On July 14, 2015, New Horizons flew past Pluto at a distance of 13.78 kilometers per second and 12,500 kilometers. Human probes finally set foot in the last corner of the solar system, but I believe most people do not know What's more, with the probe reaching Pluto and the ashes of the astronomer Tombaugh !
Tombo's ashes were glued to the New Horizons probe.
What will happen to the ashes after being buried for many years?
The ashes of the scientist Tombaugh flying into space may not change in the future we predict, while another part of his ashes is still on the earth, and will become part of the earth with the passage of time, oxidation and decomposition.
People become ashes, how much quality is there?
About 70% of the water in the human body (the proportion of older and thinner people will be lower, and the proportion of women will be higher), 25% of organic matter, such as protein, fat, etc., and about 5% of carbon, phosphorus, Calcium and trace elements such as iron, zinc .
After cremation of , water will evaporate, fat and protein will be burned, and part of inorganic matter will dissipate in the form of gas oxide, such as carbon dioxide , etc., but still part of the inorganic matter is ashes The form survives, so what exactly does the ashes contain?
The human skeleton is mainly composed of inorganic salts , also known as bone salts (bony salts), organic matrix and bone cells. Among them, bone salt accounts for 65~70% of the dry weight of the backbone, and the main components are calcium phosphate (84%), and others include calcium carbonate (10%), calcium citrate (2%), magnesium phosphate (1%) ), Na2HPO4 (2%), etc.What is the process of cremation of
?
Speaking of cremation, everyone will remember the scene of cremation of corpses of new crown patients in and in India this year, and there are too many corpses and even wood and are not enough. Burn, but this scene is too shocking!
Putting people directly on the fire, the fire crackles, the skin is scorched and the flesh is rotten, this scene is estimated to make people have nightmares for three months, so the cremation method of modern civilization has been changed to a special cremation furnace , cremation generally Going through the following process:
1, the corpse will be pre-processed first, such as pacemaker and women's silicone implants will be taken out, the former will prevent the battery from exploding, and the latter will stick to the bottom of the cremation furnace. It's hard to deal with ashes.
2. The corpse is usually wrapped in white cloth or paper coffin , or it is easier for to burn pine wood coffin or plywood, that kind of thick solid wood is not suitable for cremation, as for the paper coffin in "Avatar" The male protagonist's brother was cremated You should all have seen it.
3. After being sent into the cremation furnace , diesel fuel and combustion-supporting oxygen will be injected, the temperature rises rapidly, all the hair and clothes are burnt out within 30 seconds, or the paper coffin and the like will not last for 1 minute. .
4 Within a few minutes, the skin, muscles, and fat begin to contract, and the oil part will be precipitated and the oxygen will also start to burn. During this process, a very strange phenomenon will occur, because the muscle contraction will make the body Sitting up halfway in the hearth, it is estimated that some people say that the cremated corpse "comes alive" is this phenomenon, but this is just muscle contraction.
5. After more than ten minutes, the body fluid will spew out in the boiling, of course, it cannot extinguish the high-temperature burning flame, the internal organs shrunk and coke, the skull also begins to crack, and the high temperature is scrambling to release it.
6. After forty minutes, the muscles have disappeared and become carbonized skeletons, and the subsequent burning is to try to make the organic matter in the bone burn off and then become brittle. In an hour or so, the human body is left with remnants of brittle bones!
Of course, only cremation will not burn it, and it will still leave relatively large lumps. Most families will require bones in this state. picks up bones and is a stage, but if you want to load them As for the urn, you need to do a simple beating and beating. At this time, the brittle bones are easily broken, and the powdery ashes are in the state of machine grinding.
No matter who it is, after removing the reinforcement objects in the body, such as steel nails and titanium alloys used to strengthen the fracture, the real ashes will not exceed 1.5~2.5 kg. For many friends, these ashes will still be buried in the cemetery , for the condolences of relatives. The main component of
ashes is calcium phosphate , which is relatively insoluble in water, but easily soluble in dilute hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, but there are not many opportunities for this in nature, so it will be relatively stable, but the soil acidity and alkalinity It is not neutral, so it will react with the acid of the soil to generate calcium dihydrogen phosphate , which is eventually absorbed by plants.
So the ashes are also a fertilizer ! Of course, for a 60 kg human body, only 1.5 to 2.5 kg of "fertilizer" is left in the end, which is too wasteful! Therefore, some foreign funeral companies have launched ice burial and compost burial, both of which are similar, and ultimately retain most of the organic matter, and can be made into compost through a simple process, which can fertilize plants.
It’s just how many people can accept this method. However, compared with cremation, it wastes a lot of fossil fuels, and the gas released also pollutes the environment. Therefore, this is the real environmentally friendly burial, but it may take a long time for everyone to accept it. .
Human body Frozen
There are also friends who believe that they can be resurrected after death and choose to freeze the corpse. Of course, this is not simple freezing, but immediately after death, the blood of the whole body is replaced with cryoprotective liquid, and then after several procedures, use Freeze it in liquid nitrogen, hoping to revive it in the future.
Extended reading: What will happen to Tombaugh's ashes?
Some of Tombaugh's ashes are basically unchanged in space, but it may be bombarded by neutrons, and it may become the radioisotope . Of course, in the longer future, maybe it will become a planet or part of the planet.
