German Version: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/die-atomaren-bausteine-unserer-körper-norbert-keimling/
My body consists of approx. 99% hydrogen, oxygen and carbon atoms.The other 38 elements built into my body (including nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, sodium, potassium and chlorine) account for just 1% (1).Considering my weight of 70 kg, I consist of the unimaginably large number of
7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms (in other words, 7 * 10 ^ 27).
Before I proudly enjoy my 7 * 10 ^ 27 atoms, I have to consider: As early as 1953, researchers discovered that the atomic building blocks of us humans are permanently exchanged.Depending on the study, most of the atoms in our human body are replaced every 5-7 years.98% of all atoms are replaced after just one year.The exchange takes place at different speeds (2):
- the water stored in the body is exchanged every 16 days (after all, we consist of approx. 72% water)
- the atoms of the skin every 4 weeks
- the atoms of the liver every 6 weeks
- Calcium and phosphorus in the bones usually every 8-11 months (through crystal growth and dissolution processes)
Applied to my body, this means that 50 kg of my weight was not part of my body 3 weeks ago and only very few of my 7 * 10 ^ 27 atoms were mine 10 years ago.
More plastically: three weeks ago, only the mass of my head and right leg were part of my body.A year ago, only the mass of my two hands belonged to me, the rest is new (3).What was still mine then is now installed elsewhere.
If there is constancy in me, it is not material.Anyone who identifies with their body will therefore easily come across the Theseus paradox (4), which has already been discussed by ancient philosophers and even in financial matters.
In the first century, the historian Plutarch introduced a famous philosophical paradox.The paradox goes like this.A ship–“The Ship of Theseus”–was returning home to Athens from Crete.As it sailed, the wooden planks that made up its structure gradually decayed.The sailors kept the ship afloat by replacing the decaying planks, one by one, using fresh wood that they were carrying onboard.Eventually, the sailors replacedallof the wooden planks that made up the the ship’s original structure, so that the new form of the ship had no material in common with the old form.The question followed: was the ship thesameship through the change? If so, what made it thesameship, rather than a new ship, a different ship?
cited from @Jesse_Livermore (4)
If almost all of my components have been replaced in the past 10 years, am I still me? In any case, this change hardly matches my intuitively anchored idea of a static human body whose components only dissolve after death.The body rather resembles a river through which matter constantly flows or a fire which constantly transforms it."We are constantly dressing our personality in new flesh" (5).
Exchange Processes of our Atoms
When I look at the flow of my atomic components, the boundaries between myself and others also blur.
For example, when I breathe, oxygen and glucose are converted to energy and water.The water is also excreted via the air we breathe, after all 400g of water per day, which at 20,000 breaths corresponds to approx. 0.02g of water per breath (6).
0.02g of water corresponds to 0.000028% of my body, which roughly corresponds to 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms (2 * 10 ^ 21) or 670,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules (6.7 * 10 ^ 20).I breathe out an unimaginable amount of my atoms with every single breath.
A more plastic example: On my 10-minute walk to the bakery, I breathe in and out about 150 times.So I give approx
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules (10 ^ 23)
from my body into the environment.A large part of the molecules that are not stopped by the corona protective mask are presumably blown away by the wind and widely distributed through the water cycle.With another part, something much more interesting should happen on my way to the bakery through busy streets:
If out of 1 million exhaled water molecules only one molecule is inhaled by a fellow human being and out of 1 million inhaled water molecules only one is absorbed by another living being through absorption of the mucous membranes in the lungs and throat, about 100 billion molecules (100,000,000,000) would change hands on my short way to the baker alone. If this assumption is even roughly correct, more atomic building blocks would be exchanged between us in only 10 minutes than there are people on the planet. In a room with many people, such as a bakery, an even greater exchange takes place.
Countless components that were part of my body before I visited the bakery are now built into other creatures.Of course, vice versa.With every breath we build an unimaginable number of atoms into our bodies that were previously in other people, animals and plants.And breathing is not the biggest exchange process in the body.Seen in this light, it would not surprise me if every human being carries within him at all times components of every animal and plant species on our planet.
If I consider that my 50 kg of water alone have been completely replaced over 900 times in the last 39 years, and with this I have released 45.6 tons of matter into the environment (which should have spread over a large area by now - just think how radioactive elements have spread worldwide after Chernobyl or f*ckushima), I ask myself whether there can be a reader of this text who does not carry any former components of mine within himself and vice versa.
Probably not: Our entire earth's atmosphere consists of 3 * 10 ^ 22 approx. Liters of air (9).Considering that my 45.6 tons of water released in the past decades alone contained 4.6 * 10 ^ 30 atoms and, for reasons of simplification, let us imagine that half of these atoms are evenly distributed within the atmosphere (the other half could have ended up in the oceans or the earth), every single liter of air on our planet would contain 75 million(!) former atoms of mine.One liter corresponds to about one breath.
I like the thought that with every breath I take, I build millions of atoms into my body that already belonged to Aristotle, Gandhi, Goethe, Jesus or Buddha (*) himself.In this awareness, a special pleasure can be discovered in every single breath.Especially in the difficult times of Corona I like thinking about the strong connection between all creatures and our environment, which shows itself on such a small level :-)
(*) this of course also applies to Graham, Buffett, your neighbors or any other person you like...
Sources to look up and read on
- https://foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Ch03_1.php
- https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-most-of-the-atoms-in-your-body-to-be-replaced-by-others/answers/624373? srid = hXE0 & share = 1(according to Bhardwaj 2006; Spalding 2005, Bergmann 2009, Spalding 2005) presumably atoms of the neurons remain in the neocortex, sometimes heart muscle cells and enamel atoms over the lifespan in the body)
- http://www.arsmartialis.com/index.html?name=http://www.arsmartialis.com/faq/m_konto.html
- http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2014/11/dilution-index-evolution-and-the-shiller-cape-anatomy-of-a-post-crisis-value-trap/
- https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/der-fluss-des-lebens/1141896.html
- https://recreational-engineer.com/how-much-water-do-we-produce-when-we-breathe/
- https://www.live-counter.com/wassertropfen-atome/
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atemfrequenz
- http://www.hk-phy.org/articles/caesar/caesar_e.html
