This microscopic animal can survive in outer space. Find out how and learn about the toughest animal on earth (and off of it) by listening to today's episode!
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NXu2AzNhIj7V_9jcISMvxolWlCAim0uzCLveJDYuFtQ/edit?usp=sharing
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0:00.0 | Why can't humans survive in outer space? |
0:04.6 | That's a question with like 29 different answers, and all of them are right. |
0:10.9 | Because space kills humans in basically every way it's possible to kill something. |
0:16.8 | Space freezes you. |
0:18.5 | The average temperature in outer space is about 455 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, |
0:24.9 | about 270 degrees below zero Celsius. |
0:29.4 | That's cold enough to turn your body into a human sickle before you could even really feel the cold. |
0:36.0 | In fact, that's too cold for your body to recognize the feeling as cold. |
0:42.3 | At that temperature, you don't shiver. Your cells burst open. |
0:48.0 | Space is also a total vacuum. Zero pressure. This kills you in many ways, including by depressurizing your lungs, |
0:56.2 | causing them to explode. Lowering pressure also causes liquids to vaporize, or boil, at much |
1:03.0 | lower temperatures, right? There's less holding liquids as liquids when there's lower pressure, |
1:08.3 | less stopping them from floating away into gases. |
1:12.0 | There's actually a famous anecdote from the 60s illustrating this. |
1:16.0 | One man was testing spacesuits and got briefly exposed to a near total vacuum, |
1:22.0 | and he felt bubbling in his mouth in the moment before he lost consciousness. |
1:28.0 | His saliva was boiling. |
1:31.7 | Apes like us evolved to survive in the context of atmospheric pressure. |
1:37.7 | Space also radiates your body. |
1:40.3 | Many people don't realize this, but lethal levels of radiation are flying around the universe perpetually. |
1:46.0 | And Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field are doing yeoman's work to protect you from it, mostly. |
1:52.2 | Mostly, meaning Google sun-induced skin cancer, for examples of not quite totally. |
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