Shawntay -
Well, the rough summary in either case is that the person in question would be very dead, very fast, in a very unpleasant manner. But, since you seem to be looking for a more specific answer than that, let’s take it one at a time. (Let me warn you ahead of time that if you have a weak stomach, you may not be interested in some of the images that this all draws to mind.) First, if a person were to wind up unprotected at the bottom of the ocean...
At the bottom of the ocean, there’s four big things that would happen. (1) It’s cold. Because it’s so cold, the person would experience severe hypothermia, and the body would eventually stop working because of the cold temperature, but this is probably not what would kill them. (2) There’s no air. You can’t breath at the bottom of the ocean. If you can’t breath, your body won’t stay alive for more than about 30 minutes. (Although you’d lose consciousness after about 5.)
(3) The water pressure is very high. The pressure from the water would push in on the person’s body, causing any space that’s filled with air to collapse. (The air would be compressed.) So, the lungs would collapse. At the same time, the pressure from the water would push water into the mouth, filling the lungs back up again with water instead of air. But if there’s no air-filled space to be pushed into, the body would not be crushed. (Part of the problem with the old pressure suits that deep-sea divers used to use was that if they depressurized, the soft part of the suit and the entire body would be crushed into the rigid helmet. This is one of the big reasons that divers don’t use suits like this anymore.)
(4) At high pressures, the chemistry of how the body works changes. If the person did have some way of getting air into their system, their body would immediately undergo what’s called "nitrogen narcosis." This happens because at high pressures, nitrogen is much more soluble in water (or blood) than oxygen is. And especially since air is mostly nitrogen, the blood would become full of dissolved nitrogen. The nitrogen would bind to the parts of the body that need to use oxygen, and the person would literally suffocate from the inside out.
Ok... now, if the person were unprotected in space. (Fortunately, this hasn’t actually happened yet, so we don’t really know exactly what would happen. But here’s the best guess.) In space, the three big problems are (1) no air, (2) there’s no air pressure in space, and (3) it’s extremely cold (much colder than at the bottom of the ocean).
If the person were able to hold their breath, they could probably last for at least a few minutes before they ran out of air (and this would protect them from their lungs freezing, too).
The lack of air pressure would pull outwards on their body, but they wouldn’t blow up the way the people did in "Total Recal." What would probably happen instead is that the blood vessels near the skin would burst, causing their skin to turn a pinkish-red color. But it’s pretty hard to say if it would be the lack of air or the cold temperature that would kill them first.
(mod by mw) The cold would be a less immediate problem, because the thermal conductance of the vacuum is low. The body would gradually radiate heat as infrared waves, slowly cooling down. The other problems would be fatal first.
-Tamara
(published on 10/22/2007)
FAQs
This comparison illustrates that we can go further into space than we can go beneath the ocean due to the effects of pressure. But even though it is difficult for us to go down to deep depths of the ocean, we have been able to send specialize robots and submersibles down there.
Is there more pressure at the bottom of the ocean or in space? ›
No matter how far out you are in space, the difference in pressure between inside and outside is no greater than one atmosphere's worth of pressure. But as soon as you go down even a little bit into the ocean, you can have way more than one atmosphere of pressure pushing on your vessel.
What if you were at the bottom of the ocean? ›
You can't breath at the bottom of the ocean. If you can't breath, your body won't stay alive for more than about 30 minutes. (Although you'd lose consciousness after about 5.) (3) The water pressure is very high.
Which do you think should be explored more, the space or the ocean? ›
Space is wildly more popular, and has proven its worth with many advancements. The ocean, however, has major benefits: providing food, medicine, and the air we breathe. Oceans can bring much more to the table, if we would simply explore more of them.
What would happen to a human at the bottom of the ocean? ›
8 tonnes per square inch increases with depth. Any air filled crevice of the human body would collapse in the blink of an eye under this pressure. Lungs filled with air would collapse and the bones would crush. Mariana Trench is the deepest location in earth's crust.
Is the bottom of the ocean colder than space? ›
The coldest temps of the deepest earthly ocean is around 31°F while deep space is close to absolute zero, around -454°F.
Would a human body be crushed at the bottom of the ocean? ›
Many sea creatures are made of mostly water. Water cannot be compressed, or squeezed, by pressure like air can. This means that animals in the sea can stay safe when in the depths of the sea, as their body is balanced with the pressure around them, whereas we have air in our bodies that would be crushed.
How deep can a human go in the ocean before being crushed? ›
While there's no precise depth at which a human would be 'crushed', diving beyond certain limits (around 60 meters) without proper equipment and gas mixes can lead to serious health issues due to the pressure effects on the body, including nitrogen narcosis and oxygen toxicity.
What would 6000 psi do to a human? ›
Air / gasses in the body would compress significantly, if not allowed to exit the body. Your lungs would collapse in an instant, and your chest cavity would collapse on itself, until all air has escaped, and then replaced by water. Your ear eardrums would also rapture in an instant.
Is there a Life at the bottom of the ocean? ›
There are two types of deep-sea organisms: Benthic organisms are those that spend most of their lives on the ocean floor. Some benthic organisms, like lobsters and crabs, can freely move around on the ocean floor. Others, like anemones, attach themselves to the ocean floor.
At the bottom of the Mariana trench the pressure exceeds 1000 atmospheres, which is enough to crush all but the most robust submersibles. It would kill an unprotected human instantly.
Have we touched the bottom of the ocean? ›
Thousands have climbed Mount Everest, and a handful of people have walked on the moon. But reaching the lowest part of the ocean? Only three people have ever done that, and one was a U.S. Navy submariner.
Is it safe to go to space or the bottom of the ocean? ›
Given the gruesome deaths suffered by the five men onboard the Titan, it's easy to believe that the ultrahigh pressures of the deep sea are more dangerous than any ride to space. Ocean exploration is, however, often safer than it seems.
Why do we explore space but not the ocean? ›
Part of the answer comes down to ease of exploration. Sure, it's hard to get a spaceship, or even a probe, into space. But it's also not an afternoon lap swim to get a person to the bottom of the ocean, where the pressure of 50 jumbo jets rests on you [source: Stillman].
How much of the ocean have we explored in 2024? ›
What drives astronomers to ask, “What's out there?” and oceanographers, “What's down there?” Despite covering 71 percent of the planet, only 5 percent of the ocean has been explored.
Have more people been to space or the bottom of the ocean? ›
While there are some similarities to space exploration and ocean exploration, there's a reason why more people have gone to the moon than to the bottom of the ocean. CNN's Ashley Strickland explains why.
How close have we gotten to the bottom of the ocean? ›
A history of ocean exploration
A major step forward in human exploration came in 1960 with the historic dive of the Trieste bathyscaphe, a type of free-diving submersible, to the Challenger Deep, located more than 35,800 feet (10,916 meters) underwater.
How far away is sea level from space? ›
Yet the edge of space – or the point where we consider spacecraft and astronauts to have entered space, known as the Von Karman Line – is only 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level. If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.
How many feet is space from the ocean? ›
The Kármán line (or von Kármán line /vɒn ˈkɑːrmɑːn/) is a proposed conventional boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space set by the international record-keeping body FAI (Fédération aéronautique internationale) at an altitude of 100 kilometres (54 nautical miles; 62 miles; 330,000 feet) above mean sea level.
