what happens to a human body after death
J ohn had been dead near four hours before his body was brought into the funeral habitation. He had been relatively healthy for virtually of his life. He had worked his whole life on the Texas oil fields, a job that kept him physically active, and in pretty good shape. He had stopped smoking decades earlier, and drank moderate amounts of alcohol.
Lately, his family and friends had noticed that his health – and his listen – had started to falter. So, one cold January morn, he suffered a massive heart assault, apparently triggered past other, unknown, complications, fell to the floor at home, and died almost immediately. He was only 57 years old. Now, he lay on the metal table, his trunk wrapped in a white linen sail, cold and stiff to the touch on, his pare purplish-grayness – tell-tale signs that the early stages of decomposition were well under way.
Most of us would rather non think about what happens to our selves and loved ones after decease. Most of us die natural deaths and, at least in the West, are given a traditional burial. This is a mode of showing respect to the deceased, and of bringing a sense of closure to bereaved family. It besides serves to slow downwardly the decomposition process, and so that family members can remember their loved ane as they once were, rather than equally they now are.
For others, the end is less dignified. A murderer might bury his victim in a shallow grave, or get out their body at the scene of the crime, exposed to the elements. When the torso is eventually discovered, the beginning matter that the police detectives and forensics experts working on the case will endeavour to constitute is when death occurred. Time of death is a crucial piece of information in any murder investigation, but the many factors influencing the decomposition process can make it extremely difficult to judge.
The sight of a rotting corpse is, for virtually of us, unsettling at best, and repulsive and frightening at worst, the stuff of nightmares.
Far from beingness 'dead,' however, a rotting corpse is teeming with life. A growing number of scientists view a rotting corpse equally the cornerstone of a vast and circuitous ecosystem, which emerges soon afterward death and flourishes and evolves as decomposition proceeds.
We still know very little about human decay, but the growth of forensic research facilities, or 'torso farms,' together with the availability and ever-decreasing cost of techniques such as Deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing, now enables researchers to study the process in ways that were non possible just a few years ago. A better agreement of the cadaveric ecosystem – how it changes over time, and how it interacts with and alters the ecology of its wider surroundings – could take of import applications in forensic science. It could, for example, lead to new, more authentic ways of estimating time of decease, and of finding bodies that have been hidden in surreptitious graves.
Decomposition begins several minutes after death, with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion. Shortly afterwards the heart stops chirapsia, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions brainstorm to accrue within them. Enzymes kickoff to digest cell membranes and then leak out every bit the cells break down. This usually begins in the liver, which is enriched in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content; eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to suspension down in this way. Damaged blood cells spill out of broken vessels and, aided by gravity, settle in the capillaries and small veins, discolouring the skin.
Torso temperature also begins to drib, until it has acclimatised to its surroundings. Then, rigor mortis – the stiffness of death – sets in, starting in the eyelids, jaw and neck muscles, before working its way into the trunk then the limbs. In life, muscle cells contracts and relax due to the actions of two filamentous proteins, chosen actin and myosin, which slide along each other. After decease, the cells are depleted of their free energy source, and the poly peptide filaments become locked in identify. This causes the muscles to get rigid, and locks the joints.
"It might take a niggling chip of forcefulness to break this up," says mortician Holly Williams, lifting John's arm and gently angle information technology at the fingers, elbow and wrist. "Usually, the fresher a body is, the easier information technology is for me to work on."
Williams speaks softly and has a happy-get-lucky demeanour that belies the gruesome nature of her piece of work. Having been raised in a family-run funeral dwelling house in north Texas, and worked there all her life, she has seen and handled dead bodies on an nearly daily ground since her childhood. Now 28 years former, she estimates that she has worked on something like 1,000 bodies.
Her work involves collecting recently deceased bodies from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and sometimes beyond, and preparing them for their funeral, by washing and embalming them. Embalming involves treating the trunk with chemicals that slow downwards the decomposition process, primarily to restore it equally closely as possible to its natural state before decease. Williams performs this so that family and friends can view their departed loved one at the funeral. Victims of trauma and violent deaths usually demand extensive facial reconstruction, a highly skilled and time-consuming task.
"Well-nigh of the people nosotros pick up die in nursing homes," says Williams, "but sometimes nosotros get people who died of gunshot wounds or in a auto-wreck. We might get a telephone call to pick upwards someone who died lonely and wasn't establish for days or weeks, and they'll already be decomposing, which makes my work much harder."
During the early on stages of decomposition, the cadaveric ecosystem consists mostly of the bacteria that alive in and on the human body. Our bodies host huge numbers of leaner, with every ane of its surfaces and corners providing a habitat for a specialised microbial community. By far the largest of these communities resides in the gut, which is abode to trillions of bacteria of hundreds or perchance thousands of different species.
The and then-chosen gut microbiome is one of the hottest research topics in biology at the moment. Some researchers are convinced that gut leaner play essential roles in human health and disease, but we withal know very footling about our make-upward of these mysterious microbial passengers, permit alone about how they might influence our bodily functions.
We know even less about what happens to the microbiome after a person dies, but pioneering research published in the past few years has provided some much needed details.
Most internal organs are devoid of microbes when we are alive. Before long later death, however, the immune organisation stops working, leaving them to spread throughout the body freely. This normally begins in the gut, at the junction between the pocket-sized and large intestines. Left unchecked, our gut bacteria begin to assimilate the intestines, and and then the surrounding tissues, from the inside out, using the chemical cocktail that leaks out of damaged cells as a food source. Then they invade the capillaries of the digestive system and lymph nodes, spreading first to the liver and spleen, then into the heart and brain.
Last twelvemonth, forensic scientist Gulnaz Javan of Alabama Country University in Montgomery and her colleagues published the very first study of what they take chosen the thanatomicrobiome (from thanatos, the Greek discussion for 'expiry').
"All of our samples came from criminal cases involving people who died by suicide, homicide, drug overdose, or in traffic accidents," she explains. "Taking samples this fashion is really hard, because we have to enquire the [bereaved] families to sign our consent forms. That's a major ethical issue."
Javan and her team took samples of liver, spleen, brain, heart, and blood from 11 cadavers, at between twenty and 240 hours after death, and then used two unlike country-of-the-art Deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing technologies, combined with bioinformatics, to analyse and compare the bacterial content of each sample.
They found that samples taken from different organs in the same cadaver were very similar to each other, only were very different from those taken from the same organs in other bodies. This may be due partly to individual differences in the composition of the microbiome of the individuals involved in the study.
The variations may also exist related to differences in the period of time that had elapsed since decease. An earlier report of decomposing mice had revealed that although the animals' microbiome changes dramatically after death, information technology does then in a consistent and measurable way, such that the researchers were able to judge time of death to within 3 days of a nearly 2-month period.
Javan'south written report suggests that this "microbial clock" may also exist ticking within the decomposing human body, too. The kickoff bacteria they detected came from a sample of liver tissue obtained from a cadaver just 20 hours after death, but the primeval fourth dimension at which bacteria were found in all samples from the aforementioned cadaver was 58 hours after death. Thus, afterward we die, our bacteria may spread through the torso in a stereotyped way, and the timing with which they infiltrate first one internal organ and then another may provide a new mode of estimating the amount of fourth dimension that has elapsed since decease.
"The degree of decomposition varies not only from individual to private merely also differs in different body organs," says Javan. "Spleen, intestine, stomach and pregnant uterus are earlier to decay, merely on the other hand kidney, heart and bones are later on in the process." In 2014, Javan and her colleagues secured a U.s.a.$200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate further. "We will exercise next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics to meet which organ is all-time for estimating [time of death] – that'due south still unclear," she says.
One thing that already seems clear, though, is that different stages of decomposition are associated with a different limerick of cadaver leaner.
Once self-digestion is under way and bacteria have started to escape from the gastrointestinal tract, putrefaction begins. This is molecular death – the break down of soft tissues fifty-fifty further, into gases, liquids and salts. It is already under way at the earlier stages of decomposition, but really gets going when anaerobic bacteria get in on the act.
Putrefaction is associated with a marked shift from aerobic bacterial species, which crave oxygen to grow, to anaerobic ones, which practise not. These then feed on the body tissues, fermenting the sugars in them to produce gaseous by-products such as methane, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia, which accumulate within the body, inflating (or 'bloating') the abdomen and sometimes other torso parts, too.
This causes further discoloration of the trunk. As damaged blood cells keep to leak from disintegrating vessels, anaerobic convert haemoglobin molecules, which once carried oxygen around the torso, into sulfhaemoglobin. The presence of this molecule in settled blood gives skin the marbled, greenish-black appearance characteristic of a body undergoing active decomposition.
As the gas pressure continues to build up within the body, information technology causes blisters to appear all over the skin surface, and then loosening, followed past 'slippage,' of large sheets of peel, which remain barely fastened to the deteriorating frame underneath. Eventually, the gases and liquefied tissues purge from the trunk, usually leaking from the anus and other orifices, and often also from ripped peel in other parts of the body. Sometimes, the pressure is and then great that the abdomen bursts open up.
Bloating is frequently used a marker for the transition between early and later stages of decomposition, and another recent study shows that this transition is characterised past a distinct shift in the composition of cadaveric leaner.
The written report was carried out at the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Science Facility in Huntsville. Opened in 2009, the facility is located within a 247-acre area of National Forest, which is owned by the university and maintained by researchers at Sam Houston State University (SHSU). Within, a nine-acre plot of densely wooded land has been sealed off from the wider area, and further subdivided, past 10-pes-high green wire fences topped with barbed wire.
Here, scattered amongst the pino trees, are about a half dozen human cadavers, in various stages of decay. The ii most recently placed bodies lay spread-eagled near the middle of the small enclosure, with much of their loose, grey-blue mottled skin still intact, their rib cages and pelvic bones visible between slowly putrefying mankind. A few meters abroad lies another cadaver, fully skeletonized, with its blackness, hardened skin clinging to the bones, as if it were wearing a shiny latex suit and skullcap. Further still, across other skeletal remains that had obviously been scattered by vultures, lay another, inside a wood and wire cage, this i nearing the end of the death cycle, partly mummified and with several large, brownish mushrooms growing from where an abdomen once was.
In tardily 2011, SHSU researchers Sibyl Bucheli and Aaron Lynne and their colleagues placed two fresh cadavers here, left them to decay nether natural conditions, and so took samples of bacteria from their various parts, at the start and the cease of the bloat stage. They then extracted bacterial DNA from the samples, and sequenced it to find that bloating is characterised by a marked shift from aerobic to anaerobic species.
Every bit an entomologist, Bucheli is mainly interested in the insects that colonise cadavers. She regards a cadaver every bit a specialised habitat for various necrophagous (or 'dead-eating') insect species, some of which see out their entire life cycle in, on and effectually the body.
When a decomposing torso starts to purge, it becomes fully exposed to its surround. At this stage, microbial and insect activity reaches its peak, and the cadaveric ecosystem really comes into its own, condign a 'hub' not merely for insects and microbes, just also by vultures and scavengers, as well equally meat-eating animals.
Two species closely linked with decomposition are blowflies, flesh flies and their larvae. Cadavers give off a foul, sickly-sweet odour, made up of a complex cocktail of volatile compounds, whose ingredients change as decomposition progresses. Blowflies observe the smell using specialised smell receptors, then land on the cadaver and lay its eggs in orifices and open up wounds.
Each fly deposits around 250 eggs, that hatch within 24 hours, giving rise to small start-phase maggots. These feed on the rotting mankind and and so molt into larger maggots, which feed for several hours before molting again. After feeding some more, these yet larger, and at present fattened, maggots wriggle away from the torso. Then they pupate and transform into developed flies, and the cycle repeats over and over again, until there's nothing left for them to feed on.
Under the right conditions, an actively decaying torso will have large numbers of stage-3 maggots feeding on it. This "maggot mass" generates a lot of heat, raising the inside temperature by more than 10°C. Like penguins huddling, individual maggots within the mass are constantly on the move. Simply whereas penguins huddle to proceed warm, maggots in the mass motility around to stay cool.
Dorsum in her office on the SHSU campus – decorated with large toy insects and a drove of Monster High dolls – Bucheli explains: "It'southward a double-edged sword – if you're always at the edge, you might get eaten past a bird, and if you're ever in the center, you might get cooked. So they're constantly moving from the center to the edges and back. Information technology's like an eruption."
The presence of blowflies attracts predators such as skin beetles, mites, ants, wasps, and spiders, to the cadaver, which and then feed on or parasitize their eggs and larvae. Vultures and other scavengers, besides equally other, big meat-eating animals, may also descend upon the body.
In the absenteeism of scavengers though, information technology is the maggots that are responsible for removal of the soft tissues. Carl Linnaeus, who devised the system by which scientists name species, noted in 1767 that "3 flies could consume a horse cadaver as apace every bit a lion." Third-stage maggots volition move away from a cadaver in large numbers, often following the aforementioned route. Their activeness is then rigorous that their migration paths may be seen after decomposition is finished, every bit deep furrows in the soil emanating from the cadaver.
Given the paucity of human decomposition research, we still know very little near the insect species that colonise a cadaver. But the latest published written report from Bucheli's lab suggests that they are far more than diverse than we had previously imagined.
The study was led by Bucheli'southward former Ph.D. student Natalie Lindgren, who placed four cadavers on the Huntsville torso farm in 2009, and left them out for a whole year, during which fourth dimension she returned four times a twenty-four hours to collect the insects that she institute on them. The usual suspects were present, merely Lindgren also noted iv unusual insect-cadaver interactions that had never been documented before, including a scorpionfly that was found feeding on encephalon fluids through an autopsy wound in the scalp, and a worm plant feeding on the dried peel effectually where the toenails had been, which was previously only known to feed on decaying wood.
Insects colonise a cadaver in successive waves, and each has its own unique life cycle. They can therefore provide information that is useful for estimating time of death, and for learning about the circumstances of expiry. This has led to the emerging field of forensic entomology.
"Flies will make it at a cadaver virtually immediately," says Bucheli. "We'll put a body out and 3 seconds later at that place'll be flies laying eggs in the nose."
Insects tin can be useful for estimating time of expiry of a desperately decomposing body. In theory, an entomologist arriving at a criminal offence scene can utilize their knowledge of insects' life cycles to judge the fourth dimension of decease. And, because many insect species have a limited geographical distribution, the presence of a given species can link a body to a certain location, or show that information technology has been moved from one place to another.
In practice, though, using insects to estimate time of decease is fraught with difficulties. Fourth dimension of expiry estimates based on the age of blowfly maggots found on a body are based on the assumption that flies colonised the cadaver right later on death, but this is not always the case – burial tin can exclude insects altogether, for example, and farthermost temperatures inhibit their growth or prevent information technology birthday.
An earlier written report led by Lindgren revealed another unusual way by which blowflies might be prevented from laying eggs on a cadaver. "We fabricated a post-mortem wound to the stomach [of a donated body] and so partially buried the cadaver in a shallow grave," says Bucheli, "but fire ants fabricated little sponges out of dirt and used them to fill up in the cutting and stop upwardly the fluid." The ants monopolised the wound for more than than a calendar week, and and then information technology rained. "This washed the dirt sponges out. The body began to bloat and then it blew up, and at that point the flies could colonise information technology."
Even if colonization does occur just after death, estimates based on insects' age may be inaccurate for another reason. Insects are cold-blooded, and and then their growth rate occurs relative to temperature rather than to the calendar. "When using insects to estimate post-mortem interval, we're actually estimating the historic period of the maggot and extrapolating from that," says Bucheli. "Nosotros mensurate insect birth rate by accumulated degree hours [the sum of the boilerplate hourly temperature], so if you know the temperature and the growth bicycle of a fly, you can judge the age of a wing inside an hour or 2."
If non, fourth dimension of death estimates based on information about insect colonization tin exist wildly inaccurate and misleading. Eventually, though, Bucheli believes that combining insect data with microbiology could assist to make the estimates more accurate, and possibly provide other valuable data about the circumstances of death.
Every species that visits a cadaver has a unique repertoire of gut microbes, and different types of soil are probable to harbour distinct bacterial communities, the composition of which is probably adamant by factors such every bit temperature, moisture, and the soil type and texture.
All these microbes mingle and mix within the cadaveric ecosystem. Flies that land on the cadaver will not simply deposit their eggs on it, merely volition also have up some of the bacteria they find there, and leave some of their ain. And the liquefied tissues seeping out of the body let for the exchange of bacteria betwixt the cadaver and the soil below.
When they take samples from cadavers, Bucheli and Lynne notice bacteria originating from the pare on the body and from the flies and scavengers that visit it, as well as from soil. "When a body purges, the gut bacteria kickoff to come up out, and we run across a greater proportion of them exterior the body," says Lynne.
Thus, every dead body is likely take a unique microbiological signature, and this signature may change with fourth dimension co-ordinate to the exacting atmospheric condition of the death scene. A better understanding of the composition of these bacterial communities, the relationships between them, and how they influence each other as decomposition gain, could one day help forensics teams larn more well-nigh where, when and how a person died.
For instance, detecting Deoxyribonucleic acid sequences known to be unique to a particular organism or soil type in a cadaver could help crime scene investigators link the torso of a murder victim to a particular geographical location, or narrow down their search for clues even further, peradventure to a specific field within a given area.
"In that location have been several court cases where forensic entomology has actually stood up and provided of import pieces of the puzzle," says Bucheli. "Leaner might provide additional data and could become another tool to refine [fourth dimension of death] estimates. I hope that in well-nigh 5 years we can start using bacterial data in trials."
To this end, more cognition virtually the human microbiome and how it changes beyond a person's lifespan – and after they accept died – will exist crucial. Researchers are decorated cataloguing the bacterial species in and on the homo body, and studying how bacterial populations differ between individuals. "I would love to have a data set from life to death," says Bucheli. "I would love to meet a donor who'd allow me to take bacterial samples while they're alive, through their death process, and while they decompose."
A decomposing body significantly alters the chemistry of the soil below, causing changes that may persist for years. Purging releases nutrients into the underlying soil, and maggot migration transfers much of the energy in a body to the wider environs. Somewhen, the whole process creates a 'cadaver decomposition isle,' a highly full-bodied expanse of organically rich soil. Equally well as releasing nutrients into the wider ecosystem, the cadaver besides attracts other organic materials, such every bit dead insects and faecal matter from larger animals.
According to one estimate, an boilerplate human torso consists of 50-75% and every kilogram of dry torso mass eventually releases 32g of nitrogen, 10g of phosphorous, 4g of potassium, and 1g of magnesium into the soil. Initially, some of the underlying and surrounding vegetation dies off, mayhap because of nitrogen toxicity, or because of antibiotics found in the torso, which are secreted by insect larvae equally they feed on the flesh.
Ultimately, though, decomposition is beneficial for the ecosystem – the microbial biomass inside the cadaver decomposition isle is greater than in other nearby areas; nematode worms also become more arable, and plant life more various. Further research into how decomposing bodies change the ecology of their surroundings may provide a new way of finding murder victims whose bodies have been cached in shallow graves.
"I was reading an article about flying drones over ingather fields to see which ones would exist best to plant in," says Daniel Wescott, director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University in San Marcos. "They were imaging with about-infrared and showed organically rich soils were a darker color than others."
An anthropologist specialising in skull structure, Wescott collaborates with entomologists and microbiologists to learn more almost decomposition. Amongst his collaborators is Javan, who has been decorated analysing samples of cadaver soil collected from the facility in San Marcos.
Lately, Wescott has started using a micro-CT scanner to analyse the microscopic structure of the basic that are brought dorsum to the lab from the San Marcos body subcontract. He also works with computer engineers and a pilot who operates a drone and uses information technology to take aerial photographs of the facility.
"We're looking at the purging fluid that comes out of decomposing bodies," he says. "I thought if farmers tin can spot organically rich fields, then perchance our little drone will pick upwards the cadaver decomposition islands, as well."
Furthermore, grave soil assay may eventually provide some other possible mode of estimating fourth dimension of expiry. A 2008 report of the biochemical changes that take identify in a cadaver decomposition island showed that the soil concentration of lipid-phosphorous leaking from a cadaver peaks at around 40 days later death, whereas those of nitrogen and extractable phosphorous tiptop at 72 and 100 days, respectively. With a more detailed agreement of these processes, analyses of grave soil biochemistry could ane twenty-four hours help forensic researchers to judge how long agone a body was placed in a subconscious grave.
Another reason why estimating fourth dimension of expiry tin be extremely difficult is because the stages of decomposition do non occur discretely, but oftentimes overlap, with several taking place simultaneously, and because the charge per unit at which it gain tin can vary widely, depending largely on temperature. Once maggot migration has ended, the cadaver enters the last stages of decay, with only the bones, and perhaps some pare, remain. These concluding stages of decomposition, and the transition betwixt them, are difficult to identify, because there are far fewer observable changes than at earlier stages.
In the relentless dry rut of the Texas summer, a body left to the elements will mummify rather than decompose fully. The skin will quickly lose all of its moisture, so that it remains clinging to the bones when the process is complete.
The speed of the chemical reactions involved doubles with every 10°C rise in temperature, and then a cadaver will accomplish the avant-garde phase after xvi days at an average daily temperature of 25°C, and after lxxx days at an average daily temperature of 5°C.
The ancient Egyptians knew this. In the pre-dynastic menses, they wrapped their dead in linen and buried them directly in the sand. The heat inhibited the activity of microbes, while burial prevented insects from reaching the bodies, and then they were extremely well preserved. Later on, they began edifice increasingly elaborate tombs for the dead, in order to provide even improve for their afterlife, but this had the reverse of the intended effect, hastening the decomposition procedure, and so they invented embalming and mummification.
Morticians written report the aboriginal Egyptian embalming method to this twenty-four hours. The embalmer would starting time launder the body of the deceased with palm wine and Nile water, remove most of the internal organs through an incision made down the left-manus side, and pack them with natron, a naturally-occurring salt mixture found throughout the Nile valley. He would apply a long hook to pull the encephalon out through the nostrils, so cover the entire with torso with natron, and leave it to dry for forty days.
Initially, the stale organs were placed into canopic jars that were cached alongside the body; later, they were wrapped in linen and returned to the body. Finally, the torso itself was wrapped in multiple layers of linen, in preparation for burying.
Living in a small boondocks, Williams has worked on many people she knew, or fifty-fifty grew up with – friends who overdosed, committed suicide, or died texting at the wheel. And when her mother died 4 years agone, Williams did some piece of work on her, too, calculation the final touches by making up her face: "I always did her hair and make-up when she was alive, so I knew how to do it just right."
She transfers John to the prep tabular array, removes his apparel and positions him, then takes several small bottles of embalming fluid from a wall cupboard. The fluid contains a mixture of formaldehyde, methanol and other solvents; it temporarily preserves the body's tissues by linking cellular proteins to each other and 'fixing' them into place. The fluid kills bacteria and prevents them from breaking down the proteins and using them as a food source.
Williams pours the bottles' contents into the embalming machine. The fluid comes in an array of colours, each matching a unlike peel tone. Williams wipes the body with a wet sponge and makes a diagonal incision simply above his left collarbone. She 'raises' the carotid artery and subclavian vein from the neck, ties them off with pieces of cord, then pushes a cannula into the artery and modest tweezers into the vein to open upward the vessels.
Side by side, she switches the motorcar on, pumping embalming fluid into the carotid artery and around the body. As the fluid goes in, claret pours out of the incision, flowing downward along the guttered edges of the sloped metal table and into a large sink. Meanwhile, she picks upward one of his limbs to massage it gently. "It takes about an hr to remove all the blood from an average-sized person and replace it with embalming fluid," Williams says. "Blood clots tin can dull it downward, and so massaging breaks them up and helps the flow of the embalming fluid."
Once all the claret has been replaced, she pushes an aspirator into John'due south belly and sucks the fluids out of the body cavity, together with whatsoever urine and faeces that might nevertheless exist in there. Finally, she sews up the incisions, wipes the body down a 2d fourth dimension, sets the facial features, and re-dresses information technology. John is now ready for his funeral.
Embalmed bodies eventually decompose also, but exactly when, and how long it takes, depends largely on how the embalming was done, the type of casket in which the trunk is placed, and how it is cached. Bodies are, subsequently all, only forms of energy, trapped in lumps of matter waiting to be released into the wider universe. In life, our bodies expend energy keeping their countless atoms locked in highly organized configurations, staying composed.
Co-ordinate to the laws of thermodynamics, energy cannot exist created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another, and the amount of free energy always increases. In other words, things autumn apart, converting their mass to energy while doing so. Decomposition is ane final, morbid reminder that all matter in the universe must follow these primal laws. It breaks us down, equilibrating our bodily matter with its surroundings, and recycling information technology so that other living things can put it to employ.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This is an early draft of a feature I wrote for Mosaic, republished here (and also on Ars Technica, BBC Future, Business Insider, Daily Mail, Digg, Observe, Disinfo.com, El País, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Philly.com and Raw Story) nether Creative Commons licence.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death
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