I promise this story about microwaves is interesting.

Despite everything else he accomplished in his quite storied professional career as one of the last independent scientists... Including his work on the Viking mars landers! link To me he will always be the man who invented his own microwave to thaw frozen hamsters. The whole story is worth a watch since Tom Scott does an admirable job of explaining how he went digging up a weird fact expecting to debunk it only to wind up recording an amazing interview with James Lovelock ▶ this video but if you’re impatient the interview with lovelock about cryopreserved hamsters and his "microwave" starts here ▶ this video

The Tom Scott video( ▶ this video ) did a pretty good summary of the Percy Spencer microwave (a giant commercial oven) and the later parallel development by J. E. Lovelock of a small microwave to reheat small mammals for experiments with cryorevival (replacing lamps and hot paddles).

Tom Scott made a great video about it, he even got to the guy who started using microwaves for thawing entire small animals. Before microwaves (diathermic heating) they would use a hot piece of metal, like a large spoon. ▶ this video And yes, you can unfreeze a rock solid rat, then see it walk around. This is why cryogenics was hyped so much, because it sort of works on small animals.

This where I can post Tom Scott’s video on Microwaves, in which James Lovelock is interviewed: ▶ this video Spoiler warning, well you wouldn’t watch it if I didn’t tell you would you.

Yes, Tom Scott is one talented YouTuber. See, for example, his video on microwaving frozen hamsters back to life[0], in which he interviews the 101-year-old J. E. Lovelock, the scientist who did the work back in the fifties. [0] ▶ this video

Tom Scott interviewed him last year in a really wonderful video about microwaves. ▶ this video > I found an article that said "The microwave was invented to heat hamsters humanely in 1950s experiments." And I thought, no it wasn't. ...was it? At over 100 years old, the man was remarkably coherent and healthy. Quite sad to hear he's passed now.

This Tom Scott's video from last year about microwave ovens features a nice interview with Lovelock: ▶ this video

That's purely a size thing iirc. Lot quicker to get enough heat into a mouse to thaw it, than a human. Edit to add an interesting related video: ▶ this video

They already studied this. It sometimes worked with small animals like mice, but fails as organisms get larger. There was a really interesting video about how microwaves were first used to test this: ▶ this video

Someone wrote the following comment then deleted it. I spent 30 minutes on my response and wanted to post it anyway. Apologies if the original comment was deleted by a mod, I hope this is OK to post. ---QUOTE--- My "test" for video generation turning movie making on its head is when a model can add the missing Tom Bombadil chapters to Peter Jackson's LOTR movies. Probably 20 - 30 minutes of HD, aesthetically synced, scripted etc with minimal editing after a detailed prompt and source material. Qualifier - the AI just has to follow the book script, third party tools ok to use for lip syncing and audio :) I said 5 years away last year. Feels like it might be more like 1 - 2 years. What do you think? ---END QUOTE--- My response: I think we're getting into diminishing returns territory with this AI stuff. These video/image generators are impressive but they don't "understand" physical reality and probably never will without a breakthrough. You can see this in the demo videos, the best looking ones are glorified still images and the worst are whenever something physical happens, like the lemon being picked up or the guy eating cereal. These examples may get better, but I really doubt they'll ever look like real unaltered camera footage without adding an understanding of how our physical reality works into the model somehow. For the script generation, Fellowship of the Ring is not a movie script and requires serious interpretation and planning to be converted into one. Especially i

From link "In the mid-1950s, Lovelock experimented with the cryopreservation of rodents, determining that hamsters could be frozen and revived successfully.[14] Hamsters were frozen with 60% of the water in the brain crystallised into ice with no adverse effects recorded. Other organs were shown to be susceptible to damage.[15]" And there's a Tom Scott's interview with James Lovelock: ▶ this video

Tom Scott has a video on microwaves where he interviews James Lovelock about the frozen hamsters: * ▶ this video Lovelock passed away a year later (in 2022): * link