This is what happens after you die | Hacker News Reader

This is what happens after you die

mosaicscience.com

101 pointsotoolep38 comments

One of the things that I have heard before is that funeral homes sell these new "sealed" caskets. Now, the problem with sealing caskets is that the gases generated through the process of decay of the body increase the pressure inside the casket over time, and many of them have been known to blow up in a rather noisy and (bad choice of words but I can't think of another adjective) awesome way.

People, tell your families not to spend money on these caskets, unless this blow-up action is part of your plan for leaving the world, one last final act! (I am not judging! Just informing).

If I were making those caskets, I'd just put a one-way release valve on it.

I think it's interesting that reactions can produce so much pressure, given that all the components "fit" into the space prior.

All of the components of diet coke and mentos fit into the bottle prior :)

Consider how a rocket engine works.

I don't actually know, but most engines are using gas from outside of the fuel source. I suppose perhaps they use a stored gas, given that they'd need it in space, or perhaps couldn't "grab" enough for the huge amount of fuel they're using.

That said I'm aware of plenty of situations where similar things occur, I still find it very interesting.

Rockets don't use anything from outside. Otherwise they wouldn't work in space too well, since it's a vacuum.

Perhaps you didn't read my full comment.

Maybe I didn't understand it, but I read the whole thing. "I suppose perhaps" is pretty far from a statement of certainty, if that's the part you think I missed.

Rockets contains both oxidizer and fuel in liquid or solid forms, sometimes separated and sometimes even in one substance (monopropellants). Combustion products are gaseous, and gases tend to take more space than solids or liquids.

Of course, if the combustion products didn't take up more space, the rocket would be remarkable in its ineffectiveness...

The heat of combustion will also cause more space to be taken up.

The key difference between a rocket engine and other types of engine is that rocket engines only use chemicals that are stored onboard. If it needs gas from outside then by definition it's not really a rocket.

Come on, it's not rocket science.

Pretty much any time you turn a liquid into a gas, it takes up a _lot_ more space.

Is there a pressure point at which the transformation cannot occur? (Obviously far beyond the realm of what a casket is going to contain)

Yes, for any substance and temperature, there are ranges of pressures where it's gas, liquid, or solid. Look up "phase transition diagram" to get a better idea. But it's basically going to be different for every substance and every mixture of substances, so it's probably hard to predict at what pressure the gases coming off a corpse are going to liquefy.

But why deprecate the blow-up feature?

Let's offer the valve as an "option" for the less venturous types! :-)

This is the same case with bombs.

For a more varied look at what can happen after you die, I recommend the book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach [1].

I think my favorite is to donate your body to a body farm [2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm

If you are into decay I'd also like to recommend the Rodale book of composting[0], you'll be making great compost soon enough (weather you read it or not).

It isn't sensational, which can be nice. They approach it from a gardeners perspective while still mentioning things like how blood has a high nitrogen content.

[0] http://amzn.com/0878579915

Deleted comment

I wonder if the 1767 has any accuracy, or is just a random note by a guy that didn't think twice about it...

A housefly lives for a day and with exponential growth it could take just a couple of days, so it is plausible.

> raising the inside temperature by more than 10C (18F)

This article is copied from http://mosaicscience.com/story/what-happens-after-you-die licensed under creative commons with some small edits like the funny conversion above :)

Thanks! We updated the URL from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150508-what-happens-after-....

Warning: Misleading title. It is talking about what happens to your physical body, something everybody already knows what happens after you die, though perhaps not to that level of detail. NOTHING TO SEE HERE, move along now.

Where's part 2 where they cover the afterlife?

I can't find it; I guess we'll have to wait?

You can click here to see it, but you do need to be connected to the AfterLife Intranet.

http://wiki.heaven-intranet.afterlife.ninja/wiki/FAQ#WhatsNe...

It's a science article.

There is none. And death doesn't exist either (it is just an abstraction made up by humans). You are part of the universe, and as such will remain alive. When you "die" (note the quotes), the universe loses a bit of consciousness, but there is plenty of it remaining.

Sure, in the same meaningless way that LEGO houses don't exist; they're just arrangements of pieces and can be turned into something else later.

I don't know about made-up abstractions, but when your heart stops beating, your lungs stop breathing, your neurons stop firing, and all of your bodily tissues start to rot away... Surely there must be something different about being in that state?

I think he (she?) is trying to explain zen in a confident manner which makes it sound silly (it is!) and a bit off.

It is just reasoning in favor of Occam's razor. It doesn't mean it is true (people here are sufficiently smart to figure that out for themselves). However, reasoning against the razor, now that's what I call silly!

If "alive" is some set of complex chemical reactions a system is experiencing then when they stop, that system is not alive by any standard definition of the word. "dead" would be a term applied to a pile of stuff that used to be doing the "alive" thing but isn't anymore. The pile keeps the term "dead" until the pile has reshuffled much of its original mater. For some reason living things face the Ship of Theseus paradox, and dead piles don't.

(I almost think I could make a board game from the above.)

The paradox is easily resolved if you consider everything to be part of the same object (i.e., the universe).

But when we use the word "fox" it does not include the ground under the animal. And if I look at the moon and say "that is part of a fox" I am using the language incorrectly.

Of course the word "alive" is ambiguously defined semantics applying to a loose hodgepodge of phenomenon (is a virus alive?). It may be convenient to use, just like the term "sunrise" is useful. But looking for the real phenomenon behind it is like looking for the caloric fluid or the land north of the north pole, they are words for ideas invented long before we knew much about anything.

Your notion too might be useful, that everything is part of a single grouping like the observable universe. But I think we'd be in error to suppose there is something real to either of these groupings beyond being useful names.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com