Space: the final frontier, and for anyone unfortunate enough to be sucked out an airlock
without a space suit, it will definitely be the fatal frontier.
It's an old Hollywood trope- humans inside a flimsy spacecraft have an accident of some
type, and now the hull's been breached and everyone is about two seconds away from becoming
human popsicles or having their eyeballs explode.
But is that what really happens to you if you stepped out of a spacecraft unprotected?
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show- today we're taking a look
at what would happen to your body in space.
The most obvious problem you're going to have if you were sucked out into space is a lack
of oxygen- space is a nearly perfect vacuum meaning there's not much gas to breathe in,
let alone breathable O2.
So if you find yourself aboard some space disaster, then clearly you should hold your
breath and try to claw your way to safety, right?
Wrong- that would actually be almost instantly fatal for you.
As we mentioned, space is an almost perfect vacuum, and if you tried to hold your breath
you would be pitting your own chest muscles against the strength of space itself, and
that's a fight you're going to lose.
The oxygen in your lungs will immediately expand and rupture your lungs, being released
into your circulatory system and ripped out of your chest... along with large parts of
your now shredded lung tissues.
So instead of holding your breath, you want to breathe out as completely as possible and
make sure your lungs are empty.
Don't worry, your brain will continue to remain conscious for about 15 seconds, and you can
survive up to two minutes with little risk of permanent damage.
With no atmospheric pressure squeezing down on your body, the next thing to happen will
be the vaporization of water in your body.
In a normal situation water molecules are constantly being blown off, but by being replaced
with air molecules the water remains in equilibrium with the air.
Without any atmosphere though, water will begin to evaporate throughout your entire
body, causing you to start swelling like a naughty kid inside Willy Wonka's chocolate
factory.
You'll eventually swell to about twice normal size, but because human skin is incredibly
elastic and durable, you won't burst like a giant meat balloon.
If you get rescued at this point, you'll actually return to normal and you should be fine- though
we wouldn't recommend it.
If rescue isn't forthcoming though, then you're going to be in incredible amounts of pain-
and if you were hoping to instantly blackout due to a lack of blood pressure, then we got
some bad news for you.
Your circulatory system is so robust, that it's able to keep your blood pressurized even
in the vacuum of space, so as you swell up like a party balloon, you can look forward
to retaining full consciousness as the blood keeps on pumping- at least until the oxygen
stored in your blood runs out after fifteen seconds.
Moisture on the exterior of your body though and in places like your eyes and tongue will
immediately begin to boil due to the lack of atmospheric pressure- yet this isn't a
'hot' type of boiling, but rather a very violent form of evaporation, so you won't cook yourself
alive either.
If you are ejected into space in direct line of a sight of a star, then you can expect
to receive an incredibly bad sunburn on whatever side of your body is facing the star, thanks
to unfiltered solar radiation.
Depending on how far you are from the star though you might not receive enough heat to
be seriously burnt, but if you went for a stroll outside the international space station's
airlock with no space suit, you could expect a severe and very immediate sunburn.
You'll likely also be bombarded by huge amounts of cosmic radiation, specially if you're outside
the protective magnetosphere of a large planet.
Our suggestion is to spin rapidly, that way you'll be crispy nice and evenly.
We all know space is cold, roughly about 2.7 Kelvin or -270 celsius, or -455 fahrenheit.
You'd probably expect that your corpse would then rapidly freeze without any protection,
but actually you could stay relatively warm for a pretty long amount of time.
That's because your body and skin is a pretty excellent insulator, and because space is
a vacuum there's nothing to lose heat to via convection or conduction.
Here on earth we're constantly surrounded by atmospheric gases, so when it gets cold
they are able to leech heat from our body and carry it away, making us cold.
In space though there's no medium to lose heat to, so your core body temperature would
remain warm for a decent amount of time.
Once you're dead though, well you're not going to change much for a long, long, long time.
On earth we decompose as we are eaten up by the bacteria inside of us, billions of tiny,
hungry little lifeforms just waiting to eat you alive that your body keeps in constant
check through your immune system.
But once that immune system fails, those bacteria finally have their chance to turn you into
a buffet, and they gorge themselves while rapidly procreating.
Think about that next time you buy some probiotic yogurt- you're just making those bacteria
stronger, and they are patiently waiting for your immune system to slip up so they can
eat you from the inside out.
In space though the extreme radiation and temperatures will kill that bacteria before
it can consume much of your body, leaving your corpse perfectly preserved for millions
and millions of years.
If you are close to a star, you'll mummify much like an ancient Egyptian, only when aliens
find you millions of years later you'll actually be in a lot better shape than them.
So if you know anyone really vain in your life, you should recommend they die in space!
What other strange places and what they would do to your body would you like to know about?
Should we really be eating probiotic foods when it's just making the bacteria that will
consume us all in the end stronger?!
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called What Happens When You Die?!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!”