An interesting question popped into mind: What would happen to a dead body in Space?

[G.T]

I'm watching the movie "Aliens" at this very moment, and one of its crew was just ejected into space because he died violently. Would the body deteriorate like it does on Earth, to eventually become a skeleton, or does it change to an extent because there's no air: getting cold, changing color, etc, all of the usual changes that happen inside your body. Maybe none of this happens at all and something it's something completely different.

Any explaination?

 

[the Interceptor]

Well, the question I've been asking myself is: do you explode or freeze first? I think you freeze immediately due to 0°K, and I suppose your body will never change after that.

Regards
the Interceptor

 

[Danny]

Another question- When the Death Star blew up, why all the explosions in airless space?

 

[Diego440]

Well, the question I've been asking myself is: do you explode or freeze first? I think you freeze immediately due to 0°K, and I suppose your body will never change after that.

Regards
the Interceptor

hmmm... maybe they should've sent Aaliyah... her body would be just the way it was before

Oh well, that was fun.

 

[Lee]

Another question- When the Death Star blew up, why all the explosions in airless space?

I'll take a guess at the fact there was air inside the Death Star..

 

[Scaff]

Well, the question I've been asking myself is: do you explode or freeze first? I think you freeze immediately due to 0°K, and I suppose your body will never change after that.

Regards
the Interceptor

I believe (and I'm sure Famine will be able to let us know) that the background temp in space is above 0°K.

However I would suspect that the temperature would fluctuate as you passed near stars, etc.

Interesting question though.

Regards

Scaff

 

[Famine]

I'm watching the movie "Aliens" at this very moment, and one of its crew was just ejected into space because he died violently. Would the body deteriorate like it does on Earth, to eventually become a skeleton

No.

or does it change to an extent because there's no air: getting cold, changing color, etc, all of the usual changes that happen inside your body. Maybe none of this happens at all and something it's something completely different.

With the low pressure, despite the temperature, your bodily fluids would boil. All of your cells would lose their contents and multiple fluids would eject from any hole they could find, including sweat glands. But they would retain their essential shape so even though the body would be probably explode, any remnants wouldn't shrink too much, so you wouldn't go all wrinkly AND you'd be frozen. With no protection though, they would eventually be burned beyond recognition due to Solar radiation unless the body was in interstellar space and, once captured by a larger astronomical body, torn apart by gravity.

Well, the question I've been asking myself is: do you explode or freeze first? I think you freeze immediately due to 0°K, and I suppose your body will never change after that.

It's about 3K, but the sudden pressure change is the killer. You'd explode unless you were already dead - then you'd only probably explode.

Another question- When the Death Star blew up, why all the explosions in airless space?

Burning metals often don't require oxygen to prolong the burn as the reaction can provide it - and there's bucketloads of hydrogen in space.

 

[Keef]

THe temperature you feel would fluctuate, via ultraviolet and other radiation from the stars, but the temperature of the actual space wouldn't--there's no or very little matter there to hold any thermal energy.

Gahh, I've been interupted. Thank you, Fam, for the information. It's interesting to note that you would "probably explode" rather than "definitely explode" if you were dead. There's only one way to know. Kill a monkey and eject him into space. It seems to me that your fluids are still under pressure when you're dead, but it bears further investigation.

 

[samj_13]

Another question- When the Death Star blew up, why all the explosions in airless space?

The torpedoes were sent into the reactor in the Star so I'd say it was because of a nuclear explosion.

But like Bee said, it may have been because there was air in the Death Star. We should ask Mr. Lucas.

 

[the Interceptor]

It's about 3K, but the sudden pressure change is the killer. You'd explode unless you were already dead - then you'd only probably explode.

I know, Famine is never wrong and stuff, but I'll ask anyway: are you sure?

I mean you can shock-freeze stuff within milliseconds in fluids well over 3°K, so a human body should be hard as stone in an instant. Why would it explode then?

Or hey, imagine this. We (the humanity) are on a mission to Pluto one day (to apologize), and while the whole world sits in front of the ultra HDTV screen, a half-exploded, half-frozen human body smacks onto the windscreen.

Regards
the Interceptor

 

[Touring Mars]

hmmm... maybe they should've sent Aaliyah... her body would be just the way it was before.

Maybe then we could blast johnnyh into outer space as well 💡

It would be interesting to see where your freeze-dried chinks would end up... I reckon they wouldn't end up anywhere fast unless you were spat out of your spacecraft as it was travelling towards the sun, perhaps on a return trip from a Jovian satellite or a trip to Mars, in which case your bits would end up cosmically fried within a matter of weeks or months... But if you were ejected out of a space craft travelling (at very high speeds) away from the sun, it would still take your chunks several hundreds of thousands of years to reach the nearest stars - so your frozen body bits (unless they rendezvous'd with a planet or some detritus within our solar system) could end up floating out into the depths of the galaxy for a very, very long time...

 

[Pink_the_Floyd]

An explosion in space is possible but the error movie makes make is that in space, there's no such thing as noise or sounds.

 

[G.T]

An explosion in space is possible but the error movie makes make is that in space, there's no such thing as noise or sounds.

Yeah, almost every single movie makes that mistake.

The only movie I remember off the top of my head that doesn't do this is "2001: A Space Odyssey".

I find it ironic that on the DVD box of Alien (or Aliens), it says "in Space, no one can hear you scream", yet you can hear a spaceship roaring by.

 

[Touring Mars]

If you were 'near' to a star as it exploded, you might well 'hear' something - before being completely obliterated You'd have to be pretty close, but the gases ejected from the supernova would be able to transmit sound - but you'd only be able to hear that sound when you were in the gas shell yourself, which would mean that you'd probably already be dead... similarly, the gases ejected by the rockets of a spacecraft could transmit sound, but it's unlikely that you'd be able to hear anything unless you had your head right in the jetstream...

 

[Blake]

Yeah, almost every single movie makes that mistake.

The only movie I remember off the top of my head that doesn't do this is "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Yeah, the new Battlestar Galactica series does a reasonable job of that. I haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, though.

 

[toyomatt84]

My assumption would be for the brief moment that you enter space, your body would begin an explosion (due to the imbalance of oxygen and it'd leave your body to even the balance, via your skin), and probably freeze in the process. So it'd look something like a stop motion camera was filming a human explosion and stopped after a few frames into the process. But, that's just an assumption.

 

[G.T]

Yeah, the new Battlestar Galactica series does a reasonable job of that. I haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, though.

Yeah, they seem to pull it off quite well. There's still some sound, gunshots and all, but I suppose it would be boring if there wasn't any. 2001 doesn't have any sound at all on the Space scenes as far as I know (I've only ever watched the last half of the movie).

 

[Famine]

I know, Famine is never wrong and stuff, but I'll ask anyway: are you sure?

I mean you can shock-freeze stuff within milliseconds in fluids well over 3°K, so a human body should be hard as stone in an instant.

That's in normal atmospheric pressure though. Drop the pressure to a near vacuum and all bets are off (incidentally... there's no such thing as a °K - just Kelvin on its own - I mention only as reference, rather than criticism).

Furthermore, we generate our own heat, and have warm fluids being pumped through "affected areas". Though our outer layers may be quite unpleasant, quite quickly, our insides would be juicy long enough to boil.

You can see a similar effect with bromine. Crack open a phial of bromine and it'll vapourise quite slowly (unless you're holding it, as I once found out). Bung it into a vacuum chamber and crack it and it'll all vapourise, instantly, filling the vessel with red/brown fumes.


Boiling inside and solid-ish outside = kablammo!

 

[kennythebomb]

An explosion in space is possible but the error movie makes make is that in space, there's no such thing as noise or sounds.

True as this may be, if you were sitting there in the movie theater and you see the giant explosion.... you would likely sit there just waiting to hear the boom.

Moviemakers cater to the larger % of people who expect to hear the boom in order to compliment the intense visual effect, instead of to the smaller % of people interested in space who know better.

 

[Delirious]

This thread is definately worthy of subscription 👍

My turn to ask a question. What are the chances of a tiny asteroid cracking the cockpit of a space shuttle? Would depressurization happen? Would eventually the space shuttle "explode"?

 

[FoolKiller]

Yeah, almost every single movie makes that mistake.

The only movie I remember off the top of my head that doesn't do this is "2001: A Space Odyssey".

I find it ironic that on the DVD box of Alien (or Aliens), it says "in Space, no one can hear you scream", yet you can hear a spaceship roaring by.

I thought Firefly did a fairly decent job of this. The ships passed by and whatnot but all you ever heard was music.

And as odd as it seems ( I might be wrong here, I haven't watched my DVDs in a while) Red Dwarf rarely had space sounds, unless it was for comedic effect, such as SpaceBug banging against the edge of the bay doors.

My turn to ask a question. What are the chances of a tiny asteroid cracking the cockpit of a space shuttle? Would depressurization happen? Would eventually the space shuttle "explode"?

I think the chances of the asteroid hitting the shuttle would be slim.

This made me think of Armageddon (yes, the movie) where the meteorites all strike the shuttle and it explodes, making sounds and all kinds of false stuff. I remember sitting in the theater saying, "Um, no." It only got worse as the meteorites had a perfect aim on New York City, completely by chance.

I had an easier time believing that giant bugs could shoot plasma out of their butts into an asteroid, launching it with perfect timing at Earth cities from light years away (Starship Troopers - the movie, definitely not the book).

 

[the Interceptor]

That's in normal atmospheric pressure though. Drop the pressure to a near vacuum and all bets are off (incidentally... there's no such thing as a °K - just Kelvin on its own - I mention only as reference, rather than criticism).

Thanks, I didn't know that! 👍

Furthermore, we generate our own heat, and have warm fluids being pumped through "affected areas". Though our outer layers may be quite unpleasant, quite quickly, our insides would be juicy long enough to boil.

You can see a similar effect with bromine. Crack open a phial of bromine and it'll vapourise quite slowly (unless you're holding it, as I once found out). Bung it into a vacuum chamber and crack it and it'll all vapourise, instantly, filling the vessel with red/brown fumes.


Boiling inside and solid-ish outside = kablammo!

Yeah, that sounds reasonable. You convinced me! Where's the next rocket then?