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Comment by dgrin91 | Hacker News Reader

I listened to the Radiolab podcast. I remained fairly unconvinced by the reporting on the show, but the part that really didn't make sense to me was, what is their definition of death? My (limited, non-medical) understand is that death has a bit of a spectrum associated with it. At what point does this light stop emitting? When you flatline exactly?

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I came here with a similar thought. Given that we don't have a really precise definition of that transition from living to dead, I wonder if this could be it.

Some parts of the dead mice still emit in that spectrum. There won't be a clear and distinct "the lights went out" moment but a gradual fading, so you'll have to define some threshold to translate from radiation distribution and intensity do dead/alive. I don't think an image of photon emission will help pronounce someone dead.

I mean the definition of death is when the light fades right? Everything else is just an approximation. Would be wild if true.

Sleeping probably also fades light.

It would be wild because it would be wrong. We acknowledge someone who has suffered brain death to be truly dead, even if their body can be kept alive (and presumably shining!) for weeks and weeks through modern medicine. If this light is a side effect of biochemical processes then presumably someone who is decapitated will also continue to shine for minutes.

The fading of the light would be sufficient but not necessary for someone to be considered dead, so it would make a poor definition.

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