Einstein postulated that : … energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only changed from one form to another …
Well he postulated much more than just that of course, but my basic thought comes from this simple theorem. And the question I raise is this…: When we are living our bodies run on electricity. We are one big electronic impulse. So if the afore mentioned postulate is in fact correct, what happens to the electricity in our bodies when we die? Could this be an informal description of life after death? What say ye?
Not a very interesting question. Energy can not be created or destroyed, but it can leave. A dead body
is not a closed system. For that matter, where does the energy in a D-Cell battery go when you
throw it out?
There is a small part of our nervous that uses electric impulses, but they are generated by chemical processes (as Terminus Est has already said).
I can anticipate your next question: If our bodies are full of chemical energy, where does that go when we die? It goes to fuel the chemical processes that act upon the dead body: If the body decomposes, the chemicals are used by the microbes that cause that process. If the body is cremated, the chemicals burn, adding heat to the crematory. If the body is eaten, it will fuel the chemical processes that energize the body of the animal that consumed it.
You seem to have the impression that the energy that operates our bodies might come from the ‘soul.’ It actually comes from the chemical energy in the food we eat.
My way of thinking is that it doesn’t go anywhere. Rather, the body ceases to make it. (Think of the body as a generator rather than a storage battery.)
Yes, there is a difference in the “charge” on either side of the cell wall, but one the life processes cease to function, that potential isn’t maintained (no Na/K pump happens, Ca++ leaks out of the reservoir, etc.) and any difference in charge pretty much evens out.
Okay, so, like the “electricity” in your body comes from membrane potentials that happen because some ions can lose potential energy by crossing your cell membranes, right? So, like, when you’re alive, your cells expend a really amazing amount of energy on the sodium/potassium pump, pumping sodium out of the cell and potassium in, right? So you end up with a lot of electrochemical potential energy stored in the form of a sodium/potassium concentration gradient and that’s the “electricity” you’re talking about, right? Well, when you die, the sodium just diffuses right back down its concentration gradient and the potential energy turns into heat. With no ATP to run the sodium/potassium pump, things just stay that way. And that’s the secret of life and death, right there.
I think this has been sufficiently answered, but I’ma gonna answer it again because it seems the OP has the wrong idea about electricity.
Electricity isn’t really “stuff” that can be collected or weighed, typically. It’s really more of a means of transmitting energy. Think of when a generator is turned on or off. If the electricity cannot be created or destroyed, where does it come from when the generator is turned on? Where does it go when it is turned off? Electricity is just the conduit (excuse the pun) through which enery from burning coal or falling water turns the motor on your blender when making mixed drinks.
I think this has been sufficiently answered, but I’ma gonna answer it again because it seems the OP has the wrong idea about electricity.
Electricity isn’t really “stuff” that can be collected or weighed, typically. It’s really more of a means of transmitting energy. Think of when a generator is turned on or off. If the electricity cannot be created or destroyed, where does it come from when the generator is turned on? Where does it go when it is turned off? Electricity is just the conduit (excuse the pun) through which enery from burning coal or falling water turns the motor on your blender when making mixed drinks.
When you die, the chemicals which react to produce electricity run out because you are no longer eating. Electricity ceases to be produced. The generator is turned off.
I think this has been sufficiently answered, but I’ma gonna answer it again because it seems the OP has the wrong idea about electricity.
Electricity isn’t really “stuff” that can be collected or weighed, typically. It’s really more of a means of transmitting energy. Think of when a generator is turned on or off. If the electricity cannot be created or destroyed, where does it come from when the generator is turned on? Where does it go when it is turned off? Electricity is just the conduit (excuse the pun) through which enery from burning coal or falling water turns the motor on your blender when making mixed drinks.
When you die, the chemicals which react to produce electricity run out because you are no longer eating. Electricity ceases to be produced. The generator is turned off.
I understand chemical energy and I understand chemical reactions and how they are produced. I guess I should have re-phrased the OP and subbed electricity for energy. Where would the energy go that our bodies are utilizing to function and LIVE. I guess BOB SCENE answered the question the best…But I think I was looking for a little more spiritual an answer. Thats OK spiritual stuffs on this forum are usually…how should I say this…discouraged. or debunked…
The idea of conservation of energy was around LONG before Einstein.
Conservation of energy was laid out pretty formally by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz around 1690. But the idea had its roots much earlier. Descartes assumed that the total amount of motion (MV) in the universe is fixed– “certam tamen et determinatam habet quantitatem” (Princip. Philos., II, 36). But the effort to establish such assumptions by accurate experiment begins later.
The great epoch, however, in the history of the doctrine occurred in 1842, when Julius Robert Mayer, a German physician, published his “Remarks on the Forces of Inanimate Nature”, originally written in a series of letters to a friend. In this little work, “contemptuously rejected by the leading journals of physics of that day” (Poincaré), Mayer clearly enunciated the principle of the conservation of energy in its widest generality.
Einstein started his great work in the early 1900’s.
Even though the question has been sufficiently answered, I wonder if glilly is going to add anything.
How long do bodily functions continue after death? Seconds? Minutes? Clearly this would vary by function and method of death. I guess it would also depend on the definition of death to some extent. Not that I’m volunteering, but if I were decapitated and seconds later someone struck my knee with that little hammer, will my muscles still twitch? If I go headless a moment before a nasty charley-horse strikes, do the muscles still contract? Do they hold the contraction until the individual cells are starved of oxygen? (That assumes a charley-horse is not dependent on/caused by brain-centered nerve impulses.) Does peristalsis still churn away until individual cell death? Do most functions cease as soon as they stop getting the ‘all clear, continue’ signal from the brain, then everything else is dependent on tissue’s survival in the lack of circulation?
