Astrophysicist Paul Sutter from Ohio State University urged humanity to stay on Earth and not go beyond the atmosphere, if only we want to be alive and healthy.
Space is “a nasty place to avoid,” the scientist writes in the book How to Die in Space: A Guide to Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena, published just a few days after the launch of astronauts on the ISS by SpaceX.
The author describes all the dangers that await people and spaceships in space. He begins with a story about what will happen if the spacesuit suddenly ceases to protect a person from the vacuum. Science fiction films love to portray people exploding in space, but this will not happen. Instead, the fluids inside the body will expand, the body will double in size, and the person will have time to feel all this before death.
If you get to one of the planets in the solar system, you will be very disappointed, he continues. Mercury is so close to the sun that it will “roast you alive.” Venus has a “suffocating” atmosphere that can melt lead. On Mars, you will find only carbon dioxide, and on Jupiter, hurricanes rage that the Earth never dreamed of.
Sutter then describes many other dangers. For example, a tiny asteroid, accelerating to 160 thousand km per hour, can destroy a spacecraft, solar flares irradiate astronauts with large doses of radiation, and cosmic radiation destroys human DNA.
Black holes await in space, which will simply tear a person into molecules. In addition, even in the solar system, extraterrestrial life can be found on natural satellites containing water.
“My first priority is to warn,” the astrophysicist writes.
