Pneumatic Power Systems
Pneumatic Power Systems
In this story, we learn how the human body is powered by oxygen. We can live weeks without food, days without water, but we will die within minutes without air. 🫁
TLDR: I’ll summarize this story for you.
Humans are air powered. The fancy word for air powered is Pneumatic, as in pneumatic tools like these:
Pneumatic comes from the Greek word pneuma, which means wind or air.
@christians: In English bibles, whenever you see the words “Holy Spirit”, the original Greek words written my Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul were Haggia Pneuma. It means the “Sacred Wind”. We dive deeper into this topic in:
The Latin word for breath is spire. So here are some English words related to our breath:
inspire - to breathe into
perspire - to use breath
respiration - breathing
respiratory - related to breathe
respire - to breathe
conspire - to share breath with another
expire - to lose breath
spirit - made of breath
aspire - where you want your breath to take you
transpired - what happened while breathing
Our Pneumatic Engines
It’s shocking how much air we need every day. When air travels down the Trachea, it is divided in half, splitting the volume of air equally between two Lungs. Once the air is inside each lung, the “air pipe” divides exactly in half again and again, just like other divide and conquer strategies in computer science.
Our lungs continue to divide the air again and again until the air reaches tiny little sacs called Alveoli. Each alveoli only holds 0.2 milliliters of air, but there are so many alveoli in our lungs that they create more than 100 square meters of surface area. That’s roughly 1,100 square feet. The lungs in our chests create the same surface area as an average home in Germany. So just imagine trying to change the air filter at your house, if the intake vent was as big as the entire floor plan.
We need every bit of that square footage to process the volume of air required to feed the trillions of mitochondria “batteries” embedded in our cells. Check out this quote from Discovery Health,
The average adult, when resting, inhales and exhales about 7 or 8 liters of air per minute. That totals about 11,000 liters of air per day. Inhaled air is about 20-percent oxygen. Exhaled air is about 15-percent oxygen. Therefore, about 5-percent of breathed air is consumed in each breath. That air is converted to carbon dioxide. So, as far as how much air is actually used, human beings take in about 550 liters of pure oxygen per day.
11,000 liters of air per day is a lot. For reference, here is what 10,000 liters looks like:
Our lungs are directly exposed to the external world, just like our skin cells, so we breathe in a lot more than just oxygen. We inhale pollen, dust, bacteria, and viruses. To protect us from the environment, each human “robot” comes with its own self-cleaning air filtration system that is way more technologically advanced than the air filters in our homes. The air filtration system in our lungs is water-based and we can see it in action. When we exhale hot air in the winter, the little cloud that forms is the water that came directly from our lungs.
Here’s how it works. The alveoli air sacs at the bottom of our lungs have several layers. The outermost cells are called Epithelial Alveoli and they protect us from the environment by forming a super thin lipid membrane that acts as a firewall. The only molecules allowed to pass through it are oxygen and carbon dioxide, so technically it’s really an “airwall”.
This airwall is protected by Type II Epithelial Alveoli that works just like the sebaceous gland “sprinkler system” on our skin. But instead of secreting an oil-based solution, they secrete a water-based solution called Pulmonary Surfactant. So the bottom of each little air sac is constantly filled with soapy water that is disinfected by our Immune Systems. That’s why we inadvertently add humidity to the air we breathe. We lose about 400 ml of the water we drink each day when exhaling.
That’s a lot. 😮💨
Our pneumatic design is very energy efficient because our Cardiovascular System routes itself in and around all 300 million alveoli air sacs. Here is a diagram to understand this exchange.
The way these two systems are woven together means that we use very little caloric energy as we breathe. When blood is returned to the lungs, it is loaded with carbon dioxide waste from all our mitochondria batteries. Since there is a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in our blood than in the air outside, some of the carbon dioxide molecules naturally diffuse across the epithelial membrane to reach equilibrium. This exchange works the other way too. Since there is a higher concentration of oxygen in the air outside than the deoxygenated blood coming into the alveoli, some of these oxygen molecules naturally cross the epithelial membrane to reach equilibrium.
There is just so much more to learn about breathing, but I can’t explain it better than James Nestor in his book, “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art”.
This book is fantastic. When I first started reading it, I couldn’t imagine someone writing an entire book about a breath. By the time I finished, I wished this book was part of a trilogy. “Breath” will teach you that breathing is not only critical to our survival, but it’s also critical to our posture and skeletal development. You will learn why none of the cavemen in the fossil record needed braces or their wisdom teeth removed.
“Breath” will also teach you how proper breathing is critical for our mental health as well. It introduced me to Wim Hof and guided breath work. Here is an intro video to try guided breath work for yourself. Don’t worry if you feel stupid, just wait and see how you feel after you do it. (11 mins)
@psychologist: Breathing coordinates the quantum computation in our brains.
@christians: The New Testament is obsessed with breathing. We already mentioned the Haggia Pneuma, but another example is the word “soul”. Whenever you see that word in an English Bible, the original Greek word written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul was “psyche”. Pneuma means “that which is blown”, but psyche means BREATH.
The Old Testament is obsessed with breathing too. After God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, God BREATHED directly into his nostrils to bring him to life. James Nestor, the author of “Breath”, would probably want me to point out that God blew into Adam’s nostrils so he wouldn’t become a mouth breather. 😁
Organization by Design
Throughout this chapter, we have explored our own biology for signs of Intelligent Design. Did you find any?
In “The BioLogical Robot”, we explored the 1.5 gigabytes of data in our DNA. It is stored on chromosome “tape drives” with histone spools that haven’t mutated one single letter across all life forms. Ever. 🤔
The software on our tape drives is so modular and abstract that scientists can replace the Hox gene that means “head” in a fruit fly with the Hox gene that means “head” in a human, and still get a normal fruit fly. It seems absurd to imagine that humans evolved independently from fruit flies for millions of years, but our Hox genes are still interchangeable. 🤔
In “The Fountain of Youth”, we learned that 98% of our atoms are less than 12 months old because our DNA software was designed to live forever. Our software may age, but our hardware does not. 🤔
Our DNA reprograms itself throughout our lifetimes to better fit us into our environments starting in embryos as young as 5 days old. It uses programmed cell death to drastically prune the weakest versions of our source code, which enables us to live indefinitely. Now that geneticists can also reprogram our source code, our children may have to choose to die. 🤔
In “Our Cell Machinery”, we learned how our DNA software makes hardware. We looked at protein micro machines like this. 🤔
We also learned how each human cell has all the components we would expect in a modern computer: microprocessor, system bus, partitions, modem, recycle bin, UEFI, long term data storage, and power supply units. 🤔
In “Fiber Optic Carbon Fibers”, we learned about our fascia, which is made from triple-weaved carbon fiber threads that conduct light, heat, sound, force, and electricity. So you are a carbon fiber robot with fiber optic electronics. 🤔
If you haven’t found any signs of intelligent design in these five stories, then I don’t know what else to tell you.
When we look for intelligent design within any system, we are looking for the opposite of entropy. Entropy is the law of physics that states a closed system will become more disordered over time. So organization is the opposite of entropy. Organization is exactly what we see when we zoom out and look at our design.
Our DNA software instructs our cells to specialize into dedicated organs that chain together to make complex systems. These complex systems intersect each other all over the body to make a system of systems. Here are the 12 systems of the human “machina”:
Integumentary system: Includes the skin, hair, nails, and sweat glands, and helps protect the body from external damage and regulate body temperature.
Skeletal system: Composed of bones, cartilage, and ligaments, and provides support, protection, and movement for the body.
Muscular system: Includes skeletal muscles, smooth muscles, and cardiac muscle, and is responsible for movement, posture, and heat production.
Nervous system: Composed of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves, and controls and coordinates the body's responses to internal and external stimuli.
Endocrine system: Includes glands such as the pituitary, thyroid, and adrenal glands, and produces hormones that regulate various bodily functions.
Cardiovascular system: Composed of the heart and blood vessels, and transports oxygen, nutrients, and waste products throughout the body.
Lymphatic system: Includes lymph nodes, lymphatic vessels, and lymphoid organs, and helps defend the body against infections and diseases.
Respiratory system: Composed of the lungs, trachea, and bronchial tubes, and is responsible for the exchange of gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide) between the body and the environment.
Digestive system: Includes the mouth, esophagus, stomach, intestines, liver, and pancreas, and is responsible for the breakdown and absorption of nutrients from food.
Urinary system: Composed of the kidneys, ureters, bladder, and urethra, and is responsible for the elimination of waste products from the body.
Reproductive system: Includes the gonads (testes in males and ovaries in females), as well as other organs such as the uterus, vagina, and penis, and is responsible for the production of gametes (sperm and eggs) and the perpetuation of the species.
Immune system: A network of cells, tissues, and organs that work together to defend the body against infections and other harmful agents. Some sources include the immune system as a separate system, while others consider it a part of the lymphatic system.
Our body powers 79 organs across 12 systems using only 100 watts of electricity. If that’s not an intelligent design, then I literally don’t know what is.
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