life as Carbon-14

[AntonioLao]

Carbon-14 is a radioisotope of stable Carbon-12. Stability is in this sense means half-life close to infinity. However, the half-life of Carbon-14 is merely 5760 years. On the other hand if the aging process of human being can be traced to some radioactive decays of organic molecules with half-lives corresponding to the 120-year upper limit lifespan of human beings then a Carbon-14 replacement of all stable carbon atoms inside the body would definitely prolong life expectancy.

What then would it be like to live as a radioactive being? Because of the inevitable exponential decay of all radioactive compounds a radioactive being will gradually lose mass, so, instead of growing bigger, taller, or fatter, the being will shrink smaller, shorter, and skinner. Continue shrinking will eventually transform a turkey size being into the size of an electron. For a bit more down to earth analogy is baking a 20 lbs turkey in a conventional oven. After 7 hours of heat at 250 degrees, the turkey is cooked and its mass and volume reduced by half. From the perspective of an electron the universe is truly infinite. Even though the electrons and the protons live forever, their combinations could not because the other components of free neutrons must disintegrate within 15 minutes by simply violating the principle of even number conservation when summing up their total space-time charges.

[michellemfry]

Now you have also given a pretty good description of what happened to the lost scientists, not truly lost, just shrunken down to string theory size, where I tried to provide them all with comfortable eternal abodes. You break my heart sometimes, you know that. I'm sorry, Oppenheimer and the others.

[AntonioLao]

down to string theory size

Stringists are people who sweep theoretical difficulties under the rug if they dont know the answers. That is what they did to dimensional compactification.