By Barney Garcia
Much of outer space has the same density and pressure of a near ideal vacuum. Which literally means that it contains almost no friction, however the characteristics of a “perfect” vacuum are unknown. A perfect vacuum is state that cannot almost be obtained in a laboratory or in outer space, BUT, a perfect one does not exist to our knowledge. If a humans was exposed to a space vacuum, they would lose consciousness after a few seconds and would die within a couple of minutes from asphyxia. However, the real picture of death would not be as graphic as we see on movies and t.v. Scientist Robert Boyle was the first person to ever show that vacuum would kill small animals. The symptoms that occur are as follows: blood and other body fluids will boil and the vapor pressure may be so large that it will bloat the body to twice its normal size. It will also slow down circulation, but elastic like tissues of the body are flexible enough to prevent bursting. This does not happen to astronauts because they wear a fitted elastic piece of clothing called the Crew Altitude Protection Suit (CAPS) which prevents embolism and asphyxiation. However, even though embolism is avoided, there are still small amounts of evaporation taking place which can cause rapid cooling of the skin that will create frost, especially in the mouth. This however, does not pose a serious threat to the astronauts health.
Animal experiments have shown that rapid recovery is the normal if the animal is exposures for less than 90 seconds, but longer full body exposures are always fatal and recovery has never been successful. Obviously, there is limited data available about human exposure, but it is safe to say that it would be relatively close with the experiments from animals.. Limbs can be exposed for much longer periods of time compared to the entire body, but only if breathing is not impaired. If a person holds his breath during the decompression process, the fragile interior of the lungs may be damaged and result in death. Eardrums may be damaged by this, which will cause bleeding, stress and then lead to asphyxiation.
Space vacuum experiments were used by the Nazi’s in world war two on death camp prisoners. They would expose people to high altitude conditions to see how much speed and pressure the human body could withstand. Of course, this inhumane experimentation process was discontinued after the war, and all space vacuum experiments now are done theoretically or on animals.
About the Author: Barney Garcia writes about many different topics. wet vacuums and dry vacuums and space vacuums
Source: www.isnare.com
