Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren boglebam here with a classic episode from our erstwhile host,
Speaker 1: Christian Sager. This one gets a little intense. It's about
Speaker 1: what would really happen to a person if they found
Speaker 1: themselves in the nearer vacuum of space without a space suit. Hey,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, it's Christians Sager. Do you remember that time
Speaker 1: in Battlestar Galactica when that one character was blown out
Speaker 1: an air lock into outer space without a suit? No,
Speaker 1: what about when it happened in two thousand one, or
Speaker 1: Guardians of the Galaxy or Sunshine. Yes, we all dream
Speaker 1: about traveling in space, but if movies are any indication,
Speaker 1: we spend almost as much time thinking about flying around
Speaker 1: up there without a suit on. So let's answer this
Speaker 1: question once and for all. What would space actually due
Speaker 1: to a human body? Well, here's the good news. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't die instantly. Yeah, you might actually survive for a
Speaker 1: little bit out there. How do we know because somebody
Speaker 1: tested it out on dogs. In nineteen sixty five, researchers
Speaker 1: at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas exposed several dogs
Speaker 1: to a near vacuum. The dogs survived for up to
Speaker 1: nineties seconds, but if they went two minutes or more,
Speaker 1: they died when re pressurized. And if your first thought
Speaker 1: is they did this to dogs, look I'm right there
Speaker 1: with you. Researchers at NASA did the same to chimpanzees
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties, finding that they could last
Speaker 1: up to three point five minutes. And then there's been
Speaker 1: a few accidents where people got d and then re pressurized,
Speaker 1: like a technician at Johnson Space Center who lost consciousness
Speaker 1: after twelve seconds. This was just before the moisture on
Speaker 1: his tongue began to boil. That's right, his tongue boiled. Sea.
Speaker 1: Without air pressure to keep your precious bodily fluids in
Speaker 1: their with state, they would rapidly lose heat energy before
Speaker 1: they froze and then evaporated totally. This isn't the worst
Speaker 1: thing the lack of pressure can do to you either.
Speaker 1: The gases inside you would expand, causing you to swell
Speaker 1: up like a balloon in a Thanksgiving Day parade. This
Speaker 1: includes air and gas bubbles formed from your boiling bodily fluids.
Speaker 1: That effect is called ebulism, which can block your bloodstream.
Speaker 1: With those bubbles and that would cause you to pass
Speaker 1: out in about fifteen seconds. From the lack of blood
Speaker 1: flowing into your brain, your skins blood vessels would burst.
Speaker 1: Your internal organs would also swell and likely tear, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't explode like in total recall. You would just
Speaker 1: stretch painfully until you died. Keep in mind, so far
Speaker 1: we've only been talking about the effects to a body
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. In actual space, there are even more
Speaker 1: hazards to deal with. Contrary to what some inferior intellects
Speaker 1: may say, it act actually isn't very cold in space
Speaker 1: because there aren't enough gas particles to transfer heat. But
Speaker 1: depending on your location, you could either be exposed to
Speaker 1: a star's thermal radiation at around a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: degrees celsius, or your own body heat would radiate away
Speaker 1: in the shade at around negative one hundred degrees. Cosmic
Speaker 1: rays and solar wind would also cook you with high
Speaker 1: energy photons, destroying your DNA and possibly leading to cancer
Speaker 1: if you even survived. And while you're swelling and roasting,
Speaker 1: you might also be hit by micro meteoroids, which are
Speaker 1: those little particles of dust and rock that whipped through
Speaker 1: space at high speed. Finally, there's the obvious lack of oxygen.
Speaker 1: Normally you could hold your breath for several minutes, but
Speaker 1: remember without pressure, that whole boiling effect would diffuse the
Speaker 1: oxygen from your blood, so again, after about fifteen seconds,
Speaker 1: you'd pass out. And don't try to hold your breath either,
Speaker 1: it would just expand with the other gases, rupturing your lungs.
Speaker 1: All in all, these things would probably kill you in
Speaker 1: less than a minute. Today's episode was written by Christian
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Plus. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.