How long before an immortal woman runs out of eggs?

[alphaboi867]

Say a woman stops aging at 25. Her eggs stop aging too. Assuming she has a normal menstral cylce, limits pregnancy to once every couple decades, and doesn't serve as an egg donor who long before she runs out of eggs?

[Fish Cheer]

Women are born with a finite number of eggs. At birth, a woman has around 1 to 2 million eggs. However, throughout her life, a woman loses eggs through a destructive process called atresia. At puberty, only around 400,000 eggs remain. Throughout the reproductive life span, from puberty until menopause, women lose about 1,000 eggs each month.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasc.../mole00332.htm

You do the math.

[Bad Astronaut]

400 months = 33.3 years. So if the onset of puberty is 12 she would be completely empty by 45.

This seems a little early but if the data is in the ballpark we can probably conclude that the immortal woman will hit menopause the same time mortal women do.

[sevenwood]

But wouldn't an immortal woman have immortal eggs?

[sevenwood]

And suppose there was an immortal man somewhere with immortal sperm? Eventually some of those immortal sperm would find some of those immortal eggs, and...

Think in terms of a sewer system full of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but not turtles...

[Bad Astronaut]

I guess with the same assumptions, if she's normal until 25 then becomes superwoman, she will have 244000 eggs left. These will keep her going for almost 19000 years, assuming she drops one every 28 days.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Immortality without regenerative tissues would be a nightmare of scars & agony.


She might just re-grow the eggs.

[bouv]

Originally Posted by sevenwood

And suppose there was an immortal man somewhere with immortal sperm? Eventually some of those immortal sperm would find some of those immortal eggs, and...

Immortal sperm aren't needed. Men create sperm all the freakin' time (after puberty, assuming otherwise healthy sexual organs.) It's possible (and I'm sure it's happened) for a very old man to father children.

Granted, with old age comes the likelihood that sperm production will slow down or cease, but if the man is immortal and "forever 25" or something, then he'll keep making regular sperm forever, no need for them to be immortal, too.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Originally Posted by bouv

Immortal sperm aren't needed. Men create sperm all the freakin' time (after puberty, assuming otherwise healthy sexual organs.) It's possible (and I'm sure it's happened) for a very old man to father children.

sevenwood's point was that if the sperm were immortal they would exist indefinitely even after ejaculated from the man's body and could fertilize eggs an arbitrary length of time afterward. The immoral semen could run into an immortal egg in a sewer, 1000 years after being ejaculated, and still fertilize. The question is whether the resulting zygote would be immortal immediately and thus could come to term in the sewers.

[hotflungwok]

If the immortal man's sperm was itself immortal, and he had unprotected sex with the immortal woman (with her immortal eggs), conception would be almost guaranteed baring other factors. The sperm that didn't reach the egg wouldn't die off quickly like normal sperm. It would hang around, still moving, still trying to reach the egg. Men ejaculate between 40 and 100 million sperm in a single orgasm. All that sperm would go where ever it could, and some would eventually make it's way to the fallopian tubes. Would they actually be stopped by the tissues protecting the other 244000 eggs? I'm thinking several hundred thousand ectopic pregnancies might qualify as 'bad'.

Hmm, on second thought, would immortal sperm have an infinite energy supply? Would they eventually exhaust their ability to move, and then hang around forever immortal?

[Markxxx]

But let's say she maximizes her egg produciton to one per month

That's 400,000 eggs and she let's one a month go.

That's 400,000 months

400,000/12 =33,333.33 years

[sevenwood]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Dunlop

The immoral semen could run into an immortal egg in a sewer

...and that's exactly where you'd find an immoral semen - with both his mind and his tail in the sewer.

[goodie]

Immortal doesn't mean she can't off herself...no one could make it past a thousand or so kids...

[carnut]

Originally Posted by sevenwood

...and that's exactly where you'd find an immoral semen - with both his mind and his tail in the sewer.

You beat me to it.

We know the quality of both eggs and semen can decline with the human's age. As someone pointed out earlier, immortal doesn't mean the aging process stops. If the woman's aging process were to stop at 25, would the eggs process stop? What about the sperm? Talk about mutant!

[Locrian]

Even if she stops giving birth, an immortal woman will still be around to see her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

[Pandoranoid]

I think everything about this thread's existence is completely awesome.

[BubbaDog]

[smartass]

I dunno, how many omelets does she plan to cook

[/smartass]

[Cincoflex]

I totally mis-read the line of this thread and thought it was asking about an *immoral* woman--

I think a lot of them wouldn't mind running out of eggs---

[lieu]

I can't be the only one that read the title and wondered what in the world her morality had to do with things.

[tiescore]

If you all like this thread, you need to read the short story by Larry Niven, Man of Steel Woman of Kleenex... that got into what would happen if Superman tried to knock up Lois Lane... it gets a bit gruesome at points.

The part about of millions of Supersperm destroying the egg in an orgy of one celled mindlessness then ripping through LL's body and streaking across the sky looking for other eggs across earth.... seems to fit into these musings somehow.

[carnut]

Hah. Lois Lane is stronger than Larry Niven thinks.

[Markxxx]

If you change immortal to immoral the thread still works