How many years before enough atoms of your body are replaced to survive the sudden disappearance of the original body's atoms?
A magician summons a person to the material world to be their servant. Their body is not made from true atoms per se, but is some kind of force projection.
In most ways though, they act as a person and experience the laws of physics as if they were a normal flesh and blood being. This includes eating, getting sick, excreting, and so forth.
Away from the main projection though, 'matter' that was once part of the host that leaves the body in the form of carbon dioxide, skin flakes, urine or otherwise will disappear on an 'atom' by 'atom' basis without releasing much in the way of energy with a half life of two weeks.
It is widely known (or believed) that after about ten years the human body will have fully replaced every cell within it. However, I have not been able to find out how much of the material that makes up the cells remains.
How many years will it take to ensure that when the magician tires of the projection and aims to dismiss it, it can reasonably be assumed that the projection will survive with their physical and mental facilities intact?
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1 answer
Even if they survived Zeiss Ikon's way, there's not a hope of surviving this:
The neurons in the brain don't get replaced over this sort of time period. It is widely understood now that new neurons can grow, but when a nerve cell dies, it is gone for good. The nerve cells in your brain today have the same molecules of DNA that they were initially created with.
Other cells, different story, same problem: when a cell replicates its DNA by mitosis to replace old or dying cells, it unzips its DNA, and new nucleotides are synthesized to be the complimentary strand. Errors are fixed (a small percentage), then the strands are zipped up again - approximately half the atoms constituting the DNA in each daughter cell are from the original.
The mitochondrial DNA (the so-called power-houses of all cells except erythrocytes) would be similarly distributed between cells.
In conclusion:
The summoned creature's cells would cease to function without their energy factories and the nucleus giving coherent instructions to the protein factories - probably about the same way as acute cyanide poisoning (seizures, cardiac arrest, apnea, coma and death), and probably as quick (a few seconds 'till the end).
Addendum:
A human lifetime would not be enough time for atomic replacement to occur that would enable survival. Of course, it might be possible to design a species that could withstand this treatment, but not within the scope of the question.
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