Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> writes:
> Anders Sandberg wrote: According to the chemistry textbook I have
> > in my bookshelf the abundancy in living material is one in 10^12.
> > The human genome is roughly 6e9 nucleotides, each having around
> > 10 carbon atoms ...
>
> thanks anders. i cant find in my modern physics book the number
> of C14 abundance. if it is one in 10^12, my calc was off by
> a mere 5 orders of magnitude. {8^D i think peter passaro wrote:
The number is from General Chemistry by PW Atkins, Freeman 1989, page 820
> > ...Only one in roughly ten million carbon atoms
> > is a C-14 atom and with a half life of 6000 years this is not a very
> > frequent event...
>
> im a space type not a biology type. which of the above is right,
> 10^7 or 10^12? spike
I must admit I don't know. I just trusted the textbook (*very* dangerous! :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y