Cryo-regeneration may not be a science fiction anymore. You may see awakened frozen people on the street in the future.

A Korean research team has developed a technology that enables researchers to watch and analyze liquid with graphene, one-atom-thick slice of graphite, for the first times in the world.

It is generally regarded impossible to bring frozen humans back to life again because body cells are destroyed in the freezing in the thawing process.

However, if scientists could find what is happening to cell liquid during the process with the technology, they would eventually succeed in reviving frozen humans, according to the team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, about 160 kilometers south of Seoul.

Scientists have been making efforts to find how to analyze the liquid at the atomic level but without tangible outcomes. Transmission electron microscopy is used to image solid structures but achieving the same resolution for fluid specimens is tricky. The microscopes require a vacuum to keep air molecules from interfering with the irradiating electronic beam. And vacuums cause liquids to vaporize.

However, the team led by Lee Jeong-yong has been successful in encapsulating the liquid in graphene, the hexagon-shaped carbon atom. The graphene capsule of the 0.34 nanometers, the thinnest-ever transparent substance, has enabled researchers to check crystallized substances on the atomic level inside the capsule as fish can be seen in a transparent fishbowl.

The landmark technology is expected to help analyze viruses far smaller than white and red blood cells in the human body, the reactions between electrolytes and electrodes in batteries and the process of creation of gallstones in the human body.

The research was put on the online edition of the global journal, Science, on April 6 and published in its April issue.