the.com/decomposition
nature's recycling crew, turning yesterday's corpse into tomorrow's wildflower with zero ceremony
means The process by which something breaks down into simpler parts — whether organic matter rotting into soil, or a problem split into smaller pieces.
from Built from Latin pieces: 'de-' (down, away) plus 'componere' (to put together) — itself 'com-' (together) and 'ponere' (to place). So to decompose is literally to un-put-together, to take apart what was assembled. The word came into English through French 'décomposer' around the 18th century, first in the chemical and natural sciences, later spreading to anything that could be broken into parts — a corpse, a function, an argument.
- crew size
- a single gram of soil holds billions of decomposers
- famous flower
- corpse flower smells rotten to lure pollinators
- forensic clock
- insects on bodies help police estimate time of death
- heat output
- compost piles can self-ignite from microbial warmth
- deep time
- too few decomposers once let coal forests pile up
great oxidation event — 2.4 billion years ago when atmospheric oxygen decomposed reducing compounds, reshaping earth's chemistry