Is it true that when you die...

...you go to heaven? j/k

Is it true that when a person dies they lose 21 grams? I heard this as a part of a movie trailor and I was just wondering if there is any truth to it?

Thanks in advance.

Originally posted by paradoxical
...you go to heaven? j/k

Is it true that when a person dies they lose 21 grams? I heard this as a part of a movie trailor and I was just wondering if there is any truth to it?

Thanks in advance.

I don't think its that accurate, perhaps you could provide the movie and the context involved. When you die you have the escape of air, i have no idea how much that weighs but its variable in all situations. I do believe the myth is false but we do lose weight when we die as the body begins to get rid of the expendable things, e.g. air and waste.

yeah, the cops take out that 21 gram sack of rocks off your person as they scrape your body off the floor, after a drug deal went wrong.

I saw a programme once about this place where they study dead bodies. The bodies are donated to them according to the wishes of the deceased and they basically leave them out in the open to study the effects of decomposition on them.I can't remember much of the info from the programme I just remember that it was very gruesom and yet fascinating.

awwww yes, the body farm. They put a dead body in a field and take pictures of it like everyday and compare it to a pig. Seriously, Pigs are the closest animal to us when it comes to decomposition.

yes thats it thanks joshter I'd forgotten what it was called

www.cnn.com...

the number may not be exactly 21 grams, but there is a loss of weight that may not be fully accounted for by loss of fluids and stuff.
"At the end of three hours and forty minutes he expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce"
genesismission.4t.com...

Originally posted by paradoxical
...you go to heaven? j/k

Is it true that when a person dies they lose 21 grams? I heard this as a part of a movie trailor and I was just wondering if there is any truth to it?

Thanks in advance.

Found this quote by the screenwriter of '21 grams' and he said:

"21 Grams refers to the weight a person loses at the exact moment of death. I can't say this is a corroborated specific fact. Some doctors have weighed dying people, and at the exact moment of death they lose 21 grams. I wanted to use this as a metaphor about the way a person who dies weighs over the ones that survive them. Sometimes you carry this weight all of your life."

I couldn't find anything scientific on the subject.

Pretty interesting. It could possibly be that the pressure of all organs moving around that when they stop the pressure is lifted and the wieght is then a loss of 21 grams. Not sure if that makes sense, but I know what I am trying to say.
It seems though that this would be a pretty hard thing to measure considering the exact time of a persons death is usually never known.

yes you do lose some grams, not always 21 but in the range of 10 to 30. Whether one choses to believe this or not is up to them. Many believe though that it is the soul leaving the body, most recently though scientists have begun to uncover other experiments done in the 19th century that showed people being murdered and examined to see if they lose 21 grams. When murdered though the reports showed you lose twice that amount near to 42, what this means was unknown to the scientists. It is a subject that is not examined due to the controversy that it brings upon the scenitfic community.

reply to post by joshter
And in a few other traits

There was a scientist at one time who weighed a bunch of people as they were dying and right after they died they all lost exactly 21 grams. He also did this with some animals and nothing happened. It was supposedly the weight of the soul, it goes along with the thought that animals don't have souls. I don't know how true it is, I've just heard it from people

I believe you lose 21 grams when you die for a reason i have made up. I do think it is possible that when your body is reaching its last living moments chemicals are released that turbo power your metabolisim for one last sstrive for energy.

sonmething along those lines maybe

Prolly air and the electric current (if it weighs) exit to why if anything is less about a body. I wonder does body heat weigh? You know helium is hot air. There could be something in a body that leaves when the body heat leaves.

If air and heat rises, then it doesnt have weight. 21 grams is so specific, and we are all different shapes and sizes. It doesnt seem logical. How can the soul weigh anything as it is not a physical thing? Interesting thread.

Heat doesn't have weight. Heat is just the product of high energies in the molecules of whatever is hot. The air that we breath does have weight and some of the weight loss can be contributed to exhaling at death. Not much tho, not 21 grams. It would be interesting to see what modern science could find on the subject.

Originally posted by paradoxical
Is it true that when a person dies they lose 21 grams?

A lot more than that when the bodily fluids depart.

If you're trying to say that the "soul" or "spirit" etc weighs 21 grammes....that just sounds silly to me!