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What happens when you boil water in space?

Updated: 9/27/2023
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Henry Feeney

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4y ago

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In microgravity environments, boiling works very differently than it does on Earth. Under our gravity conditions, hotter parts of the liquid rise, while cooler parts sink. When vapor bubbles begin to form, they get shot upward, creating that classic "rolling boil."

In space, though, heated liquid doesn't rise, so it just sits next to the heater and gets hotter. Likewise, as bubbles of vapor form, they don't rise to the surface. Instead, they form one big bubble that moves through the liquid. Sometimes, that big bubble sticks to the heat source, preventing the rest of the liquid from boiling.

Other times, the liquid doesn't boil at all. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have gotten liquids up to 160 degrees Kelvin above their normal boiling temperatures, and since "superheating" a liquid like that can be dangerous, they couldn't heat it any more than that for safety reasons.

All that's to say that microgravity makes hot liquids behave weirdly, and scientists don't have it all figured out.

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Keith Rohan

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4y ago
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Q: What happens when you boil water in space?
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Continue Learning about Astronomy

What happens if you're naked in space?

If you are naked in space your blood will boil, you can't breath so you suffocate, you burn, you freeze and you are inflated like a balloon, in simple terms, you die.


What happens to water in space?

Because there is no gravity in space, and because liquids' natural shape is a sphere; water, or any other liquid for that matter, in the zero-gravity of space will automaticly transform into a floating ball of liquid if not contained. For example, because your blood is contained in your veins and there is no air in your blood vessels, your blood will not do this.lol, no.the oxygen in the water would expand rapidly, aka boil. then it would intermediately freeze and turn into a cloud of ice.


What happens if you don't put on a space suit or space helmet?

You will loose oxygen then explode Actually, you won't explode. Within a few seconds the change in pressure will cause the gasses in your blood to boil and form bubbles in your bloodstream and lungs. It then becomes a matter of whether you die from that or from flash freezing at the low temperatures in space.


Why is a rip in a spacesuit so dangerous?

The Air would leak out and the coldness and radiation of space would come in. If you had a rip in your space suit, you would live for around 7 seconds.And the human body must stay in atmospheric pressure the space suit allows us to stay in that pressure..Space is a vacuum in a vacuum of 17.5 hg inches of mercury water can boil at 72 degrees f..Space would more than allow for this type of vacuum so if your space suit ripped your blood would boil you would be dead before 7 seconds!


What happens when a space-shuttle launches?

It goes into space