Commemorate Caesar: Take a Deep Breath!
Though you may not have noticed, today is the 2050th anniversary of Julius Caesar's assassination.
Most of us have a vague sense of what happened that day. Caesar was, of course, a great conqueror. He was very popular with the ordinary folks in Rome, but not so popular with a small group of senators who feared that at any moment he would make himself an absolute dictator.
The senators, including his friend Brutus ("Et tu?"), conspired, invited him to the Senate, gathered round and stabbed him over and over. Caesar, mortally wounded, exhaled and died.
And it's not like Caesar hadn't been warned. Soothsayers had told him to "Beware the Ides Of March" -- "ides" meaning the middle of the month. But he paid no heed.
That's what most people know.
The Chemistry Angle
Here's what chemistry students know: For some reason, Caesar's dying breath, his last exhalation, has become a classic teaching tool in high school and college. When Caesar exhaled, he released an enormous number of "breath" molecules, mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. It's a very, very big number says Dan Nocera, chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). By Nocera's calculation: .05 x 6 x 10 to the 23rd.
"10 to the 23rd" all by itself looks ridiculously large. It's 10 followed by 22 zeros:
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Over the years, a number of scholars have tried to figure out what typically would happen to all those molecules. They figured some were absorbed by plants, some by animals, some by water -- and a large portion would float free and spread themselves all around the globe in a pattern so predictable that (this is the fun part) if you take a deep breath right now, at least one of the molecules entering your lungs literally came from Caesar's last breath.
That's what they say.
If you look around the Internet, you will find professors who say we take in three of Caesar's molecules per breath, or eight, or 10. It all depends on your assumptions about the size of a breath, the size of the atmosphere, the location of the breather (on a mountain, or at sea level?)
To Commemorate Caesar's Demise...
But bottom line?
Even though these calculations apply to any breath exhaled long ago -- Shakespeare's, Cleopatra's, Lincoln's, your great-great-grandma's -- you may still want to take a moment today to share with Caesar. Just breathe in and share his molecule.
9(MDAyNzUwMDI2MDEyNTA3MTU5NzcyNTQyNA004))
Several listeners wrote in saying that technically this is the 2049th anniversary of Caesar's death. Our correspondent, Robert Krulwich, has this response:
2050th birthday. This came up when we celebrated the millennium on Jan. 1, 2000. That New Year's Eve was the big one, with all the hoopla, the big TV coverage. Looking at the 2000 number, people just -- in an odometer kind of way-thought "This is it!"
However, if you count backwards, what you will find is there was no year "0".
There was 1 B.C. And the next year was 1 A.D.
So, even though the arithmetic (the year 2000 or, in our case, 2050) looks like a nice round anniversary, technically we are entering the 2050th year, not completing it.
There were people who said the millennium didn't begin until Jan. 1, 2001; those same people would say the 2050th doesn't really finish, and shouldn't be celebrated, till next year.
Technically, they have a point.
Culturally, I think we celebrate on the round numbers.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The president is not the only politician you might be thinking about today. NPR's Robert Krulwich has been looking backward as well as forward and the word is: Beware.
ROBERT KRULWICH reporting:
I know it may have slipped your mind, so let me just mention that today is the 2050th anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar. Yep, this is the day, March 15--the Ides of March--44 B.C. He came to the Roman Senate. He got stabbed repeatedly. He cried out et tu brute--that's the Shakesperean version. He gasped his final breath and he died. Now to honor this even in a very personal way, first, I want you to meet Professor Dan Nocera.
Professor DAN NOCERA (Professor of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology): I teach chemistry at MIT. I'm a professor of chemistry.
KRULWICH: And in your classes do you mention Caesar and his last breath?
Professor NOCERA: Yes, sometimes that's true. He is mentioned.
KRULWICH: And it's not just in Dan's class. It seems that Caesar's last breath is mentioned in chemistry classes all over the place.
Professor NOCERA: That's right. Caesar's last breath really caught on.
KRULWICH: Okay, let me tell our audience what you teach in class. When Caesar exhaled that final time, how many breath molecules did he exhale?
Professor NOCERA: Well, all you have to do is multiply .05 x 6 x 10 to the 23rd and that's how many you get, which is quite a bit.
KRULWICH: That's enormous! That's hundreds and hundreds of trillions of molecules. Now, what chemistry professors teach is that when anybody exhales, those molecules, once they leave you, will float free and spread across the globe in a mathematically predictable pattern. So, when Caesar exhales his molecules...
Professor NOCERA: Some are absorbed are plants.
KRULWICH: Right.
Professor NOCERA: Some by animals who eat the plants.
KRULWICH: Some get absorbed by water.
Professor NOCERA: They go into the ocean.
KRULWICH: And the rest float free. They're floating right now in the air all over the globe.
Professor NOCERA: Yes.
KRULWICH: So, let me ask you now, Dan Nocera, if I take a deep breath (inhales), how many molecules that were in Julius Caesar's lungs when he exhaled in 44 B.C., how many of those same molecules did I just breathe in?
Professor NOCERA: You got about one.
KRULWICH: One. You mean one of Julius Caesar's molecules.
Professor NOCERA: You just had one molecule go into your lungs from Caesar.
KRULWICH: Now, do you mean this poetically, like kind of like one of his molecules, or do you mean that one of the molecules literally in Caesar's chest then, is now in my lungs--the actual molecule?
Professor NOCERA: Yep. It's in your lungs.
KRULWICH: Huh. Really.
Professor NOCERA: And now you just breathed it out, but you got another one on the next breath.
KRULWICH: This is real science? You really believe this?
Professor NOCERA: Yes I do.
KRULWICH: Which means--and this may not be the most hygienic thought in the world--that what Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare and Lincoln--what they all breathed out, you breathe in.
Professor NOCERA: We have everybody.
KRULWICH: I know, but since this is Caesar's day, today if you want to, you know, commemorate, you want to share a moment with the old Roman guy, just breathe in (inhales) and share his molecule. Robert Krulwich, NPR News in New York (exhales). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
