Yesterday in yoga I was in the final resting pose, which is called Corpse Pose or Savasana, and suddenly wondered what would happen if I died on a space capsule and they just pushed my body out into the void.
My body would float weightless and probably desiccate. It would be cold, unless it were within the solar system, in which case the sunward side of the body might get very hot. Not sure if microbial decomposition would occur or not. Other than that, how would a human body disintegrate and how long would it take? I imagined that maybe hundreds or thousands of years later, it would be a separated pile of bones and maybe some dust. Maybe the bones themselves would disintegrate as well, eventually.
It depends highly on where in space you are. Even within the solar system space around the orbit of Mercury is a veeeeeery different place than space out by Pluto.
Most of you would freeze solid, unless too close to the sun, and what would happen to that frozen body can be roughly estimated by what happens to other icy celestial bodies.
You would, of course, be discovered millions of years later by an Earth civilization that was convinced space travel only dated back five or six decades.
I’ve a few insights to share to hopefully aid in your visualization. Sorry if they seem like nitpicks.
(1) Buried in space is a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it? I’d suggest “released into space” or “abandoned in space.” Buried implies being interred under the soil of a planetary body such as the moon, Mars or Earth. I suppose it could also mean encapsulated inside a smaller body such as an asteroid.
(2) While the body may seem like it is floating, it is at all times under the influence of gravity. At any time it would be orbiting the Earth or Sun. Unless, of course, it’s moving fast enough to escape solar gravity, in which case it is orbiting the galactic center. The term we’re reaching for is “in microgravity.”
(3) Now for the gross part, the decomposition. As others have posted, depending on where you are orbiting and how well protected you are from the sun, your body would either freeze or burn away, or do a bit of both. Interestingly, orbiting at the distance from the sun that the Earth is (e.g. Earth orbit), the average temperature of a body is about the freezing point of water. That includes factoring the heat input from the sun, as well as the “coldness of space” the body experiences when not sunlit. I’m assuming the body is exposed to vacuum. If permanently in shadow, I believe the body would form a frozen mass and pretty much stay that way for ever. If exposed to the sun, even part time, at a distance out to about the orbit of Mars, I believe the body’s bits would dry and boil off, and a lot of the material would be shed, until perhaps the entire body disappears. It’s possible that anaerobic bacteria could still do their thing if the conditions inside the body are not too extreme, i.e. just above the freezing point. This would hasten the in-sun decomposition.
I think that the common SF image of a skeleton in a broken-mask space suit lying face up on a sunlit planetary body (like the moon and Mars) is pretty realistic.
This is what I thought. Aren’t there examples of people buried in sealed coffins that for whatever reason had to be opened? I hate to conjecture what that would be like.
Well…oddly enough I have a story about that, possibly apocryphal, from my own family’s history. One of my relatives (on my mother’s side) was entombed in a glass coffin and was inside a mausoleum. The story goes, the body looked perfect even years later–it must have been embalmed. The lady looked like she was just sleeping. The kids would sneak into the mausoleum from time to time and gawk.
I think you can tell where this is going. One day, one of the kids got the idea to open up the sealed glass coffin. They struck one of the (presumably soldered) joints where two glass panes came together. There was a hissing sound. And, right before their eyes, the body pretty much fell apart, into dust. Just like in a horror movie. (This was written down no later than the 1980’s.)
Analogous to buried at sea I guess, but you’re right, “buried” not quite the right word. And I wasn’t thinking in a space suit. Just, like, I was on a crew, died out there, and they jettisoned my body (with my total consent in case anyone asks about that).
I also wondered if putting a fresh corpse into a space vacuum with “microgravity” would result in gases expanding first, so the body would sort of… yuk… explode like a detonated beached whale.
Before anyone says I should stop doing yoga and go see a shrink instead: I’ll say that this image came to me spontaneously, and was actually rather peaceful. I was floating in space among the stars, timeless. That final resting pose is called corpse pose for a reason, and sometimes I use it to contemplate my mortality.
I don’t think there’s enough of a pressure differential (it’s only 1 atmosphere worth!) to do that. They’d want to put your corpse in a diaper though… according to studies done on live dogs exposed to near vacuum, they suffered the following (they survived though!):
The moisture in your body would freeze pretty quickly but sublimate over time and be wicked away. Freezing probably will stop your internal decomposition before you had the chance to swell up and explode.
Freeze-drying is an extremely effective way of preserving organic tissue, essentially taking out the water and leaving all the harder cellular structure behind. You’d look a great deal like the naturally formed mummies found in the Sahara Desert and in Peruvian Andes, but possibly wearing your official NASA or Elon Musk jock strap.
I guess once you’re floating around there you also become susceptible to being struck by meteorites or space junk. I expect a frozen turd nugget from Apollo 13 would not even slow down as it cut a hole right through you.
Oh, and you’d probably rotate slowly while Blue Danube music played, so that’s a thought to be hanging on to.
Nothing useful to add, but this thread had me thinking about Bikram Yoga. Not knowing anything about it except it was in a hot room, I looked it up on Wikipedia, where I read about the corpse pose (something I had not known about before). Then the very next thread I mouse over, that term is in the preview. Freak me out, man, freak me out.
One day, one of the kids got the idea to open up the sealed glass coffin. They struck one of the (presumably soldered) joints where two glass panes came together. There was a hissing sound. And, right before their eyes, the body pretty much fell apart, into dust. Just like in a horror movie. (This was written down no later than the 1980’s.)