Human exposure to vacuum..... What happens after 2 minutes?

reply to post by 38181


That is a great point. I never thought of the human body, somehow not being burned to nothing, or ripped to shreds, or pulverized.

A frozen corps floating around is space is a plausible idea. To me anyway.


[edit on 29-10-2008 by schism85]

This sis interesting!!!! I dont have enough facts so am going to go on a search!!! by its very nature I believe that a vacuum would have a suction effect!!! that would almost tear the body apart, both gaseous and liquid!!


gonna look further!!

reply to post by 38181


in the vacuum, the body (protein) would remain unaltered Only the molecules would leave the body This is crucial as remember dna and rna are molecules Therefore vacuum is able to push dna and rna out of body , together with rest of molecules

Originally posted by schism85
reply to post by 38181

 

That is a great point. I never thought of the human body, somehow not being burned to nothing, or ripped to shreds, or pulverized.

A frozen corps floating around is space is a plausible idea. To me anyway.


[edit on 29-10-2008 by schism85]

are you not aware of the thousands (possibly millions of unknown) types of radiation that are constantly wafting throughout space?
A human body would not indefinitely float throughout space,
It would suffer immense side effects from the radition (cant say what exactly, as its unknown)
But the most likely thing to happen is that the body would be grabbed by a planetary body's gravity and sucked in,
It could also be shot into millions of pieces by tiny pieces of space rock/ice hurtling through it,
It is very doubtful you would find a body that had been floating in space after several months time
(unless i guess it was floating in perfect orbit of a planet or object)

Would it be legal for someone to donate their corpse to study this very question in the near future? Like if I died tomorrow, can I volunteer my body, and will there be funds to have it launched on the next flight to the ISS?

All you gotta do is tie a camera and alot of sensors to one of my rib bones eh?

In atmosphere, people can go for far longer than that without air, but in space, the vacuum causes dissolved gasses to come out of solution in the lungs, making suffocation happen faster. Probably a person would die, or be well on their way, with irrepreable brain damage and blindness, by two minutes. There would also be grotesque swelling.

after that: eventual cooling down and freezing, combined with slow evaporation water and other volitiles.

Hi guys, I've just written an article on this very subject - interesting stuff, isn't it? I thought I'd add a bit on how you might look if you'd been exposed to hard vacuum. Initially, as in the first few seconds, probably not that different. Blood won't spew from your eyes, that's for sure.

After a few hours, the heat will have radiated away from your body and your cells will begin to expand and rupture, giving you a a bit of a scary zombified look. As mentioned before, you could get sunburn very quickly too, so you'd have a certain crustiness about you!

reply to post by damwel


Actually, instant freezing would not occur because there is no air, so the only way you could loose heat is through radiation and that takes a while.

Actually you would freeze. Thermal energy moves from 'downhill'; in other words, heat moves from hot objects to cooler objects. That's how ovens work. So the heat from your body would disperse into the vacuum.

From what I understand, the surface of your body directly facing the sun would burn on the surface, but everything else freezes.

You do de-pressurize, but not explosively. The Oxygen in your blood stream would extract from the blood cells, and act as an air bubble stopping your heart. Basically, you wouldn't have to experience dying from freezing, your heart jams, and your brain doesn't receive the proper levels of, well, anything.


But, this sounds like a perfect excuse to shove a pig out the airlock.

reply to post by schism85

Wow u all need to do some research first off absolute 0 is minus 274 look that up while space is 273 that remaining 1 degree is remnants of the energy released in the big bang all heat is is energy which is all that's left in space after billions of years as u procede outward toward the edges of our universe it gets warmer or so thought yes I know crazy idea anyways what happens to your body well your blood doesn't boil and you don't explode sorry that's just sci fi all that really happens is you freeze. You can survive for a shortwhile in space but after that first breath or more than 20 seconds u are a gonner skin freezes instantly as well as your lung tissue and eventually the rest of u in maybe 10 or so minutes and ur a cubsicle you will not explode or implode in space there is no pressure in space nor atmosphere u will simply freeze

I guess no one read the anonymous NASA Link on page one.

According to NASA, who are citing at least two instances of people being exposed to a vacuum, you would become unconscious after 14 seconds of no air. If you hold the air in, you get pressure sickness, though it does not specify whether it’s the bends, air expansion injury, or both. However, they are treated the same way. There would be some miner swelling of the skin, which reverses almost immediately, and possible sunburn from ultraviolet exposure. Reverse squeezes in any airspace that is not equalized, the same as diving, and the possibility of your salvia boiling on your tongue.

It almost sounds as though you could float around out there just fine with some good sun tan lotion, a warm jacket, and a normal scuba regulator.

As I heard from previous studies, a vacuum is what sucks things from you in space...so your heart would come out of your mouth and intestines out of yout bottom...if you get my point you organs come out of your holes, but never the less, to learn or discover we make sacrifices...why not creat a vacuum center somewhere in NASA's territory, and throw a cat in and see what happens or throw a monkey in... either way we must find out by experiments, not everything relies on studies, for example lets say: how do you know if there is not a sort of bacteria that survives without oxygen up there but survives by the radiation??...see we must risk someting atleast to check...even a dead corpse authorized by the family to be up there.

Thank you.

When water is exposed to a vacumn it will start to or vaporize so starting with your eyes then mouth etc it would just boil away!

So i guess in 5 to 6 minutes the only part of you that could be recognized would be some teeth and a bit of bone. Ohh and also your buzz light year underpants.