A chilling first prize: live twice

As competition prizes go, this is easily the most death-defying. A magazine is offering one of its readers a semi-permanent place in a hi-tech deep freeze and with it, a chance to live twice.

The winner of the competition by New Scientist will receive what is being billed as a "second chance at life, rather than the inevitability of death" - the full-body version of a process called cryonic preservation.

When the competition winner dies, their body will be taken to Michigan, in the United States, where the nonprofit making Cryonics Institute will put it into a specially insulated, double-walled fibreglass vessel insulated with special beads and preserve it indefinitely.

Their corpse will be filled with a form of antifreeze and cooled to a temperature where physical decay of the body stops - about minus 78.5C degrees, says the magazine.

"They will be suspended in liquid nitrogen, in a state known as cryonic preservation. When and if medical technology allows, he or she will then be revived and woken to extended life in youthful good health."

Maybe. It is a very slim chance, its proponents admit. Even if the body is frozen immediately after death, the knowledge of how to repair all the damage caused by dying, freezing and thawing is not even close. Neither is the technology, which would have to be able to repair the body cell by cell, and blood vessel by blood vessel.

Several types of living creatures have, it is true, already been frozen to liquid nitrogen temperature and below, where they exhibited no signs of life and experienced no signs of decay. They were then restored to a functioning, normal life.

But the process has never worked on humans or any other mammals of higher intelligence yet, nor does a breakthrough seem imminent, despite millions of dollars being spent on making it a reality.

So, is this something with which the previously respectable New Scientist should be getting involved?

"Cryonics is a fringe science," admits Jeremy Webb, the magazine's editor. "Dozens of people have been frozen. None of them have been brought back. I think that scientists are split down the middle about it.

"If I had to pay for cryonics I would not do it. But if I won it as a prize I would definitely do it. The thought of waking up in a couple of hundred years really appeals.

"I would not say it is tacky. New Scientist is known for its quirky sense of humour. This is right in line with that. It is intended to be partly humorous."

But in case the winner prefers something a little less postmodern and rather more immediately pleasant, the magazine is offering an alternative, truly science-based prize: a holiday to watch the stars at the British observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

"We are calling it the 'live now or later' competition," says Mr Webb.

The winner will be chosen randomly from readers who collect a series of vouchers in the magazine.