The Odds That You'll Breathe a Single Molecule of Air That Once Traveled Through the Lungs of Jesus.

Thanks for the vote up the vine! Yea, there are some pretty far out ideas in cosmology, seriously no pun intended, but in the end all of them based on observation. One of the key observations we've made about interstellar space in the 20th century is that everything is moving away from one another. We combine this with the knowledge that over time everything moves to a lower energy state.

When we extrapolate backwards in time we find that matter and energy move to a higher state, clump up together in the opposite of dispersion, and move much closer together. The farther back we look, the closer, hotter, and denser the universe appears.

It takes the world's best physicists to extrapolate all the way back to one planck second (5.39124e-44 seconds, a very, very, very small unit of time) but when they do they find that the universe was an extremely hot, dense, and tiny object even smaller than ourselves or the atoms we know of. That is of course, just the currently accepted theory. Indeed it may change, or indeed it may not. The Big Bang explanation will only hold as long as it can accurately predict what we observe.

Fortunately knowledge is free, and by analyzing all the known observations (and making a few yourself) you might find that you agree with the idea. Or if you discover observations that seem to counter big bang theory, I'm sure you can propose your own explanations. Thats the cool part about science, you, me, and anyone can be involved as long as their explanations are justified.

If you ever want to disagree with something, that's fine. But if you want to convince others of your opinion and/or justify your conclusions, please state why.

Mankind trying to explain the universe is similar to a pair of ants sitting on top of an anthill in the middle of the Sahara Desert and wondering what the rest of the world might be like.

I've head this analogy before, but what are the real similarities between ants and men here? How far away can each of them sense?

Ants are 4mm across. The earth is 12,756 kilometers in diameter, or 12,756,000,000 millimeters across. (its circumference is 40,000,000,000 millimeters)

We could stretch 10 billion ants around the circumference of the world. The entire planet is 3,189,000,000 times bigger than their body. Of course, lacking any technology to sense beyond their immediate chemical surroundings, we doubt that ants can sense or understand the world as we do. We immediately doubt that an ant would know of something 3.2 billion times bigger than itself. I would doubt that it could ever sense something that is even a million times bigger than its body.

But what about humans? The average height of a Homo sapien is 1650 millimeters. Yet despite our comsologically miniscule size, we are aware of the structure, shape, composition, and light coming from objects 13 billion light years away. (source) 1 light year is 9.46e18 millimeters. 13 billion light years is the equivalent of 1.23e29 millimeters. Divide this distance by the average size of the human and we get an impressive ratio of a distance that is 74500000000000000000000000 times bigger than we are.

74.5 heptillion times bigger, and yet we still know of it. Perhaps there is an upper limit and a lower limit to what we can know, but I think you severely underestimate how much more sophisticated our sense of scale (and technology) is than ants.

Thanks presentense, and I wouldn't doubt that the world would be a simpler place without him, but the point is that you can apply this kind of math to anyone who ever lived, fun stuff.

oh duh!

Thanks dude, I figured I missed a step in there somewhere.

Article corrected

Thank you for your concerns Fry8HalR, but the numbers pretty much have to rely on biology if nothing else.

When a liviving being (animal,person, or plant) breathes in, all of those molecules are not breathed out

This assumption is true, but not entirely relevant. Air is about 77% nitrogen. And all of that nitrogen is completely inert to us. It comes right in, and goes right out. 21% of air is oxygen, but suprisingly we don't even use all of this with each breath. For humans at least, very little of the air we breath gets stored in our bodies or even converted to solids. Remember that even most of the air we use gets converted to carbon dioxide, a gas that gets expelled right back out again.

Its also very true that plants store gases as solids (carbon dioxide to sugars) but through processes of decomposition, forest fires, and even cellular respiration they can get rid of these gases again.

There are also processes that dissolve gas in liquids, ultimately filling our ocean, but when we get down to it, even if we made the assumption that 99.99999999% of all the gases that every came into contact with this 2000 year old guy's lungs were now unavailable, there would still be an average of 4 molecules for every breath we take, and a near certain chance of encountering them in one's lifetime.

The number I proposed is the highest possible estimate. It's pretty hard to imagine any number higher because the factors I've used represent the realistically optimum conditions. The whole point of using such a high number is that we can detract from it by any process we can imagine affects the total. If we found out for instance, that 50% of his gases are likely stored in plant material, we could multiply 4.6e12 x 50% and we would still get a ridiculoulsy high number per breath.

As John said earlier, that's nature's recycling in action!

First, the average age for a human used is incorrect.

The part of the equation where I factor in how long we live no longer applies. For our purposes all we can do is assume that the dude lived for 32 years. The odds that, in a single one of your breaths, you'll encounter a single molecule of air that once passed through J's lungs remain astronomically high. Factoring in the length of your own lifetime shouldn't matter too much.

Whether he was divine or not is what people argue.

I completely agree with you there, I maintain that he probably did exist, but definitely was not divine, but thats another can of worms.

1. Thank you for your thoughts cathy.one. I wish that everyone who set out to disprove Jesus ended up believing in his divinity, but it looks like Lee Strobel's case is out of the ordinary. Historians can prove that it is likely that Jesus might have existed, but as for his claims about divinity, they remain dubious. I have no doubt that there were numerous exaggerations about his performances and ideology. 8 of the 12 gospels concerning his works were thrown out, simply because they did not all agree with one another.

2. Satan believes in Jesus? So I'm supposed to take the credibility of one imaginary assumed being to vouch for the existence of another imaginary assumed being? In that case, I'm sure Santa believes in Jesus too.

3. The wind I feel on my face is a bunch of moving air molecules extering pressure and causing the corpuscles in my skin to fire neural impulses to my brain.

4. I'm sorry but this last statement won't fly with me.

just have a little faith, and ask Him into your heart and I promise that you will know for sure!

I'm on my way to becoming a pharmacist. If I ever gave my my patients a pill that I knew wouldn't do anything, and then asked them to just have faith that it would work, I would be fired. Faith is nothing without proof. I have to back up my words with proof of what they do, and be able to demonstrate my explanations. If god, or Allah, or Zeus, or Brahma, or Quetzacoatl, or Yaweh, or Santa, or Satan, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster really wanted me to believe in them, they could clear the whole matter up and appear right now.

Don't worry, I've taken into account that 2000 years worth of wind, or even a few decades worth of wind, could effectively disperse air molecules rather uniformly over time, meaning that the odds of encountering one of those air molecules should be rather uniform anywhere in the world.

jesusitshot, you have some very interesting assumptions that definitely do change a small part of our odds, but let's explore why none of them are particularly relevant.

[some of the oxygen] would of been mixed with hydrogen to form water.

here, you're right, some of the oxygen we breathe might end up mixed with hydrogen to form water. But only 21% of our air is oxygen to begin with. We don't even use most of that oxygen anyway. It's atmospheric concentration is important so that its distributed where it needs to go in the body, but our body only uses a fraction of that oxygen per breath. An arguably small percentage of the oxygen we breath out will eventually mix with hydrogen to form water, and this small percentage is multiplied by the 21% to affect the final number. Even if we were under the unrealistic assumption that 100% of the oxygen we breathed out turned to hydrogen, we would still be left with 77% of the air we breathed out as being able to circulate in the atmosphere, the possibilities. The odds would remain astronomically high.

those molecules of air into carbon dioxide

You're arguing semantics. Carbon dioxide is still a component of air. Just because the atoms went into another person's lungs and got changed (at a rate of about 5% of the oxygen converted) doesn't mean they weren't still in someone else's lungs at some point. The atoms just change positions, they are still the same atoms. We also have to consider that at least 77% of the air that goes into our lungs is nitrogen, and that is totally inert to organisms like us (but not nitrogen-fixing bacteria)

To make matters worst the combustion engines has burnt L amount of air molecules that have changed to carbon monoxide.

Aaaaand carbon monoxide is still a gas, still freely floating around and at least the oxygen atom of carbon monixide perhaps once passed through the ancient lung.

then used in the process of Photosynthesis

The carbon dioxide (a very small component of the gas we breathe) goes through a few processes in plants and becomes sugar. What happens to this sugar when the plant dies? It gets liberated as carbon dioxide or monoxide again when there is a forest fire, or when the plant decomposes over time due to the action of bacteria. Sure some of the gas will get trapped, but it will be liberated all over again.

polution

I'm not entirely sure how polution takes away air, I was under the impression that at the most it simply, pollutes it, by introducing extra chemicals

earth quakes and cave in's in mines

Within 1 year of a volcano eruption, the dust and gases from it are uniformly spread around the world. We're operating under the assumption that if you take a breath outside, it flies away forever in the wind and becomes dispersed more and more uniformly over space. Cave collapses and...earthquakes... may trap air in highly localized events. But if we have a gas that is uniformly distributed all over the planet (even in small amounts) its nearly impossible to trap all of it with localized events. Would it decrease the amount available to us? Sure, but it wouldn't even come close to affecting the fact that we're still encountering some dead guy's molecules with each breath.

titanic

In case you didn't notice, whenever a ship sinks all the water rushes in and replaces air. By the time its going down, there's so little air left, the ship is no longer buoyant.

That damn butterfly in brazil

Is inhaling, then exhaling...so? It's still the same atoms coming in and out. Creatures like you, me, and butterflies put out as much gas as we take in. Sure we may change the composition of that gas, but that atoms remain the same.

It would be a real miracle for a molecule of the air that Jesus Christ had breathed [to be breathed by our lungs]

Um, not actually it would be more of a miracle if we didn't encounter it. So much gas passed through his lungs, (or anyone else you want to imagine) and so much dispersion has taken place over time, that we'd have to imagine 99.999999999% of that gas somehow got trapped away just for it to not be available per breath. That's not just a number pulled out of the air (no pun intended) its got the math behind it.

I made the number the highest possible estimate so we could imagine what might detract from it and apply our assumptions there. Even if we assumed half of all that gas he ever breathed somehow permanently got trapped (a ridiculous assumption already) that would still leave an astronomical liklihood that we encounter his molecules with each breath. Most, in not all of the biological processes we imagine that "trap" gas are really circular processes that eventually release it again. The other mechanical processes that you can imagine (like cave-ins) don't work on a big enough scale to count.

I personally[sic] like to breathe[sic] fresh air

You're conflagrating the idea of recycled air with the pathogenic theory of disease transmission. When someone else sneezes next to you, its not their oxygen, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide atoms in their sneeze that is going to make you sick, its the tiny pathogens suspended in their mucous molecules that happened to be blown out during the sneeze and are momentarily airborn. These pathogens will die off in a few minutes. And the mucous will dry out and drop off. The airmolecules they expelled, whether breathing, or sneezing, or yawning or whatever, even though they came inside someone else's lungs, are completely benign. Ancient air isn't as far down the rabbit hole as it goes. The "fresh" air you're breathing is made of atoms that were inside the lungs of nearly every person in history from thousands of years past. The "fresh" air you're breathing is the same air thats been circulating for 4.5 billion years on this planet. The "fresh" air you're breathing is made of the same atoms that were fused together in the nuclear furnaces of stars and stellar explosions from 4.5-8.5 billion years ago. And everything that makes up the "fresh" air molecules you breath, to your cosmologically young body, is made of the same 13.5 billion year old stuff.

There is more than enough room in our lives for wondering about the crazy things that happen in the universe. If the math is right, its not only plausible that we're sharing the same air molecules, its near certain.

If you want 2 minutes of your life back, don't blame me, I posted it under "odd news" for a reason.

EuropehereIcome, don't worry even I have my doubts. The real point is to let us see the power of atomic numbers in reality. Forget all the fancy stuff, the bottom line is, we recycle alot more than we think. You're sharing your air with everyone else in the world, and at one point or another molecules are inside of you that have been inside nearly everyone else from history. Cool!

Good points Tim, I considered tidal volume, and, at least at rest we're moving very little gas. So imagine then that instead of 6,000 ml of air per breath we only take in and out 300 ml possible on average over our lifetimes (the most ridiculoulsy conservative estimate possible) 300 ml is 5% of 6,000. 5% of that grand total number of air molecules is still a ridiculously large number. (.05 x 4,685,100,000,000 = 2.34e11)

I presented the "highest" possible number of air molecules so analytical people like you and I can with reality and detract conservative percentages from that high value.

I quibble at the term "a mole of air" too.

You can have a mole of anything. A mole of cars, a mole of eggs, a mole of pokemon cards, mole of atoms, or a mole of molecules.

Even with the consideration of the tidal volue, there's no doubt that we're still breathing some of the gas that Jesus exhaled (or Hammurabi, King Tut, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, etc.)

Crazy universe isn't it?

I know, you would think it would involve quantum mechanics right?

Fortunately, atoms can be counted just like anything else. The equations here deal with things on a macroscopic scale, i.e. we can figure out approximately how many atoms are in one of our breaths by some very fundamental equations about gas laws. None of them are extroardinarily complex, and indeed a high school chemistry student could come up with the same answer.

Quantum Mechanics deals with the interaction of subatomic particles on the atomic scale. Atomic interactions happen so fast that we can only generalize their movements with equations of probability. I can definitely see how you would expect atoms and probability to coincide with quantum mechanics, but the particular probabilities that we came up with in this essay deal with the macroscopic world. It is my understanding that Quantum mechanics doesn't really apply on this sort of scale. Although I would love to get a second opinion.

1) because life is long enough that we may entertain ideas that do nothing more than entertain us

2) because I've already dedicated my enough of my brain power to solving the earth's problems for this month. One of my recent articles proposed a plausible solution to ending the war on drugs. If you want you can comment on it here (hopefully after reading it first)

http://rsloan.newsvine.com/_news/2009/04/21/2713267-fighting-a-war-we-cant-win

If you actually read the article you wuold see that the solution it poses would end up benefitting everyone

Wow, I never knew science was such a problem for you. Here's some theories that you can debunk...

1. You need oxygen to survive
2. Matter is composed of atoms
3. a mole is roughly 6.022e23 units of anything you want it to be
4. a mole of gas consists of 22.4 liters of volume
5. You exhale carbon dioxide in your breath
6. Earth's atmospheric Air is 77% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, .5% carbon dioxide, other gases exist in small amounds
7. you are unable to metabolize nitrogen
8. There are 60 seconds in a minute
9. There are 60 minutes in an hour
10. There are 24 hours in a day
11. There are 365 days in a year
12. Radioactive decay happens at predictable rates over time.

Shall I go on or are we done?