Breathing liquid oxygen

[MirceaKitsune]

Last week I got curious with liquid oxygen, and poked into video experiments with liquid air. For air to turn fluid, you do need an extremely low temperature, so we never see this occurring naturally on Earth.

 

But I was curious about one thing: Could humans and animals theoretically breathe liquid oxygen like they do gas oxygen? From the perspective of chemical composition, would the lungs treat it the same way?

 

Obviously, this is a theoretical question only. In practice no one could inhale liquid oxygen because the extremely cold temperature would freeze their lungs and cause instant death! But if somehow temperature itself wouldn't be a problem, and this factor was possible to eliminate... could a normal person breathe at the bottom of a sea composed of liquid oxygen? And would it be more or less efficient or pleasant than gas oxygen?

[Moontanman]

Last week I got curious with liquid oxygen, and poked into video experiments with liquid air. For air to turn fluid, you do need an extremely low temperature, so we never see this occurring naturally on Earth.

 

But I was curious about one thing: Could humans and animals theoretically breathe liquid oxygen like they do gas oxygen? From the perspective of chemical composition, would the lungs treat it the same way?

 

Obviously, this is a theoretical question only. In practice no one could inhale liquid oxygen because the extremely cold temperature would freeze their lungs and cause instant death! But if somehow temperature itself wouldn't be a problem, and this factor was possible to eliminate... could a normal person breathe at the bottom of a sea composed of liquid oxygen? And would it be more or less efficient or pleasant than gas oxygen?

 

 

You have several things wrong here, pure oxygen, even as a gas is quite reactive, too much would kill you. In it's liquid state it is even more reactive so no you could not breath liquid oxygen even if it wasn't very cold...

Edited May 7, 2014 by Moontanman

[Endy0816]

There is a breathable liquid out there... searching...

 

Perfluorocarbon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing

 

Here's a decent pop-sci article on the subject:

 

http://gizmodo.com/can-humans-breathe-liquid-1156138301

[MirceaKitsune]

Woah... that is really awesome, and surprising for me at least! I didn't expect there to be any liquid that people could actually breathe, nor any other gas except helium. I did however imagine that, considering it has the same composition, oxygen would be breathable in both gas and liquid form... as long as temperature and pressure werent a problem.

 

If liquid breathing does exist, it's of course most useful for medicine as well as science. I do admit that in my case, I was curious for the idea of a person being able to survive for at least several hours / days in a liquid without any diving gear, and I guess do that as an activity. For instance, imagine being able to sleep in an aquarium filled with such a liquid... which could perhaps be a very relaxing sleep being weightless and all. Or having pools where you don't just swim around, but can spend hours in underwater rooms where you may actually breathe safely.

 

Although such things sounded like a scifi thought entirely, it's amazing if they actually are possible in reality! I wonder if such ideas were ever attempted as well actually.