Well Fancy That!

[bennevisplace]

Just for fun, a silly quiz for you.

PREAMBLE

It's well known that every cell in our bodies contains coiled-up strands of DNA, the code of life. Cells are very small - for example the nucleus of a B-lymphocyte or a red blood cell are about 7 μm (7 thousandths of a millimetre) across - but so tightly wound is DNA that its uncoiled length, from a single cell, would stretch to about 2 metres. The human body contains lots of cells - 37.2 trillion is the figure I'm going to work with.

FINGERS ON KEYBOARDS... THE QUESTION

If you could somehow extract, uncoil and join together all (living) human DNA, and take it off into space, it would be long enough to encircle the Milky Way galaxy how many times?

[Sepsur]

Twice?

[bennevisplace in reply to Sepsur]

Did you work it out, or just guess?

Higher.

[Sepsur in reply to bennevisplace]

Just call me Cheshire’s answer to Terry Tao 😜

[Newdawn Administrator]

Sorry I googled it so I won’t answer 😉

Newdawn

[Sushibruno in reply to Newdawn]

😂

[bennevisplace in reply to Newdawn]

Googling is allowed.

It's a pity that GIFs are not. There's a good one of Pinnochio.

[Emerfly]

I agree with your answer Bennevisplace 😉

[LeoPa]

Wow, 5.93 times. Had to use a spreadsheet. My hand calculator could not fit in the zeroes 😂

[bennevisplace in reply to LeoPa]

Good effort LeoPa.

I'm away from base right now and will post my solution later today.

[bennevisplace]

Thanks everyone, competition closed.

Look out for Part Two, coming up.