Lost in space, a very long four minutes…

QUESTION

Would you die immediately in the near vacuum of space? WITH no air, extreme cold and almost zero pressure, the human body won’t last long – however, death would not be instantaneous.

It would take around 10-15 seconds for your body to use up the oxygen reserves from your bloodstream, and the lack of oxygen to your brain would render you unconscious.

Don’t hold your breath, though – a rapid loss of external pressure would cause the gas inside your lungs to expand, rupturing them and releasing air into the circulatory system.

Nasa concludes you might remain alive for up to four minutes, though the potential to stage a full recovery is restricted to 90 seconds.

Your skin and the tissue underneath would swell as the water in your body vaporises in the absence of atmospheric pressure, and you’d bloat to about twice your normal size, though your skin is elastic enough to prevent rupture.

You would be in immense pain and your blood circulation would be impeded. You would not immediately freeze. The lack of gaseous molecules in the near vacuum of space means negligible heat loss through convection and conduction.

However, because you would be exposed directly to unfiltered cosmic radiation, you could expect nasty sunburn, and you’d probably get decompression sickness. Thomas Davids, by email.

QUESTION

What sounds common in other languages are not used by English speakers? FURTHER to previous answers, a sound used by Swedish speakers is that represented by sj, produced by blowing through pursed lips.

The long vowel u is somewhere between oo (as in ‘soon’) and German ü. These two sounds occur in the word for ‘seven’, sju, which approximates to English ‘phew’.

Rick Taylor, by email.