Speak slowly, I'm a history major.

[Handley_Page]

If memory serves, Arthur C Clark did depressurization in 2001 (book form, don't know about the movie). The ship was opened to space and the hero had to run to a special closet designed for that situation - a sealable chamber with a separate air system and a space suit.
People can survive for a good few seconds in vacuum, so dashing to a safe place is feasible. Once in the space suit, of course, he was free to roam the airless ship and start making repairs.

Your hero has no idea how space drive works and doesn't care. When it fails he sends his Wookie to bang on loose connections (and personally I'd fire the Wookie for leaving loose connections on his ship.)

What is glasslight, which does it come in sheaves and why does it glow blue? I have no idea. I don't know what purpose it serves or why it's stacked in a library.
I closed my eyes, saw a blue-green glow in an otherwise dark-ish room, typed that sentence and moved on. It's technology, it's akin to magic. Not understanding leads an air of mystery; that can be a good thing.

Survive in a vaccuum ?
Not a bloody hope; the bodies cells literally explode (it's air pressure that keeps it all together).

Glasslight: This wouldn't be Cherenkov radiation would it ?

 

[Bramblethorn]

I only got half a ton on the basketball sized breach. 10 inch diameter; 74 square inches for the hole, times 15psi is about 1,100.

Yeah, I absent-mindedly used diameter instead of radius. Half a ton is correct. Mea culpa.

If I google "radius of a basketball", Google tells me 9.58 inches, then quotes sources that clearly state diameter 9.58 inches. I recognised the error and then still managed to use the wrong number. Treacherous brain.

Figuring how thick rubber would have to be to handle that goes beyond my knowledge of physics, but tires handle a bigger pressure differential, so I'll go out on a limb and suspect that 1" thick *reinforced* rubber could take it. How you glue it to the wall so it doesn't bend and get sucked out is an exercise to the reader.

Quick back-of-envelope calculation: say we're covering a perfectly round hole of radius ~ 5 inches = 12.5 cm. Pressure force on the "hole" section of the patch is ~ 5000 Newtons, which has to be balanced by the sum of elastic forces (probably mostly tensile) at the edge of the hole. Circumference of the hole is ~ 75 cm, which means a minimum tensile force of ~ 7000N per meter around the edge of the hole.

That minimum only applies if all the elastic forces are directed exactly opposite to the pressure; in fact they'll be acting at an angle, so the magnitude of their sum will be a bit less than the integral of (magnitude of tensile force) around the circumference. So let's say ~ 15000 N per meter of circumference.

Ultimate tensile strength of natural rubber is ~ 16 MPa (obviously varying with composition of the rubber, much higher for some synthetics). (15kN/m)/16MPa ~ 1 mm. Increase that by a factor of ten to allow a big margin for the fact that stress won't be distributed evenly through the thickness of the rubber, and a 1cm sheet should be strong enough not to fail. 1" should be more than enough, even without reinforcement.

With a nice round smooth hole, the problem isn't so much about the rubber sheet failing (rupturing); it's about it pulling through the hole and flying out into space. You're going to need a LOT of force to hold it in place.

But it's no good anyway; the hole isn't going to have neat edges and there'll be metal bent inwards from the impact. It won't seal well and now the rubber is subjected to interesting airflow ... yeah, not making any predictions here. Besides, by the time you found your rubber patch kit, the air is gone.

If by some magic you still have a good air pressure by the time you apply the sheet, that will help a lot with forming a seal, since it'll be compressing the rubber pretty hard against the breach. But those uneven edges will put a lot more stress on the sheet and increase the risk of a tear.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Survive in a vaccuum ?
Not a bloody hope; the bodies cells literally explode (it's air pressure that keeps it all together).

That happens a lot in sci-fi, but RL decompression is a bit less dramatic. Chimps have survived three and a half minutes in near-vacuum without apparent lasting ill-effects, and one unlucky technician in Houston lasted 27 seconds before they repressurised him.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/survival-in-space-unprotected-possible/
http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

The most dangerous part is that you lose consciousness within about 5-15 seconds; if you haven't rescued yourself by then, being able to survive several more minutes isn't very useful. In 2001, Dave Bowman was able to prepare beforehand by hyperventilating and saturating his blood with oxygen, which might have given him a few extra seconds, but in the case of a hull breach you probably don't have that warning.

(And if you DO have that warning, better to use the time to move to a different compartment!)

 

[HandsInTheDark]

That happens a lot in sci-fi, but RL decompression is a bit less dramatic. Chimps have survived three and a half minutes in near-vacuum without apparent lasting ill-effects, and one unlucky technician in Houston lasted 27 seconds before they repressurised him.

I think what matters is how FAST depressurization happens. But a ship of any size venting through a 10" hole is going to take a good few seconds to lose all pressure; no one is going to explode from internal pressure. Exhale, break wind and you'll be ok as long as you can get to oxygen in time.

On the glasslight - I think I was thinking of the color of the phospor of a friend's keychain, which is powered by Tritium illumination. But the point is it doesn't matter what makes glasslight glow or why it was there - the point was, not everything in scifi needs to be explained and it's more realistic if most things aren't.

 

[lovecraft68]

A spaceship especially a larger one would have sealed compartments, so the occasional decompression would be a useful method of disposing of redundant characters..

I learned that from Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of the movie Alien(or was the book first? I forget) about the decompression chambers and using them to jettison unwanted visitors.

Who needs a formal education?

 

[krissive69]

Of course, if you want it to seem sort of historical or space-nautical, you might use more archaic terms for direction like "ten points abaft the beam"... I'm SURE that's what space pirates would say! (of course, space has a third dimension that sailing pirates only had to worry about once [Davy Jone's Locker], but that's just a technicality)...

Read about compass points here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_of_the_compass
Read about nautical terms here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_nautical_terms

 

[Handley_Page]

That happens a lot in sci-fi, but RL decompression is a bit less dramatic. Chimps have survived three and a half minutes in near-vacuum without apparent lasting ill-effects, and one unlucky technician in Houston lasted 27 seconds before they repressurised him.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/survival-in-space-unprotected-possible/
http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

And if you DO have that warning, better to use the time to move to a different compartment!

I presume that the Chimps and the unfortunate technician were on Earth at the time ?
Gravity does wonderful things. . . .It ain't simply air pressure, is it ?

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I presume that the Chimps and the unfortunate technician were on Earth at the time ?
Gravity does wonderful things. . . .It ain't simply air pressure, is it ?

Bodies don't explode under decompression from one atmo to vacuum. Not even if it's instantaneous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression

You better not try to hold your breath, but aside from the risks of that, it's the lack of oxygen that will kill you, not the pressure change.

Gravity has nothing to do with it.

The military, NASA and commercial airlines, have all had reason to study human survivability due to air loss. They've all settled on a single solution - make a mask available and within reach to provide O2 within a short window of time, and the rest is manageable.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

There is one other problem with losing pressure in outer space that you don't necessarily have within the atmosphere of Earth...cold. Not simple cold. But mega cold. In the minus kelvin cold.

No your body won't explode, but it will freeze rather quickly if not protected. Losing air from a space craft also means you lose warmth just as quickly, as it's the air that holds that warmth.

So you can survive in vacuum, yes, don't hold your breath, exhale slowly with the pressure drop, it's most likely that you will freeze first though. Unless you are wearing a heated suit of some king. If you're in sweats, you're dead.

 

[Handley_Page]

There is one other problem with losing pressure in outer space that you don't necessarily have within the atmosphere of Earth...cold. Not simple cold. But mega cold. In the minus kelvin cold.

No your body won't explode, but it will freeze rather quickly if not protected. Losing air from a space craft also means you lose warmth just as quickly, as it's the air that holds that warmth.

So you can survive in vacuum, yes, don't hold your breath, exhale slowly with the pressure drop, it's most likely that you will freeze first though. Unless you are wearing a heated suit of some king. If you're in sweats, you're dead.

As I understand it (and my ignorance on decompression is now known), you cannot have a negative value of Kelvin. [see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin .

 

[someoneyouknow]

As I understand it (and my ignorance on decompression is now known), you cannot have a negative value of Kelvin. [see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin .

You are correct. Kelvin begins at zero and goes up from there.

The negative values people see are in the Fahrenheit scale. i.e. -200 degrees which is from zero on the Fahrenheit scale.

The other option is to say so many degrees or partial degrees above absolute zero which is Fahrenheit in reference to zero degrees Kelvin.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I presume that the Chimps and the unfortunate technician were on Earth at the time ?
Gravity does wonderful things. . . .It ain't simply air pressure, is it ?

Those ones were on Earth, but it's happened in space. Soyuz-11 depressurised while returning to Earth, at about 168km altitude, killing the crew; they were found with bruising, and blood from noses and ears, but otherwise intact.

Humans are mostly made up of solid tissue (bones etc.) and liquid water, with some air spaces filled with gas.

Gases will expand a LOT if the surrounding pressure is reduced to zero. If you fill up a balloon at normal atmospheric pressure and then expose it to vacuum, it will indeed burst, which is probably where people got the idea that vacuum = exploding people.

But that only causes an explosion if those gases have no way to vent. Our air spaces connect to the outside, so in decompression those gases will simply rush out. (Exception: if you try to hold your breath under decompression, you might rupture your lungs.)

Liquids in general and water in particular are pretty much incompressible, meaning they don't shrink when you squeeze them. By the same token, they don't expand much when you reduce the pressure. (The pressure differential between vacuum and normal atmospheric is the same as diving from the surface to ten metres underwater; people don't crush when they dive to that depth, and fish don't explode when they surface from that depth, no matter how quickly.)

Exposed directly to vacuum, water will start to boil; the guy who had the vacuum accident at Houston remembered the feeling of saliva boiling off his tongue. But most of our liquid is contained in cells or blood vessels that will prevent that from happening in a hurry.

You will get a fair bit of swelling, from elastic tissues expanding, and some small blood vessels will burst leading to bloodshot eyes, nosebleeds etc, but it's not going to cause an explosion. Our bodies are made of quite strong stuff. As shown by Soyuz, decompression certainly will damage a human body, but not as dramatically as SF books and movies like to show; it's the lack of oxygen that kills.

 

[Bramblethorn]

There is one other problem with losing pressure in outer space that you don't necessarily have within the atmosphere of Earth...cold. Not simple cold. But mega cold. In the minus kelvin cold.

No your body won't explode, but it will freeze rather quickly if not protected. Losing air from a space craft also means you lose warmth just as quickly, as it's the air that holds that warmth.

So you can survive in vacuum, yes, don't hold your breath, exhale slowly with the pressure drop, it's most likely that you will freeze first though. Unless you are wearing a heated suit of some king. If you're in sweats, you're dead.

Space is very cold as measured by a thermometer (about 4 Kelvin) but that doesn't tell the full story. The chill you feel isn't just about the temperature of your surroundings, but also about how effective those surroundings are at drawing heat away from you. For example, falling into cold water is much worse than standing in cold air at the same temperature, because water has a much higher heat capacity.

Vacuum is a very effective insulator (this is how thermos flasks work!) so even though the temperature is very cold, it's not very effective at chilling warm bodies.

Put another way: heat is a form of energy, and energy is conserved. Usually when you get cold, it's because the heat of your body has gone to warming up your surroundings. In vacuum, there's pretty much no matter surrounding you, so there's not much to warm, making it difficult to lose heat.

Even a perfect vacuum you will lose some heat through radiation, but at human body temperatures that's pretty slow.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Bramblethorn is all over this, so no need to echo what she said. But the bottom line is that in space, the only way you lose heat is by radiating it away, which is a slow process. There's no air to carry heat off by more direct means, like convection. We deliberately use vacuum to INSULATE things and keep them at their current temperature. You won't freeze in space all that quickly. Apollo 13's ship lost the ability to produce heat, and while the crew did some shivering, they didn't turn to blocks of ice overnight.

For people curious about this, I'll again recommend Arthur Clarke's _Earthlight_. Other than being a fun and interesting story in its own right, he clearly researched the effects of exposure to space and wrote a scene that covered it well and accurately. It covers all the points raised here, plus it mentions the risk of sunburn - there's not much to block UV, so if you're anywhere near a star, like Earth is, try to avoid the sunlight.

If you're all that worried, keep your heroine in a space suit. But the things are not fun to live in and they certainly aren't sexy.

 

[Harryasaboy]

Thanks to all for the feedback.

As you can see, I'm a literotica virgin, so I have no idea how to send a reply to all.

1) Yeah I guess It'll be easy to gloss over with some fun sounding gobbldlegook.

2) Not so easy. She's a space newbie and doesn't have the instincts. The dilemma I have is that she must be incapacitated in some way so the pirates don't blame her for the deaths of their crew mates. I also like the scene of the pirates unwrapping her from her survival packet.

3) Did I miss something? Either it's an inside joke or someone thinks people in my story will have sex in their space suits or with the ship itself.

 

[Handley_Page]

I learned that from Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of the movie Alien(or was the book first? I forget) about the decompression chambers and using them to jettison unwanted visitors.

Who needs a formal education?

There's been a view, expressed over here, that such a process is a good idea for convicted terrorists.

 

[Ewobbit]

I have been watching this thread with equal parts amusement and trepidation. Now, although I should probably know better, I'm going to stick my oar in. And start paddling backasswards.

I don't often try to write it, mainly because I know just enough about the real science to get me into a shit ton of trouble with the notable geeks, nerds, and dorks (not pointing any fingers) who know a helluva a lot more about the real science stuff than I do. But, I've been reading "science fiction" or "speculative fiction" or "scifi/fant/horr" or whatever name it's going by this week longer than some posters have been alive.

And more often than not, the "fiction" aspect is more important than the "science" aspect for most. Always excepting, of course, those nerds, geeks, and dorks who actual spent their time in college studying. *cough* (Again, not pointing any fingers.)

But, look at it from your own background of history for just a second. Let's say that someone from 1816 was writing a story. And in that story, they wanted to have a scientist discover how to create life. Now, they didn't know the first thing about "cloning" or "DNA" and such. So, they had to work with what they knew something about. And the best they could come up with was mixing a few various body parts from cadavers, apply some medicines (lotus derivatives most likely), and apply this new fangled technology of electricity.

"It's alive!"

*cough* sorry. Got carried away.

At any rate, my point is twofold.

First, you have absolutely no idea what will be discovered or created in the next fifty years. And unless you are trying to publish in scientific journals (or claiming to be Nostradamus reborn), no one (other than few nerds) expects every jot and tittle will be dead on. And they will argue with you if you say the sky is blue (since it would probably be more fuchsia depending on the balance of the present gasses and the class of star).

Second, a person from that time/space will probably take no more note of interplanetary transports than we do the Concorde. That is to say, that the specialists will know much more, but laymen will know next to nothing. A trick that I've seen executed is when an author just sort of glazes past something as if were no more noteworthy than how we see the internet, smart phones, dwarf wheat, and stealth bombers (all still having that new smell to my nose).

And no, I don't know how they do it. If I did, I'd be too busy with my book signings and peddling my ass to Hollywood to piddle around here.

But, it is something to think about. Push the science to the background the way only someone who has become inured to it, but isn't a specialist in it, truly can. What is the patch made of? Only Scotty and his crew would know the particular atomic number of the elements used in the manufacture of the transparent aluminum. (Although I suspect it is probably skewed pretty heavily towards unobtainium in the fourth smelting process.)

I'm going to credit Weber in his Honor Harrington novels, although I'm not one hundred percent sure that was the space opera in question. But, the author I'm thinking of had "skinsuits" (which I came away thinking of as a denser wetsuit), "hardsuits" (which were almost small spaceships), the more generic "rescue suits" (which I envisioned like thicker baggy "clean room" suits), and something which I decided must look like a cross between a dome tent and a beach ball.

Actually, it may have been Lois McMaster Bujold... Or maybe Elizabeth Moon. Hell, it may have been Heinlein. Sorry, can't remember exactly whom it was.

At any rate, I think something like that is probably what you have in mind. And if she was a passenger, she most likely wouldn't know a damn thing about it other than the stewardess... uh... bosun... uh... "personal flight assistant"(?) stuck her in it, sealed it, and then a whole lot of frightened waiting with sounds she didn't begin to understand banging, clanging, clanking, and whooshing distantly outside the walls of her safe prison.

In conclusion, I'd just point out that there is a reason the first line in "A New Hope" was "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." A) It's history. B) It's not this world's history.

Good luck. And I'm looking forward to reading it. At least as long as I don't have to take a refresher course in fifth dimensional math to get the punchline.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Space is very cold as measured by a thermometer (about 4 Kelvin) but that doesn't tell the full story. The chill you feel isn't just about the temperature of your surroundings, but also about how effective those surroundings are at drawing heat away from you. For example, falling into cold water is much worse than standing in cold air at the same temperature, because water has a much higher heat capacity.

Vacuum is a very effective insulator (this is how thermos flasks work!) so even though the temperature is very cold, it's not very effective at chilling warm bodies.

Put another way: heat is a form of energy, and energy is conserved. Usually when you get cold, it's because the heat of your body has gone to warming up your surroundings. In vacuum, there's pretty much no matter surrounding you, so there's not much to warm, making it difficult to lose heat.

Even a perfect vacuum you will lose some heat through radiation, but at human body temperatures that's pretty slow.

Okay, you can go for a stroll in you tighty whities, but me, I'm wearing a space suit. Good luck.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

As I understand it (and my ignorance on decompression is now known), you cannot have a negative value of Kelvin. [see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin .

My mistake, yet, absolute zero? So in theory nothing colder then -459 F can exist? I doubt that very much. Or do they fudge the numbers and absolute zero remains absolute zero but the new Fahrenheit scale is changed to -650 F? Now shifting the Kelvin scale completely?

If so, what the point of the Kelvin scale?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have been watching this thread with equal parts amusement and trepidation. Now, although I should probably know better, I'm going to stick my oar in. And start paddling backasswards.

I don't often try to write it, mainly because I know just enough about the real science to get me into a shit ton of trouble with the notable geeks, nerds, and dorks (not pointing any fingers) who know a helluva a lot more about the real science stuff than I do. But, I've been reading "science fiction" or "speculative fiction" or "scifi/fant/horr" or whatever name it's going by this week longer than some posters have been alive.

And more often than not, the "fiction" aspect is more important than the "science" aspect for most. Always excepting, of course, those nerds, geeks, and dorks who actual spent their time in college studying. *cough* (Again, not pointing any fingers.)

But, look at it from your own background of history for just a second. Let's say that someone from 1816 was writing a story. And in that story, they wanted to have a scientist discover how to create life. Now, they didn't know the first thing about "cloning" or "DNA" and such. So, they had to work with what they knew something about. And the best they could come up with was mixing a few various body parts from cadavers, apply some medicines (lotus derivatives most likely), and apply this new fangled technology of electricity.

"It's alive!"

*cough* sorry. Got carried away.

At any rate, my point is twofold.

First, you have absolutely no idea what will be discovered or created in the next fifty years. And unless you are trying to publish in scientific journals (or claiming to be Nostradamus reborn), no one (other than few nerds) expects every jot and tittle will be dead on. And they will argue with you if you say the sky is blue (since it would probably be more fuchsia depending on the balance of the present gasses and the class of star).

Second, a person from that time/space will probably take no more note of interplanetary transports than we do the Concorde. That is to say, that the specialists will know much more, but laymen will know next to nothing. A trick that I've seen executed is when an author just sort of glazes past something as if were no more noteworthy than how we see the internet, smart phones, dwarf wheat, and stealth bombers (all still having that new smell to my nose).

And no, I don't know how they do it. If I did, I'd be too busy with my book signings and peddling my ass to Hollywood to piddle around here.

But, it is something to think about. Push the science to the background the way only someone who has become inured to it, but isn't a specialist in it, truly can. What is the patch made of? Only Scotty and his crew would know the particular atomic number of the elements used in the manufacture of the transparent aluminum. (Although I suspect it is probably skewed pretty heavily towards unobtainium in the fourth smelting process.)

I'm going to credit Weber in his Honor Harrington novels, although I'm not one hundred percent sure that was the space opera in question. But, the author I'm thinking of had "skinsuits" (which I came away thinking of as a denser wetsuit), "hardsuits" (which were almost small spaceships), the more generic "rescue suits" (which I envisioned like thicker baggy "clean room" suits), and something which I decided must look like a cross between a dome tent and a beach ball.

Actually, it may have been Lois McMaster Bujold... Or maybe Elizabeth Moon. Hell, it may have been Heinlein. Sorry, can't remember exactly whom it was.

At any rate, I think something like that is probably what you have in mind. And if she was a passenger, she most likely wouldn't know a damn thing about it other than the stewardess... uh... bosun... uh... "personal flight assistant"(?) stuck her in it, sealed it, and then a whole lot of frightened waiting with sounds she didn't begin to understand banging, clanging, clanking, and whooshing distantly outside the walls of her safe prison.

In conclusion, I'd just point out that there is a reason the first line in "A New Hope" was "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." A) It's history. B) It's not this world's history.

Good luck. And I'm looking forward to reading it. At least as long as I don't have to take a refresher course in fifth dimensional math to get the punchline.

It has been posited that the difference between Star Trek and Babylon 5 was that Star Trek was about the tech speak and B5 was about the story.

I have no idea who said that.

 

[Ewobbit]

It has been posited that the difference between Star Trek and Babylon 5 was that Star Trek was about the tech speak and B5 was about the story.

I have no idea who said that.

Roddenberry was a pilot.

Straczynski got a degree in psychology and another in sociology.

Just sayin'.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

My mistake, yet, absolute zero? So in theory nothing colder then -459 F can exist? I doubt that very much. Or do they fudge the numbers and absolute zero remains absolute zero but the new Fahrenheit scale is changed to -650 F? Now shifting the Kelvin scale completely?

If so, what the point of the Kelvin scale?

You can doubt it all you like. Physics doesn't care what you believe.

An object's temperature depends on how much energy has soaked into its mass. If you can suck all the energy out of a mass - not an easy thing to do - it becomes as cold as it is possible to be. If every atom in the mass holds no additional energy and is at rest, you've hit 0 Kelvin. (Atoms tend to bounce around more as you heat them.) Temperature doesn't have a limit on the high end - you can always impart more energy into a particle - but you cannot take energy away when there isn't any to take, so the scale has a fixed bottom.

You've never seen an object at 0 K. No one has. Energy loves to leak, and it will leak from things with more energy into things with less, any way it can. Sucking that last 0.1 degrees Kelvin from a mass takes a lot of work. It's about impossible for any significant mass.

There are some fascinating paradoxes in low energy physics. If you have a single particle moving around, for example, you can cool it with a burst of laser energy. The energy of the particle is expressed by its movement, so if you tap it with a blast of photons in the opposite direction it's moving, the radiation pressure slows it down - which means it's cooler now. Tap it just right and it will stop, and until something bumps it or pushes it, it's at 0 K. Oh, except there's no way to measure it without imparting energy into it again, so it's hard to prove you succeeded...

Individual particles at a fraction of a degree K can *overlap*. Google "Bose condensate" and prepare to have your head explode.

We all know space is cold - but it's cold because there are very few particles around to bump into each other and transfer energy, so all heat loss is by radiation, and you'll slowly keep radiating until you match the background radiation temperature - which is very deep space gets down to a couple kelvin. But the few particles that DO roam around in space - generally, loose hydrogen atoms or smaller fragments - tend to move very quickly - so the individual particles have temperatures measured in the millions of degrees. But you just don't bump into many out there; they have a negligible effect for warming you.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My mistake, yet, absolute zero? So in theory nothing colder then -459 F can exist?

Yes, for practical purposes, zero Kelvin = -273.15 C = -459.67 F is as cold as it gets.

As a not-exact-but-close-enough version: temperature relates to the average kinetic energy of individual atoms/molecules/etc. A temperature of 0K equates to zero kinetic energy, i.e. those particles have stopped moving. Anything below that would indicate negative kinetic energy, which isn't possible; you can't be moving slower than "stopped".

If we want to get really nitpicky, temperature describes a relationship between energy and entropy. Under that definition, there are some odd cases in quantum mechanics where one can talk about negative Kelvin temperatures, but they're not relevant to this discussion.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

You can doubt it all you like. Physics doesn't care what you believe. ....

And yet theories abound about the physical laws not be a constant across even our own galaxy.

Yes, for practical purposes, zero Kelvin = -273.15 C = -459.67 F is as cold as it gets.

....

So which practical purposes isn't it as cold as it gets?

 

[Bramblethorn]

And yet theories abound about the physical laws not be a constant across even our own galaxy.

So which practical purposes isn't it as cold as it gets?

See the last paragraph of my comment above, and the included link. Basically, in some very contrived scenarios that can only exist on a microscopic scale; they're interesting in their own right but not at all relevant to the "will you freeze in a vacuum?" question.

I'm happy to discuss in more detail if people are curious, but it'll have to wait a few days; my laptop's in for repairs and I don't fancy writing it up on a phone keyboard.