In The Abyss, Ed Harris plays Bud, a guy who works as the foreman of a futuristic underwater drilling rig, with everything the job entails (dealing with crazed Navy SEALs, missiles, deep sea aliens and so on). In one scene, Bud has to deactivate a bomb that lies ticking on a shelf too deep to reach using scuba gear, so he puts on a suit full of high-tech breathable liquid instead. As the fluid fills his lungs, Bud starts freaking out, and the other guy tells him, We all breathed liquid for nine months, Bud, your body will remember -- which is a crock of bullshit. You also absorbed nutrients from a placenta when you were a fetus, that doesnt mean you can plug one into your belly and do away with food. Theres no simple way this could work in the real world ... but this is a James Cameron movie, and vaguely scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo is what he does best. Breathable liquid is no more a thing than a machine that switches your body with a giant blue cat person. Right? The Reality: Not only is this technology real -- the movie itself shows you a real example of it. Remember that scene where a rat is submerged in liquid and doesnt drown? Yeah, those arent special effects. Thats a real rat, breathing liquid. In fact, the American Humane Association gave The Abyss an Unacceptable rating because they do not feel it was necessary to subject the rat to this experiment for the purpose of filming the scene. The fact that it was a real rat wasnt widely publicized at the time, possibly because the scene was reportedly censored in some markets,like the UK, at the behest of animal rights organizations. We tested it on Ed Harris first to make sure it was safe for the rat. So how did they do it? Pretty much the same way they explain it in the movie: by using an oxygenated fluorocarbon liquid that mammals can breathe. You see, when someone drowns, they dont die because they have water in their lungs, they die from lack of oxygen. The water is more an inconvenience than anything, since it gets in the way of you getting to the air. If your lungs were full of a fluid they could extract oxygen from, you could breathe it just fine. Just fine = While completely losing your shit. But what about humans? Well, in 2010, a guy called Arnold Lande patented a scuba suit just like the one in The Abyss. Breathing liquid solves the three most dangerous medical issues associated with scuba diving:barotrauma and decompression sickness, which are caused by pressurized gas expanding as the diver rises, and alien-killing underwater nukes too deep to deactivate by other means.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 18:22:55 +0000
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