Caesar146;s last breath

The eternal, all-pervasive nature of the Creator is recognised by all faiths. Science, too, reveals that all things, from the tiniest virus ...

The eternal, all-pervasive nature of the Creator is recognised by all faiths. Science, too, reveals that all things, from the tiniest virus to the largest whale, the smallest dust particle to the galaxies themselves, are made from atoms and molecules derived from the 92 elements that constitute Nature8217;s building blocks.

Indeed, the extraordinary closeness of all beings to one another, this underlying unity of the Universe, is most vividly illustrated by what is called the 8216;Puzzle of Caesar8217;s Last Breath8217;. As the story goes, when Julius Caesar was done to death, among others by his trusted friend Brutus, he gasped, 8220;Et tu Brute8221; You too, Brutus?. Alas, instead of sympathising with poor Julius, some hard-boiled scientists of the last century proceeded to work out the number of air molecules in that last imperial gasp. Because Earth8217;s ecosystem is closed, they reasoned that all those molecules must still be present in our atmosphere!

Their calculations are quite easy for us to follow. To start with, a healthy adult expels around a litre of air with each exhalation. Since a cubic metre of air weighs around 1.2 kilograms, Caesar8217;s last breath had a mass of at least one gram. Next, we know Earth8217;s surface area is around 500 million square kilometers, and the surface atmospheric pressure is just about one kilogram per square centimetre. The total mass of our atmosphere hence works out to five sextillion grams that is, 5 followed by 21 zeros!, equivalent to five sextillion 8216;breaths8217;. Finally, how many molecules does a gram of air contain? On an average, an air molecule oxygen, nitrogen, etc weighs an infinitesimal one-twenty sextillionth of a gram that is, 1 divided by 2 followed by 21 zeros. One gram of air, therefore, contains 20 sextillion molecules, four times the number of 8216;breaths8217; in our atmosphere! In other words, Caesar8217;s last breath contained enough molecules to fill up our entire atmosphere, to the extent that on an average every litre of air, or every breath that we take, contains four of those molecules!

The implications are staggering. Because this reasoning extends to every breath that every human, and indeed every living thing, takes and has ever taken since Life began; it extends to the atoms and molecules in the food we eat and the water we drink. It means that the atoms that constitute the very essence of what makes you 8220;you8221; and 8220;I8221;, DNA, protein, bones, tissue, are as ancient as Life itself. It implies that these atoms are constantly whirling between our bodies and other bodies, the Earth and its oceans and atmosphere, in time forming new beings that are in reality not new at all.

There are no such things as Islamic electrons or Hindu protons, or secular chromosomes or communal DNA! All Life, the entire Universe, is indeed eternally bound in an incredible, pulsating dance of Creation and re-Creation. Our faiths perceived this wonderful truth through insight; science reveals this truth through reason. It is only ignorance, an ignorance tragically compounded by improper education, that conceals this oneness from our minds and leads us to regard our fellow humans with enmity and hatred.

Thus, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the Supreme Being: 8220;Shining by the functions of all the senses, yet without the senses; unattached, yet supporting all; devoid of qualities yet their experience8230; 8220;Without and within all beings, animate as well as inanimate; subte, unknowable, all-pervasive8230;is That.8221; Ch XIII, 16-17 And almost echoing these words, here is biologist Richard Dawkins describing the Genetic Code as a 8216;8216;River out of Eden8217;8217;: 8220;The river is a river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not of bones and tissue; a river of abstract instructions for building bodies, not the bodies themselves8217;8217;.