In many action -packed films, you can see how the body of a person who finds himself in open space without a special costume almost instantly explodes or icy. We checked how realistic these personnel are from a scientific point of view.

In one of the most famous films on the topic of interplanetary flights - "Cosmic Odyssey of 2001" (1968) - there is an episode in which the astronaut Dave Bownean moves for some time along a depressurized ship without a helmet and at the same time remains alive. In Hollywood cinema, you can see the reverse extremes at least in Hollywood cinema. IN "Alien land" (1981) people explodes, in the final of the film "Remember everything" (1990) The heroes come out of their eyes from orbits, in "Mission to Mars" (2000) The astronaut who removed the helmet freezes, and in the militant "Through the horizon" (1997) The hero begins to erupt blood flow. Let's try to figure out which of these scenes is closer to reality.

Firstly, it is necessary to understand what is space space in terms of temperature. It is generally accepted that in Cosmos the cold, wild by human standards reigns, comparable not even with the weather overboard the airliner, but with the absolute zero (–273 ° C). However, this is not entirely true. In thermodynamics, the temperature is function Thermal energy in a given amount of substance, and space by definition has no mass. In addition, heat transfer is carried out in three ways (conductivity, convection, radiation), however, in the open space, the first two of them are impossible, since the presence of a substance is necessary for their implementation. As for the third method, thermal radiation, a person may feel very different temperature, depending on whether he is in the field of action of direct sunlight or is located in the shade.

If we talk about a realistic situation (being in open space near the ISS), then measurements From the satellite of Technsat, rotating in a similar orbit, they showed a temperature of –4 ° C to +45 ° C. The ISS case itself is able to warm up to +260 ° C and cool to –100 ° C, depending on the same sun. The reason for this is the presence of gas around the station - the surrounding space at such a height cannot be called a complete vacuum, so convection will still be carried out, albeit in a limited volume. Nevertheless, the human body is so fast to turn into a piece of ice Can't.

How will such conditions affect a person who will be in space without a spacesuit? The main problem for him is not the temperature, but the lack of normal atmospheric pressure. With sudden decompression In a vacuum, air expansion can lead to a rupture of lungs and death if this air cannot be exhausted immediately. In addition, death can be called The fact that the reduced pressure of the environment reduces the boiling temperature of the body fluids and initiates the formation of water vapor in venous blood and soft tissues. Direct consequences of this - Gas embolism and blockage of blood vessels due to gas bubbles in the bloodstream. At the same time, the blood itself will not boil in any case, since the walls of the blood vessels will maintain pressure inside at a level that is enough for the body temperature to be below the boiling point, at least until the heart stops fighting. Moreover, it is impossible to talk about the exploding (bursting) human body - even if there is a rupture of the internal organ, that is, the lungs, it will not be noticeable outside.

Animal experiments and statistics of accidents in training testify The fact that a person can live in a vacuum for about a minute (in an unconscious state), but not much longer. Widely known happening 1971, when the Soviet cosmonauts Dobrovolsky, Patsaev and Volkov died after the depressurization of the Soyuz-11 apparatus.

A huge amount research It is dedicated to how the human body protected by the spacesuit behaves in the long term, but this is a completely different story. As shown above, in space, a person - at least in the first minutes - can neither explode nor relate.