Science Buffs

Soldato
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You are in space in a ship for example and you are caught in a decompression and go out into space what would happen to you?

I have always had the idea you would explode because of the pressure?
 
The first type, a sudden change from normal atmospheric pressure to a vacuum, is the more common. Research and experience in space exploration and high-altitude aviation have shown that while exposure to vacuum causes swelling, human skin is tough enough to withstand the drop of one atmosphere although the resulting hypoxia will cause unconsciousness after a few seconds
You would keep moving with a constant velocity, till you reach a gravitational well and accelerate towards an object but you will be unconscious.
 
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Think youd be more worried by Absolute Zero than the pressure (though expect your lungs to burst) - youd be freeze-dried pretty fast...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
Youll go nuclear for no apparent reason... >_>

Nah decompression will destroy your lungs, id imagine, though who knows, maybe the body can handle it.
 
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Would your lungs burst and your eyes go pop?

How long before you freeze?
Read that wiki link - sad to say but decompression doesnt look half as cool as it does on film :(:p

Leading on, Ive got a question - at the end of one of the Alien films (think its Resurrection) when the Hybrid is killed by being sucked into space via that small hole - is that actually possible with a human? If not, what would happen - the human would just plug it up and not be in any discomfort etc?

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
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OK



First, excess air would be vented from the body at both ends. Then you'd asphyxiate. After fifteen seconds or so you would be unconscious, and after about four minutes brain death would start. At this point your body would be completely unruptured and unfrozen. Your body would never rupture: it can survive far bigger pressure drops than 1 bar: deep sea divers get the bends if they surface rapidly, and that involves nitrogen coming out of solution in their blood - but they still don't explode. Eventually, probably after several days, the body would freeze. Space isn't really at 4K: more realistically it doesn't have a temperature as such. But since the heat of your body can only be lost be radiation as convection and conduction can't happen in a vacuum, and since the black-body radiation at 37oC is very poor, it would take an age to freeze. Maybe, just maybe, you'd get a few ice-crystals on the eyes in the first few seconds, but just enough to make them gritty.


If you want to see what happens done realistically, watch 2001.



M
 
Lungs won't likely explode from a reduction in pressure of 1 atmosphere - its like a scuba diver going to 10meters and then ascending very very rapidly... you can breathe out...

Being as we are 70% water, we'd boil first, then freeze.

We've got a container called skin.... your blood won't boil.

You'll likely lose consciousness very quickly.
 
Think youd be more worried by Absolute Zero than the pressure (though expect your lungs to burst) - youd be freeze-dried pretty fast...

ps3ud0 :cool:

No, because there's nothing much to lose heat to. You'd only lose heat by radiation and humans don't radiate all that much heat (not very big, not very hot). It would take a while for you to freeze. Well, for your corpse to freeze - you'd be dead long before you'd freeze. The boiling point of water in a vacuum is far below body temperature, so you'd become a boil in the bag (skin) corpse. Or maybe the air in your lungs would expand enough to kill you that way. I'm almost sure you wouldn't even survive long enough to die of suffocation. But you wouldn't freeze before you died.
 
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