Every time you breathe, you are sharing air with the past.

A single breath contains around 25 sextillion molecules. That number is larger than all the grains of sand on Earth. These molecules do not vanish. They move through the atmosphere, carried by wind, absorbed and released by oceans, forests, and living beings.

The air on Earth mixes quickly. Within a couple of years, molecules exhaled anywhere in the world are evenly scattered around the globe. Some of the oxygen and nitrogen you inhale today may once have passed through the lungs of Cleopatra, Albert Einstein, or a person lighting a fire thousands of years ago.

The air around us is a shared archive. With each breath, we take in fragments of history and share them again with the world.