molecules of ancient ‘beings’

welcome to A2k

sorry, but I've got no clue how to help you there. good luck on your search.

Shakespeare suggests that great Caesar's dust is stopping a bung hole.

A bung? Naw.

"Even imperial Caesar, turned to clay
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."


'T'ain't no bung, unless it's a cask full of wind. Some think Richard III might have stopped a few bungs in his time, though...

'Scuse me -- make that "imperious."

Tess - I am guessing at what you're getting at. I am not a scientist. I have no link. But...........

Soon after the big bang, all the molecules that make up the current universe were already in existence. On earth, we are pretty much a closed system. Sometimes a piece of rock from outside our world lands and some specific molecules pass into or through our little world. So, we live in a never ending cycle or reuse. The universe is the ultimate recycler. So, on earth we've had billions of people pass through history (trillions?). When they die, their molecules disperse (though that may get harder with modern burial practices) into the world around them and become recycled into other things - trees, grass, animals, other humans. So, you may have a molecule that once inhabited a cave man, Napolean, Lenin, a mammoth, or whomever in your body.

I think of it like this, even in life, when you move through the world you are in a constant state of exchange with the molecules that surround you.

There was something on NPR about this not long ago. I'll see if I can hunt up a link for you. (May take a day or so. I have other projects going, too. But it was a Charles Colwich feature.)

I did a quick search and could find nothing, Merry.

So far, me neither. Maytbe we're looking in the wrong places. I distinctly remember the promo for this item. It's possible, of course, that it's no longer online and so no link is available. But I'll loook some more later.

Take a cup of water from the ocean, and it has H2O molecules that were part of Shakespeare, Hitler, Jesus, Stalin, and Leonardo da Vinci.

It just shows that there are more molecules in a cup of water than there are cups of water in the ocean....

Drew, it MIGHT have those molecules. I don't think you're guaranteed to find them though.

Exactly, but I believe they will not be molecules as those are a group of atoms in a definite arrangement held together . Probability of those still hold together is very small; However, without going to Q physics , we all are just a number of atoms . Our earth is very closed and small environment when it comes to universe, therefore we are just a little bricks made of our ancestors. I am looking for a link which will bring some scientifical data to this claim.

I do suppose it would depend on the actual existence of those persons.