(December 16, 2021 at 6:51 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(December 16, 2021 at 6:38 pm)Brian37 Wrote: So if an astronaut were to take their helmet off on a space walk, their heads would explode.
Ok, but what if they just unzip their fly?
Heads wouldn’t explode. The result of opening the fly zipper (or any zipper) would be the same as removing the helmet. The astronaut would lose consciousness with a few seconds and be dead of asphyxia in about two minutes.
Boru
In high school I volunteered to be part of an experiment in my Chemistry class. Bad idea. The teacher had 3 fingers missing, allegedly having them blown off making nitro-glycerin.
I put my thumb into a hold in a bell jar, and he turned on the vacuum. In a few seconds my thumb was double size and it hurt like hell. It took a while to get my thumb out.
If the decompression occurs all over the body, nothing will explode or bulge out, because the whole body loses pressure (of course there needs some pressure to support blood flow). If, however, the space suit held pressure in most places, but only some parts of the body were exposed to vacuum, there would 14 psi internal pressure on that tissue, which would cause a lot of damage quickly.