Saturday, July 25, 2009

What happens to a human body in a vacuum?

The whole concept for this blog all started on a forum in a thread about the original moon landing. I realized that I have no true understanding of how it happened and that bothered me a lot. It made me feel pretty dumb and simple for not understanding the science behind the technology that humans have used to explore space. I've been looking for a good book about the technology but I haven't found one yet. It doesn't have to be simple or anything like that, I love doing research, I'll just have to keep looking.

So my first question - what happens to a human body in a vacuum. 

A human in a vacuum will lose consciousness after a few seconds and die of hypoxia within a few minutes. Blood and other bodily fluids will boil (a condition known as ebullism) the body may swell up to two times it's normal size. Rapid evaporative cooling of the skin will create frost, particularly in the mouth. 

Hypoxia - a condition where the body (generalized hypoxia) or a region of the body (tissue hypoxia) is deprived of adequate oxygen.

Ebullism - The formation of gas bubbles in bodily fluids due to reduced environmental pressure.

1 comment:

  1. Love your blog! Would love to see more posts. I have always wanted to know what happens to the body in a vacuum. And the little fishtank is awesome!

    ReplyDelete