What happens to an unprotected human body in space?
imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov
imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov
Reality is so much cooler than fiction. I've read just about everything Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov have written among many other physics sci-fi authors and none of them thought of that one.
[1] http://www.iapws.org/faq1/boil.htm
EDIT: According to the replies at [2], the retained heat of ejected astronaut urine is enough to first cause boiling but that heat runs out quickly and you get ice crystals.
[2] http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen01/gen01060.htm
It's different for urine which lacks the continual heat source. If you had a mouthful of water, instead of a thin sheet of spit, you'd likely end up with an ice cube for a while.
Why was that? Does the low pressure force oxygen out of the blood in the lungs and thereby having oxygen "free" blood arriving in the brain? If you hold your breath you can easily hold it for a minute without loosing consciousness. So the low pressure must be actively taking oxygen out of the blood, otherwise I can't see that you would loose consciousness in 15 seconds.
How long did it take for Dave Bowman to exit the pod and pressurize the airlock? :)
(SPOILER if you haven't seen 2001: A Space Odyssey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e92vSua8XJY
In this clip, he ejects at about 0:20 and hits the lever around 0:27. You can see him go limp just after 0:34, before the chamber has finished pressurizing. 14 seconds.
So regardless of why the real-life (1965) test subject blacked out after 14 seconds, it appears that the makers of the (1968) film had done their homework!
But actually, I suspect that the far more important factor is CO2, which leaves the blood in the lungs when there is air present.
Just let me note -- don't hold your breath when there are pressure differences between your lungs and the surroundings!!
You can find that in any scuba diving manual.
(Edit: I do realize the parent poster probably knows this.)
Has anyone actually experienced this? I'm assuming it would have to be a really quick surface (ie: dropping your weights), and after only a short dive or on pure O2.
Look at this table [1]:
lung volume, depth m (ft) 2, 30m (99 ft) 3, 20m (66 ft) 4, 10m (33 ft) 8, 0 m (surface)
So by ascending from 30 meters to the surface you expand the volume of the air in your lungs four times. (Of course, you don't want to do this, as you will most likely get decompression sickness, aka the bends.)
[1] http://www.lakesidepress.com/pulmonary/books/scuba/sectionf....
(It's a little embarrassing to count how many people have died because pilots have intentionally turned off power to warning systems that were warning of them of an actual problem. Here's another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_255. Same digits -- freaky.)
>On March 18, 1965, became the first human to conduct a space walk.
>At the end of the spacewalk, Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter the airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, and was barely able to get back inside the capsule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure#Boiling_po...
Pressure x Volume = Temperature, so as the pressure decreases, so does the temperature.
But Wikipedia answers it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_point
The related concept here is that liquids remain liquid when the vapor pressure of the substance is less than the atmospheric pressure.
So, by the above laws, you can make water boil by (a) heating the water to increase the vapor pressure, or (b) reducing the atmospheric pressure to less than the existing vapor pressure of the water, or (c) some combination of (a) and (b).
In a liquid the molecules (which are indistinguishable from gas molecules of course if you looked at them individually) are moving much slower and form and re-form weak (liquid) bonds with the molecules near them. But still there are some moving faster and others more slowly and they are going in random directions.
Now think about the surface where the liquid meets the gas. There are some gas molecules that plunge into the liquid and become part of the liquid and there are some liquid molecules moving fast enough to escape from the liquid, breaking all their weak (liquid) bonds, and become part of the gas. The liquid surface at a molecular scale will not be a nice flat surface. It will be a complex seething bubbling thing with droplets and molecules leaving and rejoining the liquid. If we heat the liquid, make the molecules move faster, more of them will be moving fast enough to escape from the liquid. Anyway, if there are more molecules going from the gas to the liquid we say the gas is condensing, and if there are more going the other way the liquid is evaporating. Now think what would happen if we take away all the gas molecules - put the liquid into a vacuum. There will no molecules returning to the liquid, only liquid molecules becoming gas. Conversely, if we compressed the gas above the liquid we would get more gas molecules going into the liquid.
I think that's how it works.
Just because it's entertaining, the presenters are awesome, and you get to learn a lot of cool stuff (and they cite the link in question, too).
The closest I can find is a 1974 paper reviewing the effects of local pressure reductions, e.g. placing someone's arm in a low-pressure chamber, or applying high suction to a wound. Unfortunately, doesn't seem to be available online, but here's the first page: http://physrev.physiology.org/cgi/pdf_extract/54/3/566
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_acci...
Then you jump and wait for the feeling to come back in your right arm.
bastards...