Is it possible to breathe in space?

[agrusag]

:geek: I was thinking today that when the big bang, uh, exploded, and the solar system here was formed, gasses were thrown into space to be used up by the planets. This much we know already.

We also know that going out into space requires space suits, to combat the extreme pressure and temperature. But can we still breathe?

I am sure nobody has ever dared to try it, but what if those gasses were not used up. What if they were still floating around? What if we sent a sensor into space to detect those kind of things?

As earthly beings, we are naturally curious. I know I have a lot of questions to ask. So, instead of focusing on other planets, why don't we try focusing on space travel, first?

If there are any of those gasses still floating around, they are most likely in big groups. Is it possible?

I think there must be something in the so called "Vacuum". A space can't be completely devoid of everything. I think it may be possibe. What do you think?

And I was also thinking about time travel. my theory is that if we can get something to travel at the speed of light, into the fourth or fifth dimension, we could bypass the principle of time and travel. Now, I know we're a long way from this technology, but is my theory right?

:geek:

 

[3488]

Welcome to SDC.

No it is not possible. Space is very, very close to a perfect vacuum. True there is gas, but it is so tenuous that it requires instruments to detect. Hydrogen is the most plentiful about 89%, Helium nex, then Atomic Oxygen (not the molecular Oxygen we breathe O2 or Ozone O3).

Totally impossible to breathe in space.

Andrew Brown.

 

[drwayne]

" but is my theory right?"

Actually no. An idea that pops into our head has a long trip of refinement before it reaches
the level of a theory.

Welcome to the forum!

 

[drwayne]

I did see a woo site one time that tried to make the case that one could in fact breathe in space,
but "they" were keeping it a secret to keep us from "escaping" into space.

:roll:

 

[3488]

Hi drwayne,

I think I had seen the same woo woo site or similar & am sure I've heard of that too.

Andrew Brown.

 

[nimbus]

Welcome to SDC.

No it is not possible. Space is very, very close to a perfect vacuum. True there is gas, but it is so tenuous that it requires instruments to detect. Hydrogen is the most plentiful about 89%, Helium nex, then Atomic Oxygen (not the molecular Oxygen we breathe O2 or Ozone O3).

Totally impossible to breathe in space.

Andrew Brown.

To paraphrase this (and if my math isn't wrong), ambient air on Earth (25 degrees C and 100kPa) means you have very roughly ("on the order of") 10^24 molecules per cubic meter of air. That's
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in a cube with one meter long sides.
Whereas in space you have a relatively tiny number of molecules in that same volume (I don't recall the number off-hand). To put it in perspective though, altitude sickness begins around 2.5 km high (that's around 8,000 ft). Pilots I know have anecdotes about their absolute inability to fight it, to the point that they simply can't do basic tasks like simple arithmetics. Two and a half thousand meters is just 1/40th the altitude to the conventional edge of space, and then you're still not quite into outer space vacuum yet.

So, no, you can't breathe in outer space. Long before outer space, you cease to meet minimum requirements for tolerable biological function. One thing you might find interesting though, in part because possibly counter-intuitive, is that human skin makes pretty good vacuum protection, provided it's given just a bit of extra help with skin tight layers. I'm saying this from memory of early space suit development, so don't take my exact word for it. Maybe someone who recalls the specifics can chime in.

 

[Shpaget]

If I remember correctly, consensus is that there is on average 1 hydrogen atom in a cubic centimeter (1 million atoms in one m[super]3[/super]).

As for trying to breath it, I believe there were attempts. They have surely put a frog or something in an airlock and pushed the red button.
Also, Alexei Leonov almost lost his life in 1965 after his space suit inflated due to pressure differences so he wasn't able to reenter the airlock. He allowed some of the air to exit his suite, but something went wrong and he suffered from decompression sickness.

 

[amshak]

No we can not breath in space. Of course there are free floating gasses in Space. So we can send some sensors in space. But if you ask me about time travel , its immposible . If we manage to travel at light speed, we may be able to reach other dimension, means we may reach other Star system... But travelling to the Future which had not happened is immposible.

 

[amshak]

I think we can utilize it. for future space travels . For future Destination to intersteller Travels of many Years We require lots of Water . And recycled water cannot be used for long. So if the gas contains Hydrogen and Some Oxygen particles , we could prouduce Water :!:

 

[drwayne]

If I remember correctly, consensus is that there is on average 1 hydrogen atom in a cubic centimeter (1 million atoms in one m[super]3[/super]).

As for trying to breath it, I believe there were attempts. They have surely put a frog or something in an airlock and pushed the red button.
Also, Alexei Leonov almost lost his life in 1965 after his space suit inflated due to pressure differences so he wasn't able to reenter the airlock. He allowed some of the air to exit his suite, but something went wrong and he suffered from decompression sickness.

I recall reading something a long time ago about a pressure chamber test in which a suit failed and someone
was exposed to near vacuum for a period of time.

 

[nimbus]

Various and sundry answers from around the net:
Damninteresting.com mentions the anecdote in DrWayne's post
This page answers the question and a few more, e.g. "How fast does a spaceship decompress if it's punctured?"
Another comprehensive answer to the question from one of NASA's webpages.

 

[agrusag]

Ok, so we can't physically breath in space. But, if there are atoms of air we could use, or if there was some other form of producing it, could we make a machine that could recycle the air in space and pull it inside a space ship?

 

[Solifugae]

If you were in a giant stellar gas cloud that contained 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen and you were in area with similar density to Earth's atmosphere, surely you could breathe just fine. On the other hand, would the gas cloud be really hot being so dense with all those stars beaming into it?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Ok, so we can't physically breath in space. But, if there are atoms of air we could use, or if there was some other form of producing it, could we make a machine that could recycle the air in space and pull it inside a space ship?

The vast majority of the gas in space is hydrogen, which we can't breathe.

 

[ZenDraken]

Ok, so we can't physically breath in space. But, if there are atoms of air we could use, or if there was some other form of producing it, could we make a machine that could recycle the air in space and pull it inside a space ship?

Space has limitless resources. You can extract oxygen from lunar soil, you can get nitrogen from Titan's atmosphere, just to give two examples.

As for collecting atoms of oxygen floating in deep space, it's possible in principle. But since there are vanishingly few atoms per cubic meter of space, and most of them are hydrogen, it's far easier to just go to where there are a lot of atoms: planets, asteroids, and comets. Even interstellar clouds are just slightly denser than the interstellar vacuum, so you'd be very hard pressed to gather up enough oxygen to be worth your effort.

If you were in a giant stellar gas cloud that contained 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen and you were in area with similar density to Earth's atmosphere, surely you could breathe just fine. On the other hand, would the gas cloud be really hot being so dense with all those stars beaming into it?

You'd probably like the book "The Smoke Ring" by Larry Niven. It's exactly that scenario, only the gas cloud was orbiting a star (hence "smoke ring"), and was quite comfortable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smoke_Ring_(novel)

Actually "The Smoke Ring" was a sequel to the novel "The Integral Trees": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees

 

[Nuruhuine]

I did see a woo site one time that tried to make the case that one could in fact breathe in space,
but "they" were keeping it a secret to keep us from "escaping" into space.

That would have been Richard C. Hoagland during an interview on some radio show for cosmic-scale twits like him. This is the same idiot who thinks Cydonia is some huge archiological find that's been covered up, and that man has already been to Mars repeatedly to "study" these "alien" artifacts. He also believes there's an atmosphere on the Moon and remnants of a Civilization on the moon that was "incredibly advanced". Yea, he's a freaking Looney.

 

[DarwinLied]

go 99.9% the speed of light and you will be traveling in time

 

[Couerl]

Hi, you could exhale once very quickly in space and that would be the end of your breathing experiment as there would be nothing to breathe back in and your lungs would freeze almost instantly if you tried. :geek:

I have heard though that a human exposed to space could survive perhaps up to a minute or so before becoming a corpsicle.

 

[alphachapmtl]

Well, there is an Air in Space Museum, so I guess it's possible.

 

[orienteer]

Some of you will claim that this is off topic, but it is similar. Where does the solar wind go? I know the wind is the H atoms that escape from the sun and that they fly away from the sun until their momentum is canceled out by the solar gravity. I know that that happens at the heliopause. I know that the heliopause is further from the sun in the trailing direction than it is in the lead direction. I do not know where 4 billion years worth of atoms go when they get to the heliopause. Is there an atmosphere there? Do they return to the Sun? Also, when light passes through the heliopause, does it diffract like when it passes through the surface of a lake? Or does it change speed like a fish would when it jumps out of a lake? These last two ideas would change the size of the universe drastically.

 

[nimbus]

I have heard though that a human exposed to space could survive perhaps up to a minute or so before becoming a corpsicle.

From the damninteresting.com article linked above:

Heat does not transfer out of the body very rapidly in the absence of a medium such as air or water, so freezing to death is not an immediate risk in outer space despite the extreme cold.

For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of “useful consciousness” would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in.
[...]
Though an unprotected human would not long survive in the clutches of outer space, it is remarkable that survival times can be measured in minutes rather than seconds, and that one could endure such an inhospitable environment for almost two minutes without suffering any irreversible damage. The human body is indeed a resilient machine.

 

[aremisasling]

"Ok, so we can't physically breath in space. But, if there are atoms of air we could use, or if there was some other form of producing it, could we make a machine that could recycle the air in space and pull it inside a space ship?"

Some mention has been made of creating a spacecraft with a 'ram scoop' that could collect hydrogen and perhaps oxygen from the space environment for use as a fuel. I've never heard of any actual development resulting from those suggestions. Again, with the very low densities it's hard to see how, even over distances of sevaral AU, a spacecraft could even collect a modest amount of these atoms.

As for the density of the atmosphere, above 10,000ft all airplanes are required to have pressurized cabins to provide breathable air due to the thin atmosphere. Certainly we can (and do) climb mountains considerably higher than that, but the simple fact that the FAA and it's international counterparts recognize it as a significant risk even that low in the atmosphere suggests that at the Karman line (62.1 miles), the atmosphere would be very very thin. Joseph Kittinger was sent only 101,000 feet up to test early spacesuit concepts. While staggering when you think about it, it's still a very small fraction of the distance to space.

Aremis

 

[aremisasling]

Is there an atmosphere there?

Technically, yes, but the Voyagers have shown that that 'atmosphere' is as thin as a few atoms per cubic meter. In fact, right now that's all the Voyager spacecraft are doing is collecting data on atom impact frequencies. (aside from V2 which is sending garbage at the moment). In fact, the way they are marking the heliopause is in large-scale changes to the frequency of atom impacts, from a few atoms per square meter to even less.

Do they return to the Sun?

We're not sure. Given the Voyager data it appears they clump a little bit, just like water builds up at the bow of a moving boat or air builds up at the leading edge of an airplane (resulting in sonic booms at high enough speeds). Beyond that we don't know much about it.

Also, when light passes through the heliopause, does it diffract like when it passes through the surface of a lake?

Yes, but only in the same sense as it is technically an atmosphere. The density should give rise to a change in diffraction, but it would be very very small and would only occur over vast distances due to the very low frequency of atoms. I don't know for sure, but I imagine we don't even have instruments capable of detecting that effect at this point.

Aremis

 

[SR]

No, you can not breath in space. All air will leave your lungs and they will collapse. On Earth, it is the atmospheric pressure that keeps the lungs open, by counteracting the equal elastic force that tries to push air out, when you are not actively breathing. If you open your mouth in space, your lungs will turn to small solid balls the size of your fist.

 

[JackMunoz]

Yes, you could breathe in space if our sun were a neutron star and a terrestrial gas giant orbited just outside its Roche limit: if the gas giant's gravity were too weak to hold its atmosphere its air would be pulled loose into an independent orbit around the sun forming a gas torus, the central part of which would be thicker, breathable; and, so, an area in space would exist, consisting entirely of sky with no "up" or "down." (And Sun-Gas Giant L4 and L5 would be great spots for O'Neill cylinders.)