Why does anything happen to objects in the vacuum of space?

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Neugierig, Oct 10, 2013.

  1. Neugierig Registered Member

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    21
    If it's a vacuum why doesn't the object just sit there and float? Instead it gets pulled apart.
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    What do you mean by getting pulled apart?
    If you are referring to what happens to the human body unprotected in the near vacuum of space, then as far as I know, your blood may boil off, or at least ebulism would occur [bubbles] and probably decompression. Eventually you would just freeze I imagine.


    Of course if you were unlucky enough to enter a BH, then spaghetification and getting torn apart and finally broken down into your most basic fundamental parts would happen.
     
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  5. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I'm guessing he is referring to the expansion of space but if so it's a concept that he doesn't understand.
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Hmmmm, OK, possibly....

    The answer then would be, as far as the human body goes, the strong weak and EM forces hold us together against the imputus/DE/CC causing space/time to expand.....the force of accumalitive gravity then holds stars and such together and even relatively dense regions of space/time itself, such as our local group of galaxies are "decoupled" from the overall large scale expansion of space/time.
    M31 for example is being attracted towards the Milky Way along with other galaxies within the local group, and even further afield encompassing our whole cluster and wall of galaxies are encountering attraction against the overall expansion of the Universe/space/time.
     
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    It does. Objects in deep space just sit there and float. They don't get pulled apart unless something is pulling on them, like tidal forces or rotational forces.
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    There's always something pulling on anything. Satellites would fall into the nearest body (Earth, other planets, Sun, Moon) if there "forward speed" (I'm not an astro-physicist)

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    wasn't great enough to keep this from happening.

    Everything is falling.
     
  10. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Not much does happen to an already super-frozen marshmallow, or to "space rocks" that aren't sun-warmed snowballs with escaping gases, or to inhabited spaceships with well-designed hulls. But an ordinary balloon would have no chance of restraining the pressure that its thin skin would otherwise be containing with the balancing aid of outer pressure on it in Earth's lower atmosphere. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the character Dave Bowman really could have just remained conscious during that ten seconds after being ejected from the pod into the open docking tunnel. Though probably not lucky enough to have wound up grabbing the air-lock control handle or whatever. Acknowledging that body heat would not instantly disappear... Before one minute a biological "water bag" of primate lineage would have felt foaming on the tongue, probably have hemorrhaged in the lungs, and turned blue in color. But not "popped" to bits like a worker with a punctured space suit in movies like "Outland". A much tougher-skinned balloon is a "monkey gone to heaven".
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    No. It gets pushed apart by the forces inside it. Most objects that came from Earth, for example, contain a lot of air. When the air pressure outside the object drops to zero, the air inside starts pushing and may eventually cause the object to burst.

    Not to mention, even in a vacuum electromagnetic radiation is rampant. This can disturb the state of the matter inside the object, for example making it hotter, catalyzing chemical reactions, creating electromagnetic attraction or repulsion, or even causing radioactivity--although this is a long shot. Any of these things can cause the object to expand, and ultimately burst, due to the pressure differential between empty space and its own interior.
     
  12. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    7,057
    There are two searate concepts there. Objects in space "float" - i.e. fall according to gravitational forces - and objects in vacuum are pushed apart by internal pressures. Even in a strong gravitational field - e.g. the earth's surface - objects in a vacuum will be subjected to the same internal versus external forces (with the addition of the gravitational force, of course).
     

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