Then we have another gas, nitrogen (3 percent), a few smaller jars for calcium (1.5 percent) and phosphorus (1 percent), and tiny doses of potassium, sulfur, sodium, and magnesium. Carbon alone makes up about 18 percent of the human body, something like thirty pounds of an average adult. Then, for each person, I have a big jar of carbon, a major constituent of proteins and fats. The human body is about 60 percent water, so that makes my audience first of all a lot of oxygen and hydrogen. What really kills us is entropy increase. You can find many different diagnoses in death certificates, but they’re just details. A vital organ gives up, a virus beats our weakened immune system, or a blood clot interrupts oxygen supply to the brain. And eventually something breaks that can’t be fixed. We might develop a chronic illness, dementia, or cancer. Thus, slowly, bit by bit, our organs function a little less efficiently, our skin becomes a little less elastic, our wounds heal a little more slowly. Cell-repair mechanisms can’t correct these errors indefinitely and with perfect fidelity. The biological processes involved in aging and exactly what causes them are still the subject of research, but loosely speaking, we age because our bodies accumulate errors that are likely to happen but unlikely to spontaneously reverse. Hossenfelder’s book excels in simple explanations for some of the basic questions we have about life. … the point is, he shows us what happens when scientists mix fact with fiction: non-experts throw out both together.
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