Your body is made up of roughly 37 trillion cells, each humming along like microscopic factories, every second of every day. Together, they burn enough energy every twenty-four hours to bring eight gallons (about thirty liters) of ice water to a raging boil. Our cells outshine the stars: each ounce of living human tissue burns ten thousand times more energy each day than an ounce of the Sun. A small portion of this activity is under our conscious control—namely the muscle activity we use to move. Some of it we’re dimly aware of, like our heartbeat and breathing. But most of this teeming
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