If you were spaced off a spaceship, would you float forever or could your body decompose without any oxygen?

Tsahi Shemesh

*I used to watch a show called The Expanse.

It is a good a show, it respects the hard math of physics – They show bodies drifting, they are mostly right about the motion.

But you wouldn’t rot like how a body rots on earth.

It is not rot like a dead dog in the sun.

Rotting usually needs oxygen, yes – space has none.

But your gut-see it holds a secret.

It is full of anaerobic bacteria-mean things that hate air.

They will try to eat you from the inside for a short time.

They fail quickly.

The vacuum is the real killer here – no pressure means the water in your cells, it boils instantly.

Heat. It gets taken fast from the boiling – The result is a freeze dry body.

You turn into a mummy thing – stiff and preserved.

We do not decompose into dust.

We become statues of meat.

We will float that way forever.


Not changed – well maybe if a star burns us or gravity grabs us.

We become immortal but done in a lonely way – the body kept whole by the quiet.

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