There was a study a few years ago that looked at the ages of tissues in the body by studying levels of carbon-14 in the DNA of various cells. They found that the average age of intestinal and skeletal muscle cells was about 15-16 years. They also found that people’s gray matter was about 3 years younger in the cerebellum, 10 years younger in the occipital cortex, and that the occipital neurons were about the same age as the person. Another author suggested that the average age of cells could be as low as 7-10 years.

So the truth appears to be that cells turnover ranges from 5 days or so (for epithelial cells, like skin) to almost never (for central nervous system neurons). Our tissues/organs are constantly in flux, because individual cells are dying and being “born” all the time.

Even our cells themselves are not permanent, unchanged entities. The material that makes up cell structures is continually being replaced, new proteins and RNA are created, the walls of cells and organelles (the machinery within the cell) are built and rebuilt (which is why we need molecules like fats, proteins and cholesterol). So, if we look at the body at a very basic level, it’s the atoms making up all of these cells and tissues that are being replaced, and it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the age of these atoms in the body could be limited to around 7-10 years. So, in a very fundamental way, your body now is not the body you had as a kid kid (and, believe me, I feel it. I had to climb a tree today and it turns out my kid body was a monkey’s, and my present one is a sloth’s).

So you’d probably be on more solid footing if you said that all the atoms – not the cells – in your body are replaced every seven years. It’s still a stretch and an oversimplification (and perhaps a bit of a cheat), but there it is.

(I do seem to recall once reading, somewhere, sometime, a pointed debunking of the whole idea which explained that some types of cells are lucky if they last a few weeks, whereas others stick with us until we die. Maybe SF authors such as Farmer and Van Vogt finally got the word about that little detail?)

So apparently the idea was a piece of pseudoscience that was in vogue for awhile, once upon a time. Maybe this story is set back around the continuity of the 1970s, when it might have been more probable for a superhero to keep stumbling across people who had that bit of misinformation on the tips of their tongues?

What Im interested in is is it actually true? if it is then its pretty profound. It has to make you wonder what we really are – could we be simply a moment tom moment electrical pulse passing through some organs that contain “memories” making us believe we exist more then a transitional state?

Perhaps be a bit too profound a topic for this thread, though Im confident that we could figure the whole thing out if we concentrate our geeky/snarky expertise.

It’s also not true – the central nervous system sticks around your whole life.

SO TAKE THAT.

That song had some of the most ridiculous lyrics I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading/hearing.

Awesome. Just awesome. Thanks.

Sijo: Iceman’s explaining what happened to during his last battle with Mystique, to a truck driver who’s picked him up -he’s telling him because he wants to gauge the truck driver’s response to see if he is in fact Mystique himself.

Because many comic book artists can only draw 3 different male hair styles: short, 90′s shag, and ponytail.

Did you know that the cells of a person with a ponytail have trouble finding other cells that are willing to replace them when they die?

Also, why is Ultimate Peter Parker hitch hiking in Manifest Destiny?!