As humans leave space junk behind, there may come a time when human bodies will have to decompose in space. Find out how this happens and why it is a slow process.
We are building the foundations for one day living more outside our planet. However, as has been mentioned and studied several times, the human body is not prepared to live in space. In fact, not even to die!
What happens to our decomposing body in space?
By some estimates, about 3,000 dead satellites are orbiting the Earth and about 34,000 pieces of space junk were left behind by humans. Wherever humans go, they always leave a trail.
And it's an even bigger problem in space because it takes much longer to decompose and does nothing more than make the place dirty, says Jack Gabit, associate professor of physics at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
As humans return to the Moon and aim to travel to Mars, the more people who visit space, the more likely they are to end up dying there. Which raises the question: what would happen to these bodies in space?
Bacteria in Space
For organic matter to decompose, it is necessary bacteria, which often need oxygen. While there are some types of bacteria that can break down material anaerobically or without oxygen, this is often not the case, according to Gabit points out.
So the question is: are there enough bacteria on this object to decompose anything?
Questions Gabit.
Although only three people have died in space, Georgi T. Dobrovolski, Vladislav N. Volkov and Viktor I. Patsayev, in Soyuz 11their bodies returned to Earth and did not decompose in space. However, if they had done so, there might have been enough bacteria in the body to allow some kind of decomposition.
However, the decomposition process would be slow since there is no oxygen in space to help continue the process and the dry air would also slow decomposition.
But when it comes to a piece of trash, it doesn't naturally contain bacteria, and it would be difficult to start the decomposition process.
If an object is floating in the vacuum of space, the atmosphere will also lack oxygen, which means that aerobic decomposition, that is, that which requires oxygen, cannot occur.
Basically, in places where decomposition occurred, it would be much slower.
Says Gabit.
Decomposition depends on location in space
For inorganic objects like a piece of metal, for example, the decomposition process would take much longer in space. Although different processes can break things down, they all move much more slowly than they do on Earth, says Gabit.
In space, for example, if we had a piece of metal orbiting, the process would depend on where in space the junk was floating. If the debris were in a lower Earth orbit, such as the distance between Earth and the International Space Station, the debris would decay due to friction.
The debris orbits around the Earth at a rate of about 30,000 km/h, hitting air molecules at a speed that would cause them to break apart.
They could also fall closer to Earth, where they would hit a denser atmosphere at very high speeds and begin to burn more quickly. But further away from Earth, there is less friction to break down trash.
There are no atoms slamming into the object because we are essentially in a pure vacuum.
Says Gabit.
At this point, We are left with the Sun's radiationsolar wind particles that are blown away from the Sun, and perhaps some tiny meteorites that hit the debris again and again, but the process of decaying anything at that time would take thousands of years. And when you reach deep space, the process slows down even more because you're further from the Sun, which makes solar radiation weaker.
The end result is that many of these 34,000 objects left behind in space will most likely stay there for years. And for us humans who travel to space, the decomposition process would be long.
We'd better keep our space debris to a minimum because otherwise, before long, outer space will be a mess, making it very easy to collide with one of the objects left behind.
Source: pplware.sapo.pt
