Flash-heating humans

I'm working on a version of wormhole-based FTL travel, and one of the side effects of passing through the wormhole is going to be instantaneous heating of every molecule of the thing passing through. The heating works by dumping a specific amount of thermal energy into every molecule of the object passing through the wormhole, and the rise in temperature is thus affected by the specific heat capacity of each molecule.

However, this instantaneous increase in temperature brings up potential issues of survivability for a human being going through the wormhole. The heating itself exists for reasons related to thermodynamics, but its magnitude is completely up to what's best for the story. I'd like to make the heating survivable for human beings, but also significant enough to be worth a mention in the text. Essentially, I'm shooting for a temperature rise that will be uncomfortable or ideally temporarily debilitating, but not lethal. I realize there's not going to be a ton of data on spontaneous and evenly distributed temperature rise throughout the human body, but any existing and relevant data that can be extrapolated from would be great. Additionally, if this kind of temperature rise would be dangerous for electronics or any other sensitive equipment one might find on a spacecraft, you get bonus points for mentioning that in your answer.

So, to summarize, how much heat could you dump into a person's body before that person reaches the point of suffering significant long-term effects?

posted over 4 years ago

Gryphon‭

16 reputation 17 1 2 0