this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
367 points (73.7% liked)
Funny
11731 readers
1440 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Trixie, that you? As long as they had a good timeπ
(Also because I am curious: do implants really last longer than human skin and organs?)
Yeah. My wife had her implants taken out after 30 years; They looked brand new. Plastics are not forever, but last a very very long time.
Well, it looks like subcutaneous injections off silicones do see small molecules of it wrapped in vacuoles in the blood (though the injections are of fluids, so can't be certain of the breakdown of more solid forms [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6358378/]). Silicones do burn, producing silica powder, which means it is subject to oxidation-reduction reactions in some manner. Some silicones break down readily in organic processes. The wikipedia article notes clay as being particularly catalytic. The medical grade silicones don't have even that little bit available for long term study (especially of the thousands of years variety you'd need for this picture), but I'd take a wager even they would eventually decay. Buuuut, the decay would likely be slower than skin/organs.
So would silicon be subject to the same fossilization process as bones? Or whould it have a simmilar decay to cartilage?
Way beyond my knowledge base to even speculate. The NPS website has a bit of info on how fossils form, and the important bit seems to be that the material has pores which mineral carrying water can flow through. The site does mention that softer tissues like cartilage can undergo permineralization as well, but... Silicones are pretty permeable to gas, but fairly impermeable to liquids. They'd probably lose the bits that 'decayed' from the outside in, instead of the permineralization happening throughout as the material decays.
Lip filler and botox, no. But breast implants can apparently last up to 500 years or something.
Yeah now I'm curious if morticians remove this stuff and like medical metal stuff when they prepare people for burial.