back to article ISS space bio-experiment freezer to return on Discovery

Consumer pundits have long speculated that we would one day - perhaps even by now - have intelligent fridges which could be remotely controlled and monitored from afar using advanced communications links. But they couldn't realise that these fridges would become crammed with possibly-deadly organisms warped by extraterrestrial …

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  1. 4a$$Monkey
    Thumb Up

    Best story of the week

    Oh I thought it was Friday for a second :(

  2. Peter Ford

    It's very hard to understand you ...

    ... when talk with your tongue in your cheek like that :)

    Of course, if any of the major newspapers wrote such an article, that would be scaremongering, wouldn't it?

    "NASA Space Station Creates Mutant ... er ... blood and stuff" - Daily Mail

  3. Edward Miles
    Happy

    I for one...

    welcome our new Six Hundred Foot Invulnerable PMT Lady overlords!

  4. Lloyd
    Alien

    Hold on now

    They need a freezer? And they're in space, which is like a big cold vaccuum isn't it? Couldn't they have hung it outside the door?

    Incidentally, who's on board the ISS at the mo? It's not Ben Grimm, Reid Richards, Sue & Jonny Storm is it?

  5. Frank

    re. PANDORA

    Is there any hope in the bottom of the freezer?

  6. breakfast Silver badge
    Flame

    Sinister powers?

    I think you overstate matters with the sinister powers thing, that's just silly. Probably it will just release some kind of mutated bacteria that trigger the zombie apocalypse.

  7. Anonymous Custard
    Boffin

    Satellite control

    OK, why does this thing need to be satellite controlled from the ground? What the hell's wrong with a "super-freeze" switch on the front that one of the ISS crew just presses when asked?

    Or am I just over-simplifying things here?

  8. Chris Collins

    @Loyd

    Space has no molecules, so in order to transfer heat you can only use radiation. To make something cold you need to remove energy from it to somewhere else. So a hot thing in space, e.g. the Sun, doe not instantly freeze. Lrn2science.

  9. goggyturk

    There is an upside

    Look on the bright side, a zombie apocalypse will deal with obesity and overpopulation in a single go (the fat ones, being slower, will be more likely to be caught by the shuffling hordes).

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Quick phone the Daily Flail....

    ...this will make the Bird flu (rememeber that) epidemic look like the common cold....

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    @By Chris Collins

    Actually a hot thing in space will radiate IR as Light until it ccols to background temp.. that is until it gets into sunlight where it will absorb IR light and get very hot...cycle for each orbit..

    sci4u..

  12. Tom

    @Chris Collins

    Loyd is correct about the temperature in space near earth as such. I can't find a source for a good figure near the earth, but cooling was a significant issue for Apollo 13. Substantial cooling will occur simply from radiation in space, so an area away from the heating support systems for any vehicle in space will cool substantially. What it this doesn't take into account is transport to and from the surface of the earth, and for that part of the journey both substantial insulation and cooling would be required. (Although I've never understood the desire to bring potentially deadly materials back to earth. Far better to study them in space where if something goes hideously wrong you can try to contain it, maybe even launch it into the sun.)

    Oh, and the sun doesn't freeze because the gravitational energy of the sun keeps it in a plasma state in which nuclear fusion occurs, which also adds to the temperature of the sun.

    Yeah, I was an astro major a long long time ago, although I eventually gave it up because arithmetic and I don't get along.

    One last note, conduction via metal is the most efficient heat transfer mechanism. Which means that a box attached to an array of metal fins that radiate the heat away would actually be the fastest means to transfer heat away in space.

  13. Murray Pearson

    Hanging it out the door

    Would be a really lousy way of keeping it cold. You see, there's that big bright yellow thing called the sun that would cause the freezer's external temperatures to fluctuate wildly.

  14. Ilya Stavinsky

    UFOs in our Space

    "Aliens live in our Earth's atmosphere"

    For the first time in human history, I present here incontrovertible evidence of existence of tens of thousands of UFO in the Earth's atmosphere, which can be seen by any person in any part of the world at any time...

    http://sites.google.com/site/socialcapital1/Home/aliens

  15. Lloyd
    Alert

    Bleedin' 'ell

    Do you spuds not understand irony? You'd think that the Fantastic Four reference might have hinted at a lack of seriousness but apparently not.

    And by the way, it's a double L, like the bank or the insurance company or the chemist or the gym or the Prime Minister or the composer, in fact like everything famous with the same name except Grossman who's a septic and thus doesn't count. *sigh*

  16. Graham Marsden
    Joke

    Six Hundred Foot Invulnerable PMT Lady

    Don't panic!

    I've been working in secret on a 500 Megaton Evening Primrose Oil bomb!

  17. Wize

    @Ilya Stavinsky

    "These drawings shows exactly 90% what people will see in the night sky"

    Something blurred to a state where you can't tell what you are looking at?

  18. Martin

    That's Entertainment !

    "the big chill-down of the space freezer for loading into Discovery was a major event in its hometown of Birmingham"

    Those long Winter evenings must just fly by.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    So...

    ...with this fridge of bio-death in tow lets damned well hope the shuttle doesn't do another one of those re-entry burn ups (OOOHHH too soon!?) and send the bio-matter flinging across a latitudinal line along south U S of A showering down on its unsuspecting inhabitants.

    Or do we care? And would we be able to tell the difference if they do become infected with astro-zombification viruses?

    Frickin southern redneck merkins. I saw that Top Gear special when they drove those cars across the deep south with 'Nascar Sucks' plastered all over one of their cars - they all ignant dawg.

  20. E

    @Lloyd

    Johnny Storm must be sad, wot?

  21. Tom
    Heart

    @ other Tom

    I beg to differ, metal is not the optimum medium for heat transfer in regards to thermic transport properties, just the easiest to work with all things considered. granted, you can create a gradient to draw heat out with more reliable and constanr results, but over all speed and heat conductivity cannot be beaten by oil and polymers there of.

    Maybe you mean metal is by far the most efficiant dissapator of heat? I think that was a very open comment, and probably not worth me thinking about it, but hey, it's wednesday, i'm bored.

    all my love, other other Tom

  22. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Joke

    So, about 28 days later

    Does that mean that that film is actually a documentary ?

  23. Tim

    @ Pascal

    No, it isn't. Yet.

    However, feel free to give this topic a look in about 4 weeks or so, and see how many zombies are posting. Careful you don't log into Slashdot instead, it could be very confusing.

    Tim#3

  24. Alistair
    Coat

    Shame on you El Reg

    You obviously never served time in one of our fine higher education establishments. If you had you would have known how the contents of your average student house fridge can mutate, over time, into the most hideously deformed and unidentifiable biological waste of the lowest order.

    Mines the one with my name stitched into the laundry label by my mum ..

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