Memento mori. When the time comes, death does not negotiate. But, beyond suspending the respiratory fluctuation and closing our eyes, how does death spread within us, and how long does it take to seize us?
A group of researchers from Stanford University has witnessed and measured this painstaking process. Death embraces us by following the dynamics of a “wave of activation.” In other words, it envelops us through a kind of multi-chain reaction; it spreads unstoppably and in perfect harmony.
To verify this, the scientists used cytoplasm (the fluid inside a cell) extracted from frog eggs. Once they triggered apoptosis or cell death, the path of this “death signal” was evidenced by a fluorescence technique. Thus, not only could they contemplate the unfolding of the absence of life, but also measure its rhythm.
The study was published on August 1, 2018, in the scientific journal Science.
2 millimeters per hour
Death advances 30 micrometers per minute, something more or less equivalent to 2 millimeters (0.078 approx. inches) per hour. At least that is the speed with which it spreads into a frog egg cell – which measures 1.2 millimeters on average (0.047 approx. inches). And, although it surely varies in other types of cells (or is the speed of death, like that of light, a constant?), this is the first time that it has been possible to measure the time in which the fatal moment materializes and, above all, understand how death spreads, similar to a fire in a forest.
Poetic science
When science meets poetry, and together discuss existence, they reveal some of the most ravishing ingredients of “reality.”
Text and photos courtesy of Ecoosfera
Translated by Gaby Flores
