Will I Use My Old Body Again After Death
J ohn had been dead about four hours before his torso was brought into the funeral home. He had been relatively healthy for most of his life. He had worked his whole life on the Texas oil fields, a job that kept him physically active, and in pretty adept shape. He had stopped smoking decades earlier, and drank moderate amounts of alcohol.
Lately, his family and friends had noticed that his health – and his listen – had started to falter. So, one cold January forenoon, he suffered a massive middle attack, apparently triggered by other, unknown, complications, fell to the floor at dwelling, and died almost immediately. He was just 57 years old. Now, he lay on the metal table, his body wrapped in a white linen sail, cold and stiff to the touch, his skin purplish-grey – tell-tale signs that the early stages of decomposition were well under mode.
Well-nigh of us would rather not recollect about what happens to our selves and loved ones after death. Most of us dice natural deaths and, at least in the Westward, are given a traditional burial. This is a mode of showing respect to the deceased, and of bringing a sense of closure to bereaved family. It also serves to irksome downward the decomposition procedure, so that family members can recall their loved ane every bit they once were, rather than as they now are.
For others, the end is less dignified. A murderer might bury his victim in a shallow grave, or leave their body at the scene of the crime, exposed to the elements. When the body is eventually discovered, the starting time thing that the constabulary detectives and forensics experts working on the case will attempt to establish is when death occurred. Time of death is a crucial slice of data in any murder investigation, but the many factors influencing the decomposition process can make it extremely difficult to judge.
The sight of a rotting corpse is, for most of united states of america, unsettling at best, and repulsive and frightening at worst, the stuff of nightmares.
Far from being 'dead,' however, a rotting corpse is teeming with life. A growing number of scientists view a rotting corpse as the cornerstone of a vast and complex ecosystem, which emerges before long after death and flourishes and evolves as decomposition proceeds.
We still know very little about human decay, but the growth of forensic research facilities, or 'torso farms,' together with the availability and ever-decreasing cost of techniques such as Dna sequencing, at present enables researchers to report the process in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. A better understanding of the cadaveric ecosystem – how information technology changes over time, and how it interacts with and alters the ecology of its wider environs – could take important applications in forensic science. It could, for example, lead to new, more authentic ways of estimating time of death, and of finding bodies that have been subconscious in secret graves.
Decomposition begins several minutes after death, with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion. Soon after the heart stops chirapsia, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them. Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break downwardly. This usually begins in the liver, which is enriched in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content; eventually, though, all other tissues and organs brainstorm to break down in this way. Damaged blood cells spill out of broken vessels and, aided past gravity, settle in the capillaries and small-scale veins, discolouring the skin.
Body temperature likewise begins to drop, until information technology has acclimatised to its surroundings. Then, rigor mortis – the stiffness of death – sets in, starting in the eyelids, jaw and neck muscles, earlier working its way into the trunk and and so the limbs. In life, musculus cells contracts and relax due to the deportment of two filamentous proteins, called actin and myosin, which slide forth each other. Afterwards death, the cells are depleted of their energy source, and the protein filaments go locked in place. This causes the muscles to become rigid, and locks the joints.
"It might take a little bit of force to interruption this up," says mortician Holly Williams, lifting John'due south arm and gently bending it at the fingers, elbow and wrist. "Usually, the fresher a body is, the easier it is for me to piece of work on."
Williams speaks softly and has a happy-go-lucky demeanour that belies the gruesome nature of her work. Having been raised in a family-run funeral dwelling in north Texas, and worked in that location all her life, she has seen and handled dead bodies on an near daily footing since her babyhood. At present 28 years old, she estimates that she has worked on something like 1,000 bodies.
Her piece of work involves collecting recently deceased bodies from the Dallas-Fort Worth expanse, and sometimes across, and preparing them for their funeral, by washing and embalming them. Embalming involves treating the body with chemicals that deadening down the decomposition procedure, primarily to restore information technology as closely as possible to its natural state before death. Williams performs this then that family and friends can view their departed loved 1 at the funeral. Victims of trauma and violent deaths ordinarily demand extensive facial reconstruction, a highly skilled and time-consuming job.
"Nearly of the people we pick up die in nursing homes," says Williams, "but sometimes we get people who died of gunshot wounds or in a car-wreck. Nosotros might go a call to choice up someone who died solitary and wasn't establish for days or weeks, and they'll already be decomposing, which makes my work much harder."
During the early stages of decomposition, the cadaveric ecosystem consists generally of the leaner that live in and on the human body. Our bodies host huge numbers of leaner, with every one of its surfaces and corners providing a habitat for a specialised microbial community. By far the largest of these communities resides in the gut, which is abode to trillions of bacteria of hundreds or perhaps thousands of different species.
The so-called gut microbiome is one of the hottest research topics in biology at the moment. Some researchers are convinced that gut bacteria play essential roles in human wellness and disease, but nosotros still know very petty nigh our make-up of these mysterious microbial passengers, let alone about how they might influence our actual functions.
We know even less about what happens to the microbiome later a person dies, but pioneering enquiry published in the past few years has provided some much needed details.
Almost internal organs are devoid of microbes when we are live. Soon after death, still, the immune organization stops working, leaving them to spread throughout the body freely. This usually begins in the gut, at the junction between the pocket-sized and large intestines. Left unchecked, our gut bacteria brainstorm to digest the intestines, and then the surrounding tissues, from the inside out, using the chemical cocktail that leaks out of damaged cells as a nutrient source. And then they invade the capillaries of the digestive system and lymph nodes, spreading commencement to the liver and spleen, then into the heart and brain.
Last year, forensic scientist Gulnaz Javan of Alabama State University in Montgomery and her colleagues published the very start study of what they have called the thanatomicrobiome (from thanatos, the Greek word for 'death').
"All of our samples came from criminal cases involving people who died past suicide, homicide, drug overdose, or in traffic accidents," she explains. "Taking samples this way is really hard, because we have to ask the [bereaved] families to sign our consent forms. That'southward a major upstanding issue."
Javan and her team took samples of liver, spleen, brain, heart, and blood from xi cadavers, at between 20 and 240 hours later decease, then used two dissimilar state-of-the-art DNA sequencing technologies, combined with bioinformatics, to analyse and compare the bacterial content of each sample.
They plant that samples taken from unlike organs in the same cadaver were very similar to each other, simply were very unlike from those taken from the aforementioned organs in other bodies. This may be due partly to individual differences in the composition of the microbiome of the individuals involved in the written report.
The variations may also be related to differences in the period of time that had elapsed since death. An earlier study of decomposing mice had revealed that although the animals' microbiome changes dramatically after death, information technology does so in a consistent and measurable manner, such that the researchers were able to guess time of death to inside iii days of a nearly 2-month period.
Javan'due south study suggests that this "microbial clock" may also be ticking within the decomposing human trunk, besides. The first bacteria they detected came from a sample of liver tissue obtained from a cadaver only 20 hours afterwards decease, but the earliest time at which leaner were found in all samples from the same cadaver was 58 hours after death. Thus, after we dice, our bacteria may spread through the body in a stereotyped fashion, and the timing with which they infiltrate beginning one internal organ and then another may provide a new style of estimating the corporeality of fourth dimension that has elapsed since death.
"The degree of decomposition varies not only from individual to private but also differs in different body organs," says Javan. "Spleen, intestine, stomach and pregnant uterus are earlier to decay, merely on the other hand kidney, center and basic are after in the procedure." In 2014, Javan and her colleagues secured a The states$200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate further. "We will do next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics to run across which organ is all-time for estimating [time of death] – that's even so unclear," she says.
One thing that already seems articulate, though, is that dissimilar stages of decomposition are associated with a different limerick of cadaver leaner.
Once cocky-digestion is under style and bacteria have started to escape from the gastrointestinal tract, putrefaction begins. This is molecular decease – the break downwardly of soft tissues even further, into gases, liquids and salts. It is already under manner at the earlier stages of decomposition, but actually gets going when anaerobic leaner go in on the act.
Putrefaction is associated with a marked shift from aerobic bacterial species, which require oxygen to grow, to anaerobic ones, which do not. These and so feed on the body tissues, fermenting the sugars in them to produce gaseous by-products such as methane, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia, which accumulate within the body, inflating (or 'bloating') the abdomen and sometimes other trunk parts, too.
This causes farther discoloration of the body. As damaged claret cells continue to leak from disintegrating vessels, anaerobic convert haemoglobin molecules, which one time carried oxygen around the torso, into sulfhaemoglobin. The presence of this molecule in settled blood gives skin the marbled, light-green-black appearance characteristic of a body undergoing active decomposition.
As the gas pressure continues to build up within the body, it causes blisters to announced all over the skin surface, and then loosening, followed past 'slippage,' of large sheets of skin, which remain barely attached to the deteriorating frame underneath. Somewhen, the gases and liquefied tissues purge from the trunk, usually leaking from the anus and other orifices, and often also from ripped skin in other parts of the torso. Sometimes, the pressure is so great that the abdomen bursts open.
Bloating is often used a marking for the transition between early and after stages of decomposition, and another recent study shows that this transition is characterised by a distinct shift in the composition of cadaveric bacteria.
The study was carried out at the Southeast Texas Practical Forensic Science Facility in Huntsville. Opened in 2009, the facility is located within a 247-acre area of National Woods, which is endemic by the academy and maintained by researchers at Sam Houston State Academy (SHSU). Within, a 9-acre plot of densely wooded land has been sealed off from the wider expanse, and further subdivided, past 10-foot-high green wire fences topped with barbed wire.
Hither, scattered amidst the pine trees, are about a half dozen human cadavers, in diverse stages of decay. The ii near recently placed bodies lay spread-eagled near the heart of the modest enclosure, with much of their loose, grayness-blue mottled pare still intact, their rib cages and pelvic basic visible between slowly putrefying flesh. A few meters abroad lies another cadaver, fully skeletonized, with its black, hardened skin clinging to the basic, as if it were wearing a shiny latex adjust and skullcap. Farther withal, beyond other skeletal remains that had obviously been scattered by vultures, lay some other, inside a wood and wire cage, this 1 nearing the cease of the death cycle, partly mummified and with several large, brownish mushrooms growing from where an belly once was.
In late 2011, SHSU researchers Sibyl Bucheli and Aaron Lynne and their colleagues placed two fresh cadavers hither, left them to disuse under natural atmospheric condition, and then took samples of bacteria from their various parts, at the outset and the end of the bloat phase. They and then extracted bacterial DNA from the samples, and sequenced it to discover that bloating is characterised by a marked shift from aerobic to anaerobic species.
As an entomologist, Bucheli is mainly interested in the insects that colonise cadavers. She regards a cadaver as a specialised habitat for various necrophagous (or 'dead-eating') insect species, some of which see out their entire life cycle in, on and around the body.
When a decomposing body starts to purge, it becomes fully exposed to its environment. At this phase, microbial and insect activity reaches its top, and the cadaveric ecosystem actually comes into its own, becoming a 'hub' not simply for insects and microbes, merely as well by vultures and scavengers, as well equally meat-eating animals.
2 species closely linked with decomposition are blowflies, flesh flies and their larvae. Cadavers give off a foul, sickly-sweetness odour, made up of a complex cocktail of volatile compounds, whose ingredients alter every bit decomposition progresses. Blowflies discover the scent using specialised odor receptors, and then state on the cadaver and lay its eggs in orifices and open wounds.
Each fly deposits around 250 eggs, that hatch inside 24 hours, giving ascension to pocket-size first-stage maggots. These feed on the rotting mankind then molt into larger maggots, which feed for several hours earlier molting again. Subsequently feeding some more, these withal larger, and now fattened, maggots wriggle away from the body. Then they pupate and transform into adult flies, and the cycle repeats over and once more, until there's nix left for them to feed on.
Nether the correct conditions, an actively decaying trunk volition have large numbers of phase-three maggots feeding on it. This "maggot mass" generates a lot of rut, raising the within temperature by more 10°C. Like penguins huddling, individual maggots within the mass are constantly on the move. But whereas penguins huddle to proceed warm, maggots in the mass move around to stay cool.
Dorsum in her office on the SHSU campus – decorated with large toy insects and a collection of Monster Loftier dolls – Bucheli explains: "It'south a double-edged sword – if you're always at the border, you might get eaten past a bird, and if you're always in the centre, you might go cooked. So they're constantly moving from the heart to the edges and back. It's like an eruption."
The presence of blowflies attracts predators such as skin beetles, mites, ants, wasps, and spiders, to the cadaver, which then feed on or parasitize their eggs and larvae. Vultures and other scavengers, as well every bit other, large meat-eating animals, may also descend upon the body.
In the absenteeism of scavengers though, information technology is the maggots that are responsible for removal of the soft tissues. Carl Linnaeus, who devised the system by which scientists name species, noted in 1767 that "3 flies could swallow a equus caballus cadaver as rapidly as a lion." Third-phase maggots will move away from a cadaver in large numbers, oftentimes following the same route. Their activeness is so rigorous that their migration paths may exist seen after decomposition is finished, equally deep furrows in the soil emanating from the cadaver.
Given the paucity of human decomposition inquiry, we all the same know very little about the insect species that colonise a cadaver. But the latest published study from Bucheli's lab suggests that they are far more diverse than we had previously imagined.
The written report was led by Bucheli's former Ph.D. pupil Natalie Lindgren, who placed four cadavers on the Huntsville body farm in 2009, and left them out for a whole yr, during which fourth dimension she returned 4 times a 24-hour interval to collect the insects that she establish on them. The usual suspects were present, but Lindgren also noted four unusual insect-cadaver interactions that had never been documented earlier, including a scorpionfly that was found feeding on brain fluids through an autopsy wound in the scalp, and a worm found feeding on the dried skin effectually where the toenails had been, which was previously simply known to feed on decaying wood.
Insects colonise a cadaver in successive waves, and each has its ain unique life bicycle. They tin therefore provide data that is useful for estimating time of death, and for learning about the circumstances of expiry. This has led to the emerging field of forensic entomology.
"Flies volition arrive at a cadaver well-nigh immediately," says Bucheli. "We'll put a body out and three seconds later at that place'll be flies laying eggs in the nose."
Insects can be useful for estimating time of death of a badly decomposing body. In theory, an entomologist arriving at a crime scene tin use their noesis of insects' life cycles to judge the time of expiry. And, because many insect species take a limited geographical distribution, the presence of a given species can link a trunk to a certain location, or show that it has been moved from one identify to another.
In exercise, though, using insects to gauge fourth dimension of expiry is fraught with difficulties. Fourth dimension of decease estimates based on the age of blowfly maggots found on a body are based on the assumption that flies colonised the cadaver right after death, merely this is not always the instance – burial tin can exclude insects altogether, for case, and extreme temperatures inhibit their growth or prevent information technology birthday.
An earlier study led by Lindgren revealed some other unusual way by which blowflies might exist prevented from laying eggs on a cadaver. "We made a post-mortem wound to the stomach [of a donated torso] and then partially buried the cadaver in a shallow grave," says Bucheli, "just fire ants made little sponges out of dirt and used them to make full in the cut and cease up the fluid." The ants monopolised the wound for more than than a week, and then it rained. "This washed the dirt sponges out. The body began to bloat and then it blew up, and at that signal the flies could colonise information technology."
Even if colonization does occur just after expiry, estimates based on insects' age may be inaccurate for another reason. Insects are cold-blooded, and then their growth rate occurs relative to temperature rather than to the calendar. "When using insects to judge postal service-mortem interval, we're actually estimating the age of the maggot and extrapolating from that," says Bucheli. "We measure insect birth charge per unit by accumulated degree hours [the sum of the average hourly temperature], so if you know the temperature and the growth bike of a wing, y'all tin can estimate the age of a wing inside an hour or two."
If non, time of decease estimates based on information near insect colonization tin can be wildly inaccurate and misleading. Somewhen, though, Bucheli believes that combining insect data with microbiology could help to brand the estimates more authentic, and perhaps provide other valuable information nearly the circumstances of death.
Every species that visits a cadaver has a unique repertoire of gut microbes, and unlike types of soil are likely to harbour distinct bacterial communities, the composition of which is probably adamant past factors such as temperature, wet, and the soil type and texture.
All these microbes mingle and mix inside the cadaveric ecosystem. Flies that state on the cadaver will not only deposit their eggs on it, but will as well take upward some of the bacteria they observe there, and go out some of their own. And the liquefied tissues seeping out of the body let for the exchange of bacteria between the cadaver and the soil beneath.
When they take samples from cadavers, Bucheli and Lynne detect bacteria originating from the skin on the body and from the flies and scavengers that visit it, every bit well equally from soil. "When a torso purges, the gut bacteria commencement to come up out, and we see a greater proportion of them outside the trunk," says Lynne.
Thus, every dead trunk is likely take a unique microbiological signature, and this signature may change with fourth dimension according to the exacting weather condition of the decease scene. A amend agreement of the composition of these bacterial communities, the relationships betwixt them, and how they influence each other as decomposition gain, could i day assist forensics teams learn more well-nigh where, when and how a person died.
For instance, detecting Dna sequences known to be unique to a particular organism or soil type in a cadaver could help crime scene investigators link the body of a murder victim to a particular geographical location, or narrow down their search for clues even further, perhaps to a specific field within a given area.
"There have been several courtroom cases where forensic entomology has really stood up and provided of import pieces of the puzzle," says Bucheli. "Leaner might provide additional data and could become another tool to refine [fourth dimension of death] estimates. I hope that in about 5 years we can beginning using bacterial data in trials."
To this cease, more cognition about the human being microbiome and how it changes across a person's lifespan – and after they have died – will be crucial. Researchers are busy cataloguing the bacterial species in and on the homo body, and studying how bacterial populations differ between individuals. "I would love to take a data prepare from life to death," says Bucheli. "I would love to meet a donor who'd let me to take bacterial samples while they're alive, through their expiry procedure, and while they decompose."
A decomposing body significantly alters the chemistry of the soil beneath, causing changes that may persist for years. Purging releases nutrients into the underlying soil, and maggot migration transfers much of the energy in a body to the wider environment. Eventually, the whole procedure creates a 'cadaver decomposition isle,' a highly concentrated area of organically rich soil. As well as releasing nutrients into the wider ecosystem, the cadaver besides attracts other organic materials, such as dead insects and faecal matter from larger animals.
Co-ordinate to ane estimate, an boilerplate human body consists of 50-75% and every kilogram of dry out body mass somewhen releases 32g of nitrogen, 10g of phosphorous, 4g of potassium, and 1g of magnesium into the soil. Initially, some of the underlying and surrounding vegetation dies off, possibly because of nitrogen toxicity, or considering of antibiotics constitute in the body, which are secreted past insect larvae equally they feed on the flesh.
Ultimately, though, decomposition is beneficial for the ecosystem – the microbial biomass within the cadaver decomposition island is greater than in other nearby areas; nematode worms also become more than arable, and institute life more diverse. Further research into how decomposing bodies modify the ecology of their environs may provide a new way of finding murder victims whose bodies accept been buried in shallow graves.
"I was reading an article almost flight drones over crop fields to see which ones would exist best to plant in," says Daniel Wescott, director of the Forensic Anthropology Centre at Texas State University in San Marcos. "They were imaging with near-infrared and showed organically rich soils were a darker colour than others."
An anthropologist specialising in skull structure, Wescott collaborates with entomologists and microbiologists to larn more than about decomposition. Among his collaborators is Javan, who has been busy analysing samples of cadaver soil collected from the facility in San Marcos.
Lately, Wescott has started using a micro-CT scanner to analyse the microscopic structure of the bones that are brought dorsum to the lab from the San Marcos body subcontract. He also works with estimator engineers and a pilot who operates a drone and uses it to take aerial photographs of the facility.
"Nosotros're looking at the purging fluid that comes out of decomposing bodies," he says. "I thought if farmers tin spot organically rich fields, then perchance our fiddling drone will pick upward the cadaver decomposition islands, also."
Furthermore, grave soil analysis may eventually provide another possible way of estimating time of death. A 2008 study of the biochemical changes that take place in a cadaver decomposition isle showed that the soil concentration of lipid-phosphorous leaking from a cadaver peaks at effectually 40 days later death, whereas those of nitrogen and extractable phosphorous peak at 72 and 100 days, respectively. With a more detailed understanding of these processes, analyses of grave soil biochemistry could one mean solar day help forensic researchers to guess how long ago a body was placed in a hidden grave.
Some other reason why estimating fourth dimension of death can exist extremely hard is because the stages of decomposition exercise not occur discretely, but often overlap, with several taking place simultaneously, and considering the rate at which information technology gain tin vary widely, depending largely on temperature. One time maggot migration has ended, the cadaver enters the final stages of decay, with just the bones, and mayhap some pare, remain. These final stages of decomposition, and the transition between them, are hard to identify, because in that location are far fewer observable changes than at earlier stages.
In the relentless dry out heat of the Texas summer, a torso left to the elements will mummify rather than decompose fully. The skin will rapidly lose all of its moisture, and so that it remains clinging to the basic when the process is complete.
The speed of the chemical reactions involved doubles with every 10°C rise in temperature, so a cadaver will reach the avant-garde phase after 16 days at an average daily temperature of 25°C, and afterwards fourscore days at an average daily temperature of 5°C.
The aboriginal Egyptians knew this. In the pre-dynastic period, they wrapped their expressionless in linen and buried them direct in the sand. The heat inhibited the activeness of microbes, while burial prevented insects from reaching the bodies, and so they were extremely well preserved. Subsequently, they began building increasingly elaborate tombs for the dead, in society to provide even ameliorate for their afterlife, but this had the opposite of the intended effect, hastening the decomposition process, and so they invented embalming and mummification.
Morticians study the ancient Egyptian embalming method to this day. The embalmer would first wash the body of the deceased with palm wine and Nile water, remove near of the internal organs through an incision made downwards the left-hand side, and pack them with natron, a naturally-occurring salt mixture institute throughout the Nile valley. He would use a long claw to pull the brain out through the nostrils, then cover the entire with body with natron, and leave it to dry for twoscore days.
Initially, the dried organs were placed into canopic jars that were cached aslope the body; later, they were wrapped in linen and returned to the trunk. Finally, the body itself was wrapped in multiple layers of linen, in training for burial.
Living in a pocket-sized town, Williams has worked on many people she knew, or fifty-fifty grew upwards with – friends who overdosed, committed suicide, or died texting at the wheel. And when her mother died 4 years ago, Williams did some piece of work on her, too, adding the final touches by making up her face: "I always did her hair and brand-up when she was live, so I knew how to do it merely correct."
She transfers John to the prep table, removes his clothes and positions him, so takes several small bottles of embalming fluid from a wall cupboard. The fluid contains a mixture of formaldehyde, methanol and other solvents; it temporarily preserves the torso's tissues past linking cellular proteins to each other and 'fixing' them into identify. The fluid kills bacteria and prevents them from breaking downward the proteins and using them as a food source.
Williams pours the bottles' contents into the embalming automobile. The fluid comes in an array of colours, each matching a different peel tone. Williams wipes the body with a wet sponge and makes a diagonal incision just above his left collarbone. She 'raises' the carotid avenue and subclavian vein from the neck, ties them off with pieces of string, then pushes a cannula into the artery and small-scale tweezers into the vein to open the vessels.
Adjacent, she switches the machine on, pumping embalming fluid into the carotid avenue and around the body. Every bit the fluid goes in, blood pours out of the incision, flowing down along the guttered edges of the sloped metal table and into a large sink. Meanwhile, she picks up one of his limbs to massage information technology gently. "It takes nearly an 60 minutes to remove all the blood from an average-sized person and replace it with embalming fluid," Williams says. "Claret clots can slow it down, then massaging breaks them up and helps the menstruum of the embalming fluid."
One time all the blood has been replaced, she pushes an aspirator into John's abdomen and sucks the fluids out of the torso cavity, together with any urine and faeces that might nevertheless be in in that location. Finally, she sews up the incisions, wipes the body down a 2nd fourth dimension, sets the facial features, and re-dresses it. John is at present ready for his funeral.
Embalmed bodies eventually decompose likewise, simply exactly when, and how long it takes, depends largely on how the embalming was done, the type of casket in which the torso is placed, and how information technology is buried. Bodies are, afterwards all, merely forms of energy, trapped in lumps of matter waiting to be released into the wider universe. In life, our bodies expend free energy keeping their countless atoms locked in highly organized configurations, staying composed.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, free energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another, and the corporeality of energy always increases. In other words, things fall autonomously, converting their mass to energy while doing so. Decomposition is one concluding, morbid reminder that all thing in the universe must follow these fundamental laws. It breaks us down, equilibrating our bodily matter with its surround, and recycling it so that other living things can put it to employ.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This is an early draft of a feature I wrote for Mosaic, republished hither (and likewise on Ars Technica, BBC Future, Concern Insider, Daily Mail, Digg, Discover, Disinfo.com, El País, Gizmodo, Huffington Postal service, Philly.com and Raw Story) nether Artistic Commons licence.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death
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