dead battery
The model of a "dead" battery, a state in which the free energy change of the electrochemical potential of the reaction is zero; a model that applies to humans and to human chemical reactions, e.g. as in a "dead marriage" (or dead relationship), after which divorce tends to follow.
In terminology, dead, as contrasted with alive, is a defunct theory layspeak term that tends to signify a point past the termination of the existence of what historically or religio-mythologically has been conceptualized as a "living entity" (or living being, living matter, living molecule, life, etc).

Difficulties on term
The term "dead", in the context of the defunct theory of life, wherein past a certain point of reduction, often called the unbridgeable gap, down the evolution timeline, molecular ancestors to humans (human molecules) become purely viewed (under the atomic microscope) as powered animated matter or "molecules" (animate molecules or inanimate molecules), chemicals (or chemical species), atomic structures, or atoms, etc., is a concept that does not hold and looses sway as workable model.

To exemplify, one cannot say, at some point in the following reaction, that the water molecule is “born” or comes “alive”:

Dead - Hmolpedia

anymore than one can say that the water molecule “dies” or is “dead” past a certain point in time in the following reaction:

Dead - Hmolpedia

In chemical speak, to note, language often employed assigns borrowed terms, such as “half-life” (see: Paul Aebersold), to quantify or describe the state (or bound state) of the state of existence of atomic or molecular entities. To exemplify, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years. The carbon-14 atom, in earth-bound conditions, forms naturally when neutrons from cosmic ray interactions participate in the following reaction:

Dead - Hmolpedia

We do not, however, as intelligent chemists, say or believe that the carbon-14 atomC14 atomis "alive" or comes "alive" or is "born" at any point in this reaction any more than we say or conclude that the carbon-14 atoms "dies" or becomes "dead" at any point in the following reaction:

Dead - Hmolpedia

This same logic scales up to the scenario of human chemical reactions occurring on the surface of the earth. The prime example, being the human reproduction reaction (a larger version ofC14 atomformation reaction, previous):

Human reproduction reaction

In this case the sperm-eggSpEgmolecular structure, which eventually buds off from the parental orbital structure (at around age 15-years), is analogous (or rather a scaled up version) to the newly-formed semi-stable carbon-14 atomC14 atomthat forms in the cosmic ray induced combination reaction (above), yet in neither case do we say that either of the newly produced entities is "alive" nor their previous reactants "dead".

Some may naively be quick to argue for a said-to-exist "emergence" phenomena that brings about the first form of life some 3.85-billion years ago (such as hypothesized famously in the warm pond model, tested in the Miller-Urey experiment, or theorized about to no end via contrived thermodynamical theories about the hypothetical origin of life), but whatever position one argues, the bottom line is that the process is still a chemical reaction, and there is no such thing as a "living chemical reaction". Even worse, some may take recourse in the panpsychism position the "everything is alive" position, but again this only recourse to nothingness, a baseless argument that requires that one throw one's chemical thermodynamics textbook in the trash.

The central issue is that what invariably clouds the discussion is a rooted ingrained adherence to the older beliefs passed along to us via comparative religions and mythologies of the past, the foremost of these being the concepts of "life" and "death", a theory that is predominately of Egyptian origin, rooted in the model of the sun (Ra) cyclically "living" each day and "dying" each night.

See also
Death
Death drive
Vis mortua (dead force)

External links
Radiocarbon dating – Wikipedia.

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