SpaceX may have made its first successful launch but that doesn’t mean mankind should go into space.
A new book says we should be happy here on Earth rather than venturing beyond the atmosphere – unless we want certain death.
How to Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena claims that space is a ‘nasty’ place that should be avoided.
Aliens may be lurking out there and black holes can suck you into their singularity where you would be shredded into molecules during a process known as ‘spaghettification’ – an actual scientific term.
An asteroid the size of a grain of sand going at 100,000 mph could destroy your space ship. Solar flares could irradiate your body and cosmic rays could disrupt your DNA or or destroy all your onboard electronics.
And woe betide anyone who is foolish enough to go into orbit without a suit – you would get ice all over your body before the vacuum makes your skin swell up to twice its size.
The light-hearted book by Paul M. Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, comes out after the successful launch of Elon Musk’s Space X.
A new book says humans should be happy here on Earth rather than venturing beyond the atmosphere – unless we want certain death and details all the mind blowing ways that could happen – including a black hole, like the one pictured above
The author says aliens could be lurking out in space and black holes can suck you into their singularity where you would be shredded into molecules during a process known as ‘spaghettification’ – an actual scientific term
This is a rendition of magnetars – the ‘fast-spinning zombie stars of the cossmos’, writes Sutter. No one could survive such a blast
This week SpaceX made its first successful dock at the International Space station (ISS). NASA has partnered with the company, which was founded by Elon Musk, to act as its ‘taxi’ to the ISS with the hope it could spark a new generation of space exploration.
How to Die in Space: A Journey Through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena, is available now and claims that space is a ‘nasty’ place that should be avoided
‘How To Die In Space’ probably wasn’t among the books that the SpaceX astronauts took on board, and that’s likely for the best as it would give them chills.
Sutter writes: ‘My first priority is to warn you off the whole escapade altogether. Find a planet, find a rock, call it home. Raise a farm. Raise some kids.
‘Put some dirt under your feet and some air over your head. Get yourself a nice steady star with billions of years left of heat and light and warmth, and a nice steady planet with plenty of liquid water.
‘Get a hobby, and get your mind off space. Buy a telescope. Enjoy it from afar’.
Sutter starts the book with the most obvious danger: the vacuum in space.
If you venture into space with no suit or a source of oxygen things go ‘haywire fast’, he writes.
Your skin will flash freeze and all the oils and liquids in your skin instantly crystalize and evaporate.
This will be agonizing – but you won’t die.
Science fiction movies like to portray people exploding in space or your eyes exploding out of your head but that won’t happen.
Instead the fluids inside you keep expanding but can’t break out of your skin, so your body will end up twice as big as it normally is.
If you are rescued before your brain becomes starved of oxygen then you will recover and go back to normal size – but it won’t be comfortable.
If you make it to another planet, prepare to be very disappointed.
Mercury has zero oxygen and is so close to the sun it would roast you alive. Venus has a ‘chokingly thick’ atmosphere that could literally melt lead.
On Mars you’ll find carbon dioxide and not much else and on Jupiter there are constant hurricanes and a massive storm called the Great Red Spot which is twice as big as the Earth.
Sutter describes asteroids as ‘good old-fashioned dangers’ and jokes that they are ‘rocks with attitude…quiet, dark, fast and everywhere’.
SpaceX made its first successful launch on Saturday, but Sutter says that doesn’t mean mankind should go into space
Crab Nebula: Sutter describes a Crab Nebula as leftover debris from a titantic supernova explosion
Solar Flares: A massive solar flare could engulf an entire planet and any astronaut should closely monitor solar flares
The smallest asteroids, what he calls ‘generic space dirt’, are made of microscopic bits of carbon.
Don’t be fooled though: they are traveling at more than 20,000mph which is enough to kill anyone.
The next size up are meteoroids, which are fragments of larger rocks that are too small to have their own gravitational field.
Sutter writes that they ‘tumble along in their orbits minding their own business, unless you get in their way. Then they’ll rip through you like soft cheese’.
Meteorites are packed with metals and are moving at 45,000mph which is 50 times faster than a bullet.
Shooting stars that enter the Earth’s atmosphere are usually only the size of a grain of sand and reach speeds of 100,000mph.
At such an extreme velocity the rock pushes on the air in front of it like a piston, turning the air into plasma and vaporizing the rock, bit by bit. Imagine that crashing into you.
Larger asteroids are usually made of ice and can be as big as planets and can wipe out entire worlds.
A special category of rock, which brings a unique peril are interstellar interlopers, or rocks that seem to have come from nowhere.
In 2017 researchers observed one moving at an incredible speed of 200,000mph with an unknown origin and an unknown destination.
The rock was named ‘Oumuamua’, a Hawaiian term that roughly translates to ‘Scout’.
Sutter writes: ‘Whatever sent this shard hurtling into interstellar space is almost too frightening to contemplate.
‘If you venture out into space you’ll have to contend with asteroid belts which Sutter says are ‘just a matter of feeling lucky, punk’.
His advice about the rings of Saturn, which are made up of millions of rocks, is ‘stay out of the rings of Saturn’.
Star Birthplace: Orion Nebula, known as the birthplace of a batch of new starsy, is a hotbed of high-energy radiation and shock waves
Star Graveyard: A planetary nebula is where stars go to die, known as the Cat’s Eye Nebula
Then there are comets which are icy bodies which shoot through space such as Halley’s Comet which is visible once every 75 years.
But they are not just nice to look at, they can be deadly too.
In 1994 a comet called Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up into 21 pieces before slamming into Jupiter. Jupiter survived but it was left with some ‘atmospheric disfigurements’ and the largest impact struck with a force equivalent to 600 times the entire world’s supply of nuclear weapons.
Any astronaut should closely monitor solar flares and coronal mass ejections which take place when the sun expels vast amounts of plasma and its magnetic field.
As Sutter puts it: ‘Anybody ever wind up a towel and give you a good crack? Imagine doing that with the force of a million atom bombs at the surface of the sun’.
Paul M. Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, is the author of the light-hearted book that gives quirkly look into the dangers of space travel
They are dangerous for another reason: they emit an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which can knock out any electronics in their wake.
EMPs have been featured in science fiction films like The Matrix series and in 1959 one struck the Earth in what was known as the Carrington Event when a massive solar flare wiped out much of the Victorian telegraph network.
Cosmic rays could be deadly to space travelers as well because they scramble your DNA with their ionizing radiation.
You won’t feel anything when it strikes but gradually your DNA fail and you will likely get cancer and die.
Even less than lethal cosmic rays can add up over time.
Sutter writes: ‘It’s estimated that Earth to Mars travelers, without proper shielding, would lose about five percent of their cells to slower cosmic rays during the voyage. Five percent, including skin cells, heart cells, and precious brain cells.
‘If the sun throws a coronal mass ejection event at you when you’re among the planets, it ends quickly.
‘Instead of just slowly raising your risk of generating a cancer, it gives you acute radiation poisoning, and within a few days or even hours your internal organs simply fall apart.
‘First comes the nausea and vomiting. Then the diarrhea. Maybe just a bad stomach flu, right? But then comes the severe headaches and the fever.
‘Nasty, but survivable, right? Then the tremors, seizures, and lethargy, as your central nervous system shuts down. Then mortality’.
Another eye opening part of the book is when Sutter describes what happens when you get sucked into a black hole.
Black holes are a puncture in spacetime itself and a point of infinite density, where all the matter gets compacted into a tiny point known as the singularity.
They have gravitational fields that are so strong that not even light can escape them.
Sutter describes what would happen to a fictional astronaut called Alice who gets sucked in – her feet and her head fall at different speeds so she is gradually torn apart.
He writes: ‘The combined effects – pulling and squeezing – mean that Alice isn’t going to last long.
‘The gravitational effects will become extreme enough to rip apart just about any atomic bond about one-tenth of a second before you strike the black hole.
‘The original Earth-based scientists who discovered this effect must have been in a lighthearted mood that day, since the totally legit, 100 percent scientific technical term for this effect is spaghettification. Come la pasta, as the Italians would correctly observe’.
Sutter files wormholes and hostile aliens in the ‘speculative threats’ section of the book which deals with things commonly seen in science fiction movies.
So little is known about wormholes that it is impossible to say if you would survive one, let alone travel back in time as some films have suggested.
This is a close-up view of a comet between Mars and Kupiter, called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
The book raises the possibility that moons within our solar system might be home to alien life because they have water on them.
Europa, Enceladus and Ganymede have icy surfaces but hot cores and, in some cases, more liquid water than the Earth has.
On Titan there are lakes, rivers and streams of methane and hydrocarbons and a temperature of -179 degrees Celsius, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be life.
Other possible dangers include some kind of ‘cosmological defect’, or a wrinkle in the fabric of spacetime such as a cosmic string.
They are no thicker than a single proton, they have no mass but have enormous amounts of mass.
Sometimes two cosmic strings can get wrapped around each other like ‘giant lightsabers clashing’, causing vibrations that are so intense they create gravitational waves.
Scientists do now know how exactly they work but Sutter is clear about one thing – steer well clear of them.
Despite all of these dangers, even Sutter has to admit that part of him would like to go into space.
He writes: ‘I have to let you in on a little secret. The universe is a dangerous place, that much I’ve made abundantly and painfully clear.
‘But it’s also beautiful. Sublime. Exotic. Wonderful. Thought-provoking. It’s a canvas painted with the brilliant hues of matter and energy.
‘Physics is the brush. For centuries the heavens have called to us. As we peel back the mysteries new ones emerge’.