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shiloh asked a very interesting question that i couldn't figure out how to answer, because admittedly i didn't KNOW the answer. so, i opened livejournal and posed her question to the people on my list (i post closed entry to listed people only, more privacy that way for my unmentionables, ahem), and i alerted them that SHE would be reading and answering the comments.
they became so cute i about DIED by laughing and cuteness overload -- please note this is all her, typing and everything. she chose to use my arwen icon for all her replies. is she not the most hilariously cute person??!
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leander kinney (lanthanum) wrote,
@ 2004-05-23 11:35:00
omg help?!
i'm so stupid, because i'm really not sure what to tell her! so help me:
shiloh wants to know: if an astronaut was in space, and for some reason or another his/her helmet fell off and began to float away from him/her ... could s/he hold their breath long enough to say, reach out, snag the helmet, and attach it back on? because i know there is no air in space, so for some reason i'm thinking the atmosphere alone would still cause some kind of instant/close to instant death, whether or not you could hold your breath for a minute; like something to do with crushing?
i also realise that the chance of your helmet just oop! popping off in space is pretty impossible. but 9-year-old's don't care about that; as far as shi's concerned at this point, a helmet COULD fall off in space because they CAN fall off on earth, ehehe! so help a brother out! give her your answer, i'm going to let her read the comments!
COMMENTS:
1: weirdchick:
Well, look at it like this: there are air molecules throughout your body, and especially in your lungs. The air pressure between space and the atmosphere of the space suits is so great that to lose your helmet would cause your head to explode. Not in that Hollywood big boom of brains flying everywhere way, but the air molecules would swell very very quickly within your body and have no means of escape... and therefore you would explode.
There is a theory that if you were able to retrieve the helmet after a few seconds and put it back on that you might live. I don't know how true that is, though.
---- shiloh's answer:
gross!
2: weirdchick:
Oh! Some more stuff, since I got all interested in this and had to ask my dad...
He says that you could probably live through it if the helmet was to float away, but the helmets are usually pressurized and so the helmet wouldn't pop off and float away... it would be accelerated out. Most humans would panic and the pain of what would be happening to you would probably make it hard to grab the helmet right away.
But if it were to pop off, you immediately grabbed it and put it back on, you'd be okay. That's what he says.
Another interesting thing: space is very cold. Not like winter cold, but in that -230 degrees type of way. He says that it's so cold that if you had your eyes open when the helmet popped off that the water over your eyes would instantly freeze.
---- shiloh's answer:
GROSS! if your head popped since brains are wet would those freeze too
i would be scared but i would sitll grab my helmet right away i think
3: tiane:
hi shi!!
---- shiloh's answer(s):
HI TIANE MOM IS TAKIN G ME TO SEE HARRY POTTER
#2 (seperate comment):
AND I LOVE YOUR ACCENT
then puppeteerhatter (edward scissorhands icon) posted a link that had the ultimate answer, which shiloh and i read aloud. then there was this comment:
5: mein lied:
Hehee. I think I wondered that too once.
Never found an answer though.
Until now!
YAY. I don't really need a helmet. -snickers-
HI SHI!!! -Waves-
---- shiloh's answer:
hello !there is a link with an answer that sort of makes sense from edward scissor hands
mom says no no from HATTER and we just read it out loud. thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 ) )  ::-) )
my void does not want.
-- 2.13.61.
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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The bubbles in your body (blood stream) is just like the bubbles in a bottle of POP..... when the pressure is at a state of equlibrium, there are no visible bubbles....
BUT.... shake up the bottle and remove the cap and the state of equlibrium is disturbed..... the liquid in the bottle foams up and runs all over....
If your space helmit POPPED off (and it would due to the extreeme differences related to internal pressure of containment and the non-pressureized state of a vaccuum...
You would live only if you were fast enough to replace the cap on the POP and prevent a mess....
If you are not fast enough to replace the cap then your blood would boil and your skin would expand like a balloon until the internal pressure would exceede the rip stress point of your various tissues.
You would litterally explode, one cell at a time.
Side note: The condition called the "bends" experiences by SCUBA divers is similar but not quite as extreeme. In the excelerated pressures of deep water diving causes an excess of gas to become dissolved into the blood streem. Divers must either spend a great deal of time "decompressing" either at various depths or in a decompression chamber in order to allow the blood to expell the accumulated gasses.
As an example of controlled decompression, get a bottle of POP and shake it up. Then very gently break the seal and allow only a small amount of gas to escape over a controlled period of time. This is exactly what happens in decompression.
Thank you for attending todays lecture.
Physics major gone astray
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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the POP analogy -- perfect!
i also tried to, after we read the link posted in my LJ by "scissorhands," explain "the bends" to shi. my brother is a diver on the fire department and 2 summers ago, when there was a huge boating accident, he was hit with the bends after coming up too fast, and all sorts of crazy things were going on with his blood gasses, and it was a mess, and he was in a coma and it was very scary.
this kind of plays into that, too. and so hey! the both of us learnt something today! 
thank you.
my void does not want.
-- 2.13.61.
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Being much too fond of science (and -fiction) as I am, I would like to add my own thoughts to this.
NO, your head would not explode, hehe. Nor would the rest of your body, because air doesn't quite have the force neccessary to blow one's body apart. Of course, being exposed to vacuum would be like the worst sneeze ever, all the air in one's lungs would spew out through mouth/nose in a second or two, but both lungs only amount to a couple liters at most (around 5, in a big man), and usually much less when one isn't showing off. Gross thing though: you'd start to bleed from mucuous membranes and areas with thin skin due to the blood pressure differential compared to the vacuum of space.
Also, the surface of the eyes wouldn't freeze due to low temperature, as technically the vacuum of space doesn't really have a temperature. Remember, temperature is the movement of atoms in matter, and vacuum is pretty much devoid of matter. On the other hand, the lack of pressure would make moisture evaporate rapidly from the eyes, and evaporation removes heat, thus thereby lowering the temperature of the eye surface; perhaps below the freezing point due to the low boiling temperature of water in vacuum. It wouldn't mean the eye freezes solid though; that would take much longer.
So what happens to the helmet?
Well as already noted, the air pressure inside it would make it pop off like a champagne cork. It would shoot away at a great velocity, and then a short, incredibly powerful stormwind would deflate the suit through the neck opening creating additional thrust (though not neccessarily in the opposite direction; you'd start to tumble immediately). So the helmet would be going one way at a rapid pace, and the confused, disoriented astronaut would spin more slowly in another with no way of recovering said helmet, with virtually no air in the lungs and with the skin feeling as if on fire due to capillaries bursting. Even trying to let out all the air in one's lungs doesn't come close to what the poor astronaut is experiencing since about a liter will remain no matter what in an Earth atmosphere, thus allowing us to move around some at least before we're out of breath. With no air at all in the lungs (which would likely be busy filling with blood in short order), one would pass out within maybe ten seconds I would think, and quite possibly even sooner.
Thus, one would die a most gruesome death, though without the head exploding and one's brains freezing. Still not very cute though...
It was a really good question though!
Hugs for you:
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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i've read this to her, having to stop and explain a few things along the way.
when finished, she sits there for a ten second moment of silence, appearing VERY perplexed.
finally she says, "they attach the helmets very strong to the suits, right?" and i said yes, most likely so.
then she says, "why did i want to know this again?" because in all the hubbub on 2 different forums about it, and all the information for her to digest, well, apparently she lost sight of the why, rofl.
i told her it was because she wanted to know what'd happen; that it originally came up because she mentioned wanting to go to space for a GRADUATION GIFT. that "by the time i graduate high school, or college if high school is too soon, they'd have trips to the moon for presents."
 ::-) OMG SO CUTE.
except now, unless the safety is 100 percent guaranteed, she says she decided she doesn't want to go to space, she'd rather go to australia so she can have her b-day in the summertime instead of the winter. 
my void does not want.
-- 2.13.61.
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Oh yes, they attach the helmets very strongly indeed, hehehe! They really can't come off by themselves, it'd take some sort of machine ripping it off. Astronauts have spent hundreds of hours in space by now without any helmets ever coming off, so it's not going to be a problem one has to worry about.
The biggest danger to an astronaut would be a projectile of some sort puncturing the suit, possibly the glass/plastic (dunno which) faceplate of the helmet. However, astronauts are very small targets and debris is very spread-out, and so far this hasn't happened. At least not to my knowledge, and if it did happen and it was kept secret, the astronaut was able to get to safety before air pressure dropped too low (as nobody's died in space so far).
Of course, Australia is an overall much safer place than space, though they do have some of the most poisonous snakes, spiders, jellyfish and other critters on the planet there... *giggle*
Hugs!
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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By that stage (in 9 years, eh?) I'll be living back there and I'll be able to show her all about (provided I haven't moved again). I'll be able to hook her up with a nice Aussie boy or something, or maybe a Koala. Helmets don't pop off in Australia either, at least not as far as I know.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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honestly she might prefer that over a boy--right now she has a one track crush and if the boy is cute and nice but not HER CRUSH, she ain't interested.
she cannot wait to go there (she talks about it more often than i talk about moving to toronto or pennsylvania..) to see all the animals and have a summertime birthday, and talks about it like i have the funds to just jet off there this winter, heh! i'd have to get us passports and get court permission (her dad and i have joint custody; although i have full physical, we still need some junction junk to get permission for either of us to vacation outside of the country, eh) and all this hooplah, but it'd be worth it.
my void does not want.
-- 2.13.61.
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*giggles* Hi Leander! What a cool lil pixie you got, hehe! 
Really big ROFL! 
