h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Smell Of Nothing - A839315
Author: Researcher 204556 - U204556

Althought this is my first entry, please don't be easy on it. Be truthful and honest. Also bear in mind that in the guidelines, it stated that this is not a forum for jokes or theories that have no basis in real life. This is a theory, and and joke, but just try and disprove it.

Y'know, Researcher 204556, you've got a point there.

It's short and to the point, and some might say it's a joke, but it does approach an unusual topic in an unusual way and for that at least I think you should be congratulated.

It could possibly do with a bit of a revision, just tidying up the spelling, and maybe slip in a header or two to tidy it up. I'd suggest dropping the line about 'The reasoning behind this is actually simple and was thought out in a locker room while some students were changing for gym class' - we don't need to know the history of the entry, just its topic of interest

You also write: 'The guide states that if you take a deep breath, you can survive for 30 seconds in the vaccume of space'

I'd suggest here that if you're going to refer to an Edited Guide Entry that claims that, then you should insert the entry's number (the A# that appears at the top of the entry).

But a good effort I reckon. Having said that, I've just had two slices of cake, so I'm in an excellent mood. Let's see what everyone else thinks.

Jimster

Hello,

You might want to read this: A818822

In my oppinion this Entry (as it stands) is not suitable for the Edited Guide. A very thorough re-write would be needed.

Again, just my 2p

HELL

Amongst the (dimishing number of) things I remember from school are two principles regarding pressure - one of which I believed and the other I'm still not sure about.

1) The physics teacher laid a 1 yard wooden ruler on his bench with about half of the ruler overhanging and perpendicular to the edge (as if you were about to twang the end and make the ruler go 'boing'). Then he laid a single sheet of newspaper (a broadsheet, not a tabloid) over the half of the ruler which was still on the bench and very, very thoroughly flattened it down, removing as much of the air from under the newspaper as possible. He then told us that the weight of the atmosphere above the paper, and the (near) vacuum below was so strong that if he tried to push down on the free end of the ruler, the wood would break before the newspaper. Although he didn't go quite that far (didn't want to bust school property of course), he did push down on it hard enough to show us that the vacuum under the paper and the atmospheric pressure above it was in fact enough to hold the ruler down. Astonishing.

2) He later told us in a different lesson that when you suck a drink out of a glass and up a straw, it's atmospheric pressure which is pushing the liquid up the straw and into the vacuum created in your mouth, rather the physical act of 'sucking'. I'm still not convinced of that.

Either way, I'm finding it difficult to believe that the vacuum of space will suck your insides out in the way described in the entry. I'm probably wrong - after all, in disbelieving the thing about sucking liquid up a straw I'm going against what must be an established principle of physics, which is probably why I failed my physics O level.

I thought that was rather clever about the students getting changed in the locker room, Jims - just the sort of situation where you might just wish you could smell nothing.

Hello,
I'm just curious as to what you thought needed re-writing, revising, editing or anything of the sort. So far, I've taken some remarks into consideration and I will be revising my entry soon. Maybe you can even give me some hints for future entries. Thank you for reading and taking the time to respond.

Actually you don't have to go into the depths of outer space to smell nothing - an air conditioned room with filtered air will do the job. Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide are all oderless gasses and therefore have no smell.

Stuart

Ho gosho,

"He later told us in a different lesson that when you suck a drink out of a glass and up a straw, it's atmospheric pressure which is pushing the liquid up the straw and into the vacuum created in your mouth, rather the physical act of 'sucking'."

This is quite correct. Atmospheric pressure will support a colum of water about 32 inches high. Thefore it is impossible to suck water out of a straw more than 32 inches long. I know this because I read it on h2g2 no more than a couple of days ago, but unfortunatley cannot find the article again.

Another example is the old hand pumps that were used to draw water out of a well. They cannot be used to draw water from a well more than 32 feet deep for the same reason.

Regards

Stuart

Now then Stuart, you've reminded me of an entirely different physics lesson (and teacher) where we learned about pumps, and a particular type of pump which can be used for wells of more than 32 feet in depth. As slightly more than 30 years have elapsed since that lesson, I can't recall the name of that type of pump (nor that of any others), but I do remember a scale model of one which was fixed to a backboard, and I'm seeing some kind of two stage pump in my mind's eye.

About smelling and re-writing:

I would include something about the chemical receptors in our noses. What is odeorless for us might be quite smelly for a dog or other animals. I think the point is: You can't smell stuff that you can't smell. Or, stuff for which you don't have receptors will not smell.

On the other hand: I read somewhere that 80% of our 'smelling' is infact 'tasting', or 80% of the stuff that smells also tastes. Hence only 20% would be real smells.

Plus: I totally disagree with the common notion that pure water has no taste. I think it's more a definition thing.

Plus, plus: IIRC the sensation of smelling decays, just like we don't feel the clothers on our skin. So, if you were in an atmosphere of rotting fish, after a while you wouldn't 'smell' it any longer. When you then leave that room, I think fresh air will have a very typical smell or fresh air.

On the subject, you might want to link this Entry to: A673508 (Farts and Flatulence).

See? There is a lot to do.

HELL

In response to Gosho (back a couple of posts), no pump can 'suck' up (water) from above ~10m (under normal atomospheric conditions at sea level). In fact 7m is as good as you could get, and even then it would be hellish difficult to maintain a 7m vaccum. 3m is a practical limit.

If I'm not mistaken 760mm would be the highest you could 'suction pump' mercury.

So, to get water out of a deep deep well, you'd need a submersible where you push the water up from the bottom. Much more flexibility in operation but harder to maintain in situ of course, unless you can pull it out.

All very sound advice there. I'm still feeling quite generous towards this entry, but it'd be *much* better with a little bit more factual content, which the guys have suggested here.

If a straw was squiggly and longer than 32" but less than that above the glass, would it still work?

Your insides would not get sucked out, ref. the StraightDope http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_147.html

I was confused by the thing with the straw myself, until I thought about it a little more. What you want to do is to move water against the force of gravity into your mouth. You do this by creating a vacuum in the straw, but if there was vacuum outside your mouth as well, this wouldn't matter. So I would say the teacher is half right. Sucking water through a straw works because we can create lower pressure in the straw by sucking, leading to atmospheric pressure pushing the water into the straw.

An interesting entry, although, as has been stated there is room for improvment.

Jimster, the "guide" refered to is HHGG, not an EG article. Don't tell me an italic hasn't read HHGG? (The scene in question is when Ford and Arther are thrown out of a Vogon air lock, and 29 seconds later rescused by the Heart of Gold)

I think the major mistake is stating the methane, oxygen, nitrogen, etc have smells. They don't. IIRC smells are created by an object releasing esters. (or is that only organic smells?)

Keep working on it, though.

Tango

Hi Sea Change,

Yes, a squiggly straw would work fine. Its the distance from the apparent vacumm as described by NIATA to the surface of the water and none of the squiggles are more than 32 feet.

Think of a syphon. Although the liquid is collecting below the level of the source, the bit where the water is rising can be up to 32 feet high. A might be a bit difficult to start a syphon with that amount of rise, but it is possible with a lot of suck.

Stuart

NAITA (xy, not xx),
I have to question the author of the artical you refered me to. First off, the complete lack of pressure in the void of space and the presence of pressure in the human body would dictate that the pressure would try to reach equilibrium, therefor all of the pressure in your body would try to excape you in a most painful way through the closest orafice. Secondly, the author of the artical states that the movie "2001 space oddesy" has actual scientific backing in the scene where the man exits the spacecraft for more than a few seconds and lives. No offence, but no way in hell. If the pressure didn't get him, the sub zero temperatures would have frozen his flesh in a matter of a fraction of a second. That, I believe, would be the only real deturrant in someone being turned inside out in the vaccume of space. On a side note, I'm not exactly sure how you guys manged to bring straws into all of this, but I have learned a lot, thank you. I encourage all of the digression possible, it will make for a much more interesting artical, and maybe even a few more.

I had almost forgot to touch base on some other points. When I refer to the smell of nothing, I mean absolute nothingness. Of course you can become used to a smell, but that has no relevence to the smell of nothing. And an air conditioned room, even with a filter, could not ever hope to filter out all of the organic molecules that we take in and percieve as a smell. The only way to get to a place where there is no scent is to go somewhere where there are no particals floating about, organic or inorganic.

A person in outerspace would not freeze instantly. There are three ways in which objects can lose heat. Conduction, transfering the heat particle to particle, convection, a fluid (liquid or gas) rises when heated so hot air/water/etc. would rise and cold air would replace it, causing a circular current, and radition, where heat is lost by emitting EM rays (in the case of a human body, these would be infra red). The only way to lose heat in a vacumn is by radiation, and this is very slow, you could survive in almost absolute zero for a few seconds as long as it was a vacumn. (but every blood vessel in you eyes, nose, mouth, skin etc. would explode pretty quickly, causing a few problems, such as death). So yes, you would die, but not of cold.

Tango

Tango wrote:

>> Jimster, the "guide" refered to is HHGG, not an EG article. Don't tell me an italic hasn't read HHGG? (The scene in question is when Ford and Arther are thrown out of a Vogon air lock, and 29 seconds later rescused by the Heart of Gold)<<


... which is, admittedly, something specifically advised against in the Writing-Guidelines - gratuitous references to Douglas' work.

A casual reader of that passage would be very confused by that, and further explanation would probably only make the matter worse. Might I suggest you take that para out altogether?

ta,

Jims
(Who has read all five HHGTTG books - but not all the Italics have )