Ah, but I'm assuming the stability of atomic nuclei. C12 is non-radioactive so these would stay intact (barring the odd bits in nuclear tests and the minimal weak nuclear force), and hence as carbon atons (I ignored H/O/N), and it's unlikely they'd leave the biomass in so short a period. Chances are most would indeed be in the soil, but things do cycle through - a factor of dilution of 10000 is even in my estimate. Bacteria etc consume the corpse, up through the food chain, and 20 years later there's 'eine kleine bitschenMozart' in most of the Viennese population, and wider, even though 99.9% is still carbon in the ground. And, of course, if he was cremated there'd be an excellent spread via CO2 diffusion.
As for proton breakdown, isn't that something like 10^^55 years on average? Some will have decayed, but not enough to count in the stats...
LOL. What a jolly topic :) Actually the example we had to use at school was the number of molecules in our cup of tea that were once in the hemlock draft taken by Socrates... which of course missed your earlier point about water ionising, but is even less jolly. I think we averaged it at a few thousand, ignoring that factor. |
