Ella Scott
Experts have broken down roughly how many of William Shakespeare’s atoms we have inside us — causing YouTube users to question everything.
According to the brains behind Jupiter Scientific, it’s possible to get an estimated number of exactly how many atoms in one’s body may originate from within the Bard of Avon.
This is based on calculations that look at atoms: produced following his death; those breathed out during the playwright’s lifetime and the atoms that exited his body while he was alive.
It’s a pretty complicated, mathematical process to discover how many atoms fit into these three categories.
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But some numbers that Jupiter Scientific crunched included estimating how many atoms Shakespeare breathed out during his 52 years on Earth (400 million times) as well as how many atoms he shed through perspiration, urination and defecation (100 quintillion).
By making a series of estimations like the above examples, specialists worked out that there is probably around 7 x 10 to the power of 30 Shakespearian atoms in the environment.
That unfathomable number looks something like this: 700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000.
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The team also worked out that the number of atoms in the Earth’s environment is around 1.4 x 10 to the power of 47.
That would be written as 14 followed by 47 zeros, similar to this - 14,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
So, now you know how many Shakespearean atoms there are in the world and how many atoms are on the planet, you need to know roughly how many atoms are in an average human’s body.
Jupiter Science has thankfully continued to do the hard work for us, claiming that in an 80kg human, there are about 4 x 10 to the power of 27 atoms.
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That number looks a little like this: 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00.
These three numbers have been put into an equation to find out how many atoms are inside of us right now.
The equation is: the number of Shakespearean atoms x (the number of body atoms divided by the number of environmental atoms).
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The answer, thankfully, is a number that is possible to say.
According to specialists, 200 billion atoms in your body have also touched the beloved bard. Wow.
Around 10,000 of these are likely to have actually come from deceased Shakespeare following his death in April 1616.
However, if you live in Britain, you will probably have more atoms from the Hamlet writer inside of you due to proximity to his grave.
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YouTuber Soph’s Notes, who made a video using Jupiter Science’s research in 2019, explained that we’re likely expelling Shakespearian atoms at the same time we’re taking them in.
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“This means this number - 200 billion - is pretty much constant,” she explained. “And it turns out about one in seven of your Shakespearean atoms came from his waste.”
Of course, this type of calculation doesn’t just work for Shakespeare.
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You’re likely to have the same amount of atoms in your body as anyone who lived as long as Shakespeare.
That includes actors like Christopher Reeve and revered magician Harry Houdini, who both died at the age of 52.
Interestingly, you’re also likely to have more Julius Caesar atoms in your body than the Shakespearian ones. This is because the Roman emperor’s assassination took place when he was 55 years old, thus he had longer to release atoms into the air.
After watching Soph’s Note’s video on the subject, many YouTube users took to the comments section to have their say.
One typed: “Yay, I'm 0.00000042% dinosaur! Woot.”
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While a second said: “Is there a chance his atoms from his brain that got recycled to my brain? Or it could of been his atoms from his bu... could be in my brain no wonder why I’m s**t at English Literature GCSE.”
“OK. Using the I'm part of all atoms that have ever been makes me very very old at around 14 billion years old. I'm due a lot of Seniors discounts,” remarked someone else.
And someone else commented: “Deep breath - you just breathed in atoms Shakespeare breathed out with his dying breath... kinda unhealthy?”