Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 14, 2026

Isolation and Cryopreservation of Neonatal Rat Cardiomyocytes
Published on: April 9, 2015
The big freeze may be over: a contracting universe for cryopreservation?
Robert Peter Gale1, Guillermo J Ruiz-Argüelles2
1Department of Medicine, Haematology Research Centre, Division of Experimental Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK. robertpetergale@alumni.ucla.edu.
Abstract:
According to current cosmological theory, the universe will continue to expand indefinitely. If so, it should cool eventually reaching temperatures too cold to sustain life. This theory is commonly referred to as heat-death or the big freeze. Putting aside this potentially unpleasant scenario, unlikely in the lifetime of current readers (about 10 × E + 2500 years from now), freezing, in contrast, has played an important role in hematopoietic cell autotransplants for disease such as plasma cell myeloma and lymphomas. Let us consider how.
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