Science Catches Up To Star Trek - - Again

Apparently the newest thing in mortuary science involves dissolving human bodies with lye, which results in a liquid that can be poured down a drain, and a small amount of powdered remains, that can be buried/saved in urns.

Which is sort of what happened in the classic Star Trek episode By Any Other Name, in which aliens capture the Enterprise and reduce most of the crew into powdery dodecahedrons:



It's also the episode where Scotty uses Scotch Whisky as a weapon:



In any event, it's a good thing that this process wasn't well-known when Keith Richards' father died, or we'd have stories of Keith drinking Dad.