I'm surprised that there was anything that even resembled Harry Kim recovered.
From what I have read of what happens to the human body when exposed to the vacuum of space, Harry's eyes should have popped out of their sockets and exploded, his abdomen should have swollen to the size of a Honda Accord, his lungs should be dangling from his mouth, and his entire circulatory system should have exploded when his blood began to boil in the ultra-low pressure of empty space.
The Kobali have to be some medical geniuses if they can put that mess back together again.
EDIT: Or maybe what I have read is just sensationalism.
I'm surprised that there was anything that even resembled Harry Kim recovered.
From what I have read of what happens to the human body when exposed to the vacuum of space, Harry's eyes should have popped out of their sockets and exploded, his abdomen should have swollen to the size of a Honda Accord, his lungs should be dangling from his mouth, and his entire circulatory system should have exploded when his blood began to boil in the ultra-low pressure of empty space.
The Kobali have to be some medical geniuses if they can put that mess back together again.
EDIT: Or maybe what I have read is just sensationalism.
I think so.
The vacuum of space is cold. Like really cold. A body in space would probably bleed boiling blood from every TRIBBLE for a minute or so, but would freeze solid before and dramatic external changes take place. Likely, Harry's body would still look very much like Harry's body- it would appear rather well preserved actually, but the cellular damages would be all encompassing.
So yeah, the Kobali technology would still need to be pretty ridiculously impressive to fix that.
I would think the biggest problem with the human body out in space is the vacuum, not the cold.
A vacuum is an excellent insulator (it has no temperature), without heat loss from convection your corpse is not going to cool down quickly. It'll take a rather long time for your corpse to cool by radiation.
Being in a vacuum, your blood would boil, along with sweat and any other liquids in or on your corpse.
The vacuum of space is cold. Like really cold. A body in space would probably bleed boiling blood from every TRIBBLE for a minute or so, but would freeze solid before and dramatic external changes take place. Likely, Harry's body would still look very much like Harry's body- it would appear rather well preserved actually, but the cellular damages would be all encompassing.
So yeah, the Kobali technology would still need to be pretty ridiculously impressive to fix that.
Sorry. You've fallen for the classic Space Is Cold trope. Despite the absolute temperature being very cold (in the shade), hard vacuum is actually a terrible conductor of heat because there's no ambient gas for convection so you're left with radiation, which is a very inefficient way to transmit heat. Liquids will boil away from the low pressure well before they'll freeze.
Cabezadetortuga is a lot closer to the mark.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I would think the biggest problem with the human body out in space is the vacuum, not the cold.
A vacuum is an excellent insulator (it has no temperature), without heat loss from convection your corpse is not going to cool down quickly. It'll take a rather long time for your corpse to cool by radiation.
Being in a vacuum, your blood would boil, along with sweat and any other liquids in or on your corpse.
Vacuum is no insulator at all. There is absolutely no medium to prevent heat from radiating away from your body. Freezing would set in very quickly.
Sorry, you fail thermodynamics forever. That's a basic misconception used in a lot of sci-fi. Radiation is a very, very inefficient way of getting rid of heat, which means things stay warm longer, and radiation is the only possible way to get rid of heat in hard vacuum (apart from being in physical contact with another object, in which case conduction comes into play).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Vacuum is no insulator at all. There is absolutely no medium to prevent heat from radiating away from your body. Freezing would set in very quickly.
My reading on the subject suggests that the unrestrained radiation in space would reduce a 70kg human body by 37c in under an hour. Longer than I estimated, but still fairly rapid.
My reading on the subject suggests that the unrestrained radiation in space would reduce a 70kg human body by 37c in under an hour. Longer than I estimated, but still fairly rapid.
Yeah, that'll kill you, but really, the real killer from being spaced? It's not the cold, or the depressurization. It's the simple fact that there's nothing to breathe. You'll be unconscious in ten seconds or so from lack of oxygen, dead soon after that.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Yeah, that'll kill you, but really, the real killer from being spaced? It's not the cold, or the depressurization. It's the simple fact that there's nothing to breathe. You'll be unconscious in ten seconds or so from lack of oxygen, dead soon after that.
Right. I was never contending that he'd die from exposure to the cold, rather that the onset of freezing would preserve the body relatively in tact.
Now I can't be sure what an hour's worth of vacuum exposure would do to a body, but my estimation would be that the integrity of the body tissue would generally hold up to the pressures and changes, leaving a relatively recognizable corpse.
My reading on the subject suggests that the unrestrained radiation in space would reduce a 70kg human body by 37c in under an hour. Longer than I estimated, but still fairly rapid.
I'm about 99% sure I found what you read, and I'm 99% certain you misread it.
It takes just under an hour for a 70kg human body to go from 37C to 32C.
That does not mean a loss of 37C in under an hour, it's a loss of 5C in under an hour, when starting from 37C. (The starting temperature does matter, since the rate of heat loss is affected by the difference between the body and the environment.)
If we simplify the calculation and simply assume it's linear, at 5C per hour it would take over 7 hours before the body is below the freezing temperature of water, which is easier to freeze than everything else in the body.
When NASA accidentally exposed someone to near vacuum, the man passed out in less than 14s, but reported he could feel the liquids on his tongue boiling. In the time it takes your corpse to freeze, the liquids in at least the extremities (like your eyeballs) would be boiling, severely damaging tissue before it could freeze.
I'm about 99% sure I found what you read, and I'm 99% certain you misread it.
It takes just under an hour for a 70kg human body to go from 37C to 32C.
That does not mean a loss of 37C in under an hour, it's a loss of 5C in under an hour, when starting from 37C. (The starting temperature does matter, since the rate of heat loss is affected by the difference between the body and the environment.)
If we simplify the calculation and simply assume it's linear, at 5C per hour it would take over 7 hours before the body is below the freezing temperature of water, which is easier to freeze than everything else in the body.
When NASA accidentally exposed someone to near vacuum, the man passed out in less than 14s, but reported he could feel the liquids on his tongue boiling. In the time it takes your corpse to freeze, the liquids in at least the extremities (like your eyeballs) would be boiling, severely damaging tissue before it could freeze.
Fair enough. But this would only change the amount of time taken for the body to freeze from 1hr to around 7hrs. Still not enough time for and substantial decay or breakdown.
Also, the action of boiling on the surface of the body would not cause damage itself. The water is not actually heating up, rather is boiling point is changing based on conditions. There would be damage to cells that dehydrate or rupture (as I suggested in my initial post), but for the most part, I see no reason that the basic structural integrity of the bulk of body tissue would be compromised.
There would be damage to cells that dehydrate or rupture (as I suggested in my initial post), but for the most part, I see no reason that the basic structural integrity of the bulk of body tissue would be compromised.
When liquids boil they are turning to a gas, that gas creates pressure which ruptures membranes and other barriers. The gas wants to escape from the body and destroys tissue as it works its way out.
If you're curious what happens when trapped gasses try to escape the human body too quickly you can look up the effects of 'the bends' when diving to great depths. That's nitrogen that is built up under those pressures in your body, bends occur when the nitrogen is allowed to escape from the body too quickly. You can die from this as well if you depressurize too quickly, very similar effect as having internal liquids boil in a vacuum.
I'm not suggesting his eyeballs would pop, just a lot of cellular damage.
His lungs would be totally trashed, at the very least.
Gven Star Trek technobabble and the presence of things like "cellular regenerators", it's all probably negligible.
I completely agree. My originating point was that the damage to Harry Kim would not be so much reconstructive, rather it would require system wide cellular regeneration. I've only argued that his body would essentially be in one recognizable piece.
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From what I have read of what happens to the human body when exposed to the vacuum of space, Harry's eyes should have popped out of their sockets and exploded, his abdomen should have swollen to the size of a Honda Accord, his lungs should be dangling from his mouth, and his entire circulatory system should have exploded when his blood began to boil in the ultra-low pressure of empty space.
The Kobali have to be some medical geniuses if they can put that mess back together again.
EDIT: Or maybe what I have read is just sensationalism.
I think so.
The vacuum of space is cold. Like really cold. A body in space would probably bleed boiling blood from every TRIBBLE for a minute or so, but would freeze solid before and dramatic external changes take place. Likely, Harry's body would still look very much like Harry's body- it would appear rather well preserved actually, but the cellular damages would be all encompassing.
So yeah, the Kobali technology would still need to be pretty ridiculously impressive to fix that.
A vacuum is an excellent insulator (it has no temperature), without heat loss from convection your corpse is not going to cool down quickly. It'll take a rather long time for your corpse to cool by radiation.
Being in a vacuum, your blood would boil, along with sweat and any other liquids in or on your corpse.
Search for "Question ID: 970411a" on this website: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/ask_astro/space_travel.html
Sorry. You've fallen for the classic Space Is Cold trope. Despite the absolute temperature being very cold (in the shade), hard vacuum is actually a terrible conductor of heat because there's no ambient gas for convection so you're left with radiation, which is a very inefficient way to transmit heat. Liquids will boil away from the low pressure well before they'll freeze.
Cabezadetortuga is a lot closer to the mark.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Vacuum is no insulator at all. There is absolutely no medium to prevent heat from radiating away from your body. Freezing would set in very quickly.
Sorry, you fail thermodynamics forever. That's a basic misconception used in a lot of sci-fi. Radiation is a very, very inefficient way of getting rid of heat, which means things stay warm longer, and radiation is the only possible way to get rid of heat in hard vacuum (apart from being in physical contact with another object, in which case conduction comes into play).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
My reading on the subject suggests that the unrestrained radiation in space would reduce a 70kg human body by 37c in under an hour. Longer than I estimated, but still fairly rapid.
Yeah, that'll kill you, but really, the real killer from being spaced? It's not the cold, or the depressurization. It's the simple fact that there's nothing to breathe. You'll be unconscious in ten seconds or so from lack of oxygen, dead soon after that.
As far as the mortal remains of Perpetual Ensign Kim? The corpse is going to basically have been freeze-dried.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Right. I was never contending that he'd die from exposure to the cold, rather that the onset of freezing would preserve the body relatively in tact.
Now I can't be sure what an hour's worth of vacuum exposure would do to a body, but my estimation would be that the integrity of the body tissue would generally hold up to the pressures and changes, leaving a relatively recognizable corpse.
I'm about 99% sure I found what you read, and I'm 99% certain you misread it.
It takes just under an hour for a 70kg human body to go from 37C to 32C.
That does not mean a loss of 37C in under an hour, it's a loss of 5C in under an hour, when starting from 37C. (The starting temperature does matter, since the rate of heat loss is affected by the difference between the body and the environment.)
If we simplify the calculation and simply assume it's linear, at 5C per hour it would take over 7 hours before the body is below the freezing temperature of water, which is easier to freeze than everything else in the body.
When NASA accidentally exposed someone to near vacuum, the man passed out in less than 14s, but reported he could feel the liquids on his tongue boiling. In the time it takes your corpse to freeze, the liquids in at least the extremities (like your eyeballs) would be boiling, severely damaging tissue before it could freeze.
Fair enough. But this would only change the amount of time taken for the body to freeze from 1hr to around 7hrs. Still not enough time for and substantial decay or breakdown.
Also, the action of boiling on the surface of the body would not cause damage itself. The water is not actually heating up, rather is boiling point is changing based on conditions. There would be damage to cells that dehydrate or rupture (as I suggested in my initial post), but for the most part, I see no reason that the basic structural integrity of the bulk of body tissue would be compromised.
His lungs would be totally trashed, at the very least.
Gven Star Trek technobabble and the presence of things like "cellular regenerators", it's all probably negligible.
When liquids boil they are turning to a gas, that gas creates pressure which ruptures membranes and other barriers. The gas wants to escape from the body and destroys tissue as it works its way out.
If you're curious what happens when trapped gasses try to escape the human body too quickly you can look up the effects of 'the bends' when diving to great depths. That's nitrogen that is built up under those pressures in your body, bends occur when the nitrogen is allowed to escape from the body too quickly. You can die from this as well if you depressurize too quickly, very similar effect as having internal liquids boil in a vacuum.
I completely agree. My originating point was that the damage to Harry Kim would not be so much reconstructive, rather it would require system wide cellular regeneration. I've only argued that his body would essentially be in one recognizable piece.