# What kind of planet would the materials of a decomposing god's body lead to if it were made up similarly to a human's body?

I'm envisioning a universe where the dead gods are what make up the galaxy's stars and planets and even the black hole at the center would be a particularly huge one that managed to get itself killed in the war of the gods that only left a few still alive who put everything into stable orbits as a way to honor the dead or something along that line. The reason why they become these things is because each one has a unique body whose scale and mass would be different but would be on par with the many normally occurring celestial bodies we know of in our universe, and once dead their magic does not hold them as their bodies any longer so they collapse into spheres under their own gravity. Those who became black holes and stars are no longer recognizable as what they once were, while those who became planets or moons can still be seen to have a hand or a skull or something as part of the celestial body's features at the time where sapient mortals emerged from their bodies.

Each one would also be composed of different materials, elements, to add to each's uniqueness, but in general can be thought of to have had iron or some other heavy element as their skeleton. If a story comes from this universe it'll probably be on a planet where the god was composed of just the right amount of everything to have it be more or less earth-like, but there is a curiosity I'm wondering about...

What kind of planet would come from the materials of a god whose total mass is earth-like, is in the goldilocks orbit zone/path from the local star, and whose matter is made up proportionately of everything an average human body is made of?

Assuming a complete decomposition (something on the line of minimal energy/maximal entropy) - by whatever means - of the body of a god whose total mass is earth-like, what kind of planet would the resulting substances make up? Assume the initial composition of the god's body is made up proportionately of everything an average human body is made of, and the planet is in the goldilocks orbit zone/path from the local star.

• Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
– L.Dutch
Nov 8 '21 at 16:48
• @L.Dutch While I agree that the comments section was long, I feel like this was not an extended discussion. Comments were made by 7 distinct users on multiple topics. The last 4 comments also had nothing to do with the previous comments suggesting that the longer conversation was already resolved and did not need to be concluded in chat. By moving to chat, this obfuscates the important last 4 comments about if this question should be closed or reopened. Nov 8 '21 at 18:21
• @L.Dutch I concur with Nosajimiki, That wasn't people idly chatting. If you took each user's contribution alone and had it in the current comment section, it wouldn't be moved. Last I checked, we are supposed to discuss close reasons and question improvements. Nov 8 '21 at 19:26

and whose matter is made up proportionately of everything an average human body is made of?

Simple: an ocean world, given that 70% of the human body mass is water.

Except the radius will be about 1.7-1.8 times the current Earth's, given that the average Earth density is $$5500kg/m^3$$ and the average human body's density is very close to $$1000kg/m^3$$

And, on its surface, $$g_{god-planet} = g_{Earth}/1.7^2 = g_{Earth}/2.9$$.

The (very small) core will be made manly of carbon with a good proportion of calcium and phosphorus (bones, mainly), some small percentages of sodium, potassium, chlorine, magnesium, sulfur. Anything else in trace amounts.

Atmosphere probably made of nitrogen, ammonia, oxygen and carbon dioxide. Soon to be lost, though, that atmosphere. The core will be too small to generate enough of a magnetic field.

One of the few good things, tho', no Earth-quakes.

Here's some info on the elements' proportions in a human body

Almost 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Only about 0.85% is composed of another five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. All 11 are necessary for life. The remaining elements are trace elements, of which more than a dozen are thought on the basis of good evidence to be necessary for life. All of the mass of the trace elements put together (less than 10 grams for a human body) do not add up to the body mass of magnesium, the least common of the 11 non-trace elements.

• What is going to decompose the organic matter to release those basic elements? In space nobody can decompose you.
– L.Dutch
Nov 8 '21 at 14:42
• @L.Dutch UV, X and gamma rays, for an example. Asteroid impacts for another. Differences in glass transition temperature/crystallization, for the times the god's cadaver cooled enough. The vanquishing blow of the victorious God - so vicious that any large dalton molecules are broken into simple pieces. If you read the question carefully, it only asks "what is the final result?", not "how did we get there?" (so that I don't feel the compulsion to over-abuse Randal's the "mole of moles"). Nov 8 '21 at 14:54
• @L.Dutch Ah, yes, sorry, I almost forgot: neutrino interaction for sure - there's enough time in this universe. Maybe black matter too, when they finally discover it. Nov 8 '21 at 15:00
• What's to stop anaerobic bacteria from devouring the body? And surely the god's lungs contain oxygen anyway, at least some of which will be kept by the god's gravity. Nov 9 '21 at 0:11
• @MichaelW. I'm not sure if a planet-sized God can found a convenient place welding supplier down the cosmic road (near the chemists) to provide him with the oxygen to breathe. For the matter, I'm not quite sure he'd be able to find a greengrocer either, so he may not actually need an intestinal flora to help with breaking down those fibers. That's the beauty and the trouble with mythology, many things are left with a "because God nature" explanation. So maybe he does have anaerobic bacteria that will devour the body and poo back some stuff that's of a lower enthalpy of formation. Nov 9 '21 at 0:25

Since a human is similar in composition to a mole[citation needed], the treatise by Randall Munroe A Mole of Moles can give you a a good idea what the result would look like.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be very liveable:

The outer surface of the planet radiates heat into space and freezes. Because the moles form a literal fur coat, when frozen it insulates the interior of the planet and slows the loss of heat to space. However, the flow of heat in the liquid interior is dominated by convection. Plumes of hot meat and bubbles of trapped gases like methane—along with the air from the lungs of the deceased moles—periodically rise through the mole crust and erupt volcanically from the surface, a geyser of death blasting mole bodies free of the planet.

Eventually, after centuries or millennia of turmoil, the planet calms and cools enough that it begins to freeze all the way through. The deep interior is under such high pressure that as it cools, the water crystallizes out into exotic forms of ice such as ice III and ice V, and eventually ice II and ice IX (no relation).

• The Stank, would someone please think of the stank? <shudder> Nov 9 '21 at 18:13

## It will sedimentate into its base molecules.

While this question is in many ways similar to Randel Monroe's A Mole of Moles hypothesis, I do not believe that he actually got this one correct. Yes, Randel Monroe is correct that the intense pressures at the core of such a large flesh mass would kill off all known decomposers, but he did not take into account that pressure can do all sorts of other fun things.

When you god dies, whatever magic/divine/techno/handwavy force that kept him from collapsing in on himself will presumably cease to exist. Everywhere deep enough in his body to kill off microbial life will also rupture cell membranes similar to a giant world sized olive press. This will give you an aqueous suspension of all of your basic biological compounds: lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids. However, these compounds will not just float around where they are, they will sedimentate. As Adrian Colomitchi pointed out in his answer 70% of your body is water, and a lot of the rest of the stuff is bone. So, you will get an small inner core made mostly of collapsed bone fragments mixed in with Carbohydrates, Nucleic acids, and Proteins covered by a very deep ocean of water... but to the outside observer, this will not be a "water world". Because on top of the water will form a crust of lipids (fats) many miles deep.

This is where orbital distance becomes important since animal fat transitions between solid and liquid at 36–45°C. So, if you are closer to the sun, you will have an ocean of of melted lard, but if you are farther out you will have a solid crust of like you see form at the top of meat drippings when they cool down.

• Wait a bit without atmosphere and the lard is all cleaved by UV and energetic protons in the stellar wind. Whatever is volatile, will go as well, anything else will sediment as carbon. Water will take a bit longer to go away, but in the absence a magnetic field, gone it will be, especially if the late cadaver orbits the star in the lower side of the Goldilocks zone. Nov 11 '21 at 21:19
• @AdrianColomitchi You are right, but it will depend on distance to star. That top layer maybe frozen solid, or it might slow cook until it becomes somethings else entirely. Nov 11 '21 at 21:23
• "That top layer maybe frozen solid", just in case: I didn't mean heat cooking, I meant degradation of the fatty acids by slightly more energetic radiation. The same thing that happen with the solid plastics without UV stabilizers, even under 10-100 km thick Earth atmosphere. Once the water gets to the surface, it will sublimate even if frozen - will take longer than evaporation, but on long term is as good as gone. Nov 11 '21 at 21:28
• @AdrianColomitchi, Ah I see what you are saying. However, according to this tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09553007914550391 radiation has very little effect on lard; so, the planet should probably be fine... or at least be affected so slowly that the lard crust will last for a very long time. Nov 11 '21 at 21:57
• Depends on the radiation they used - I strongly suspect they used Xrays, I'm seeing only the dose in the linked abstract. A photon near the energy of the chemical bond (usually in near UV) will have the absorption cross-section far higher than a more energetic X or gamma ray (even if a thick layer of lard will guarantee the eventual "collision" of the EM energetic ray). Heavy particulate radiation (proton, alpha) will be "absorbed" in a space of the O(sub-millimeter) (and I don't think it will just heat the lard without cleaving some long fatty acids). Beta rad will get just a bit deeper Nov 11 '21 at 22:26