What would happen to a human body subjected to extreme water pressure?
First of all, I tried to look if this wasn't answered before. Found this and this but neither is exactly what I need.
Some Context
There's this race of humanoid fish people. They live in cities built on the ocean floor of the planets they inhabit.
For some plot reason, they decided to come to Earth. In order to remain hidden, they built their advanced post in a very deep part of the ocean floor.
Their "city" is but a collection of domes with breathable air inside. But they're not made of glass - they're "force fields" that repel the water. This means that if you're inside, you can literally get out and swim (since there's nothing solid between the air and the water). Which brings us to my question.
The Question
Picture an amount of pressure that would be way more than what is necessary to kill a human being (I have no idea what this number is, so I'll just guess 1000 meters down).
Given this ridiculous amount of water pressure, what would such a death look like to a bystander?
For this, just imagine you're inside the dome and someone else gets thrown in the water in front of you, exposed to 1000 meters (or more) of water pressure. I want to know what happens to this guy.
Does he get crushed? Bleeds from all orifices? Explodes? If you could also tell me how bad it gets with even greater depths, that would be super. If 1000 meters is too low, feel free to increase it up as much as you can, as long as it's still Earth parameters.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/134156. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
What would a death by extreme water pressure look like?
Cort Ammon's answer is quite correct, as is Andrey's. I'll add a bit more science and some idea of visuals.
1000 metres depth. The pressure here is about 100 atmospheres, Cort Ammon's answer applies as-is.
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10,994 metres depth. Mariana Trench depth.
the water column above exerts a pressure of 1,086 bar (atmospheres)... At this pressure, the density of water is increased by 4.96%
The eyeballs would get pushed into the skull through the optic nerve channel with a pop.
- 600 km depth. Pressure = 60,000 bar, the density of the water is increased by ~ 16%
This is significant, at this point the pressure difference (59.7 tons per sq cm) and density difference from the outside to the inside of the skull (corresponding to an inrush of roughly 200 cc) is high enough that the pressure wave will implode the skull, and every other bone in the body, turning them to barely more than grit.
Essentially a faceless, barely-recognisable-as-human skin full of jelly, denatured proteins, fat and pulverised bones would gently settle downwards.
Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench
http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/ice_vi.html
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