The Vitrification reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Vitrification

By contrast with freezing, which produces crystallization and other structural alterations, vitrification cools substances to form a glass without disturbing their structure.

In the context of Cryonics, Vitrification is intended to fully maintain the information encoded in the patient's brain. Early cryonicists were frozen rather than vitrified, leading to crystalization of water within the cells. This crystalization often leads to shards of ice which damages cells.

This is the "Vitrification" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.