" directly onto the body, with absolutely nothing in between the suit and the skin. That should finally work, right?
Well, probably. But I'd expect that experience to be so unpleasant that you'd really prefer being naked.
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