731
we have a problem
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I wonder what decomp would be like on the Moon. I imagine at worst this dino would be a mummy, but it'd be pretty wild to find a barely rotten T Rex.
Assuming they were wearing a space suit, probably nothing very different from ordinary decomposition except the lack of insects
That's an interesting point / question. Decomposition is living organisms (insects, bacteria, microbes, etc.) breaking down the thing. Obviously we have tons of those inside us, but could the space suit keep them alive? For how long?
This ended up leading me down a bit of a google rabbit hole, but this answer seems reasonable to me (though I don't have the background to verify it):
Ppl like you make the Internet worth using.
Can we please make an experiment to verify this, @ESA @NASA
A lot of the tiny critters responsible for decomp are aerobic, though, right? So once the air in the suit ran out they'd die, too.
The bacterial mix would probably be very different, but I don't see why the anaerobic critters couldn't finish the job.
Wouldn't the direct sun exposure mess up things?
Assuming the suit is free of breaches, the worst that solar radiation can do is cook the bacteria on the face if the sunshield was flipped up. EVAwear is designed to block the part of the spectrum that would harm biological processes.