Welcome to a mind-boggling possibility

Du Hong, writer of books for children, died on May 30 of cancer. She is back in the news more than three months later because journalists have found she spent $120,000 to have her brain cryopreserved with US-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation in the hope of "coming back to life" with the help of future technology, say, half a century later. Neuro-cryopreservation means keeping a person's brain in liquid nitrogen at about minus 196 degrees Centigrade.

The idea of reviving life comes from nature. Certain types of pear trees can lie dormant in winter when temperatures could drop to minus 33 C only to resume all life activities after temperatures return to normal; some apple trees can survive even minus 46 C. On some temperate beaches, certain kinds of oysters and mussels freeze in the cold night where temperatures can drop to minus 30 C and revive with daylight. These plants and animals only minimize metabolism - the process doesn't stop - which means they are still alive.

Du's case is totally different because she is dead while the above-mentioned creatures are not. Her "revival" in the future will depend on revolutionary technologies about which we have no idea now.