Sunday, February 19, 2017

The Last Breath of Jesus

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.  -Matt 27:50

I visited my brother yesterday.  I walked in as the respiratory therapist was walking him through some exercises.  She left him with a nifty device to exercise with.  It measured breath volume.

According the this website, the normal "tidal volume" is about a half liter.  Little bro was knocking out +2.0 liters.

Assuming that Jesus's last breath on the cross was 2.0 liters, then he exhaled 5.4e22 molecules.  Looking at just the nitrogen and argon, he exhaled 4.26e22 molecules of essentially inert molecules...molecules that are floating around in the atmosphere today.  Oxygen, carbon dioxide and the like are likely to be sequestered by chemical reactions or "banked" in the ocean.  But N and Ar are likely to still be floating around.

The mass of the atmosphere is approximately 5.15e18 kg.  The number of molecules is approximately 1.1e44.  You can look it up.

The odds that any one, given molecule in today's atmosphere was exhaled during Jesus's last breath is 4.26e22/1.1e44 or 3.8e-22

3.8e-22 is a very small number but it relates to the odds of a single molecule.  What if we multiplied it by a larger number...say the number of molecules we inhale in an average breath?  That would approximate the odds of our inhaling a molecule from Jesus's last breath in any one of our normal inhalations.

3.8e-22 (odds of a single molecule...) X 1.3e22 (molecules in normal tidal inhalation) = 5.0

That suggests to me that we inhale an average of five molecules with every breath that were exhaled by Jesus during his final breath.


If you choose, you can keep the commandments;
loyalty is doing the will of God.
Set before you are fire and water;
to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand.
Before everyone are life and death,
whichever they choose will be given them.
The eyes of God behold his works,
and he understands every human deed.
He never commands anyone to sin,
nor shows leniency toward deceivers  -Sirach Chapter 15:15-20

Of course we also inhale five of Hitler's last breath and five of Budda's last breath and five of....  It is up to you to choose whose breath will guide your path.

1 comment:

  1. That is an interesting take on the subject, and I honestly never thought of looking at it and that way! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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