Chicken in moon

I think everything's been covered.
The chicken would not decompose like it would on Earth, because the usual bacteria responsible would not survive.
The chicken would dry out pretty much completely.

You'd be left with a mummified chicken corpse, which would last a very long time.
 
You'd be left with a mummified chicken corpse, which would last a very long time.
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Basically, vacuum packed, freeze dried chicken, available in your frozen food aisle of your local megamart.
 
Mmmmm... space chicken
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MacGyver1968 said:
No, it wouldn't. Decomposition is caused by certain types of bacteria that require 3 things: Proper temperature, a fairly neutral pH, and available water. Take away one of these things and the bacteria can't reproduce. This is why we freeze, pickle, or dehydrate food to prolong it's shelf life.
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Doesn't it also require air? They find perfectly preserved newspapers and even food squashed in trash dumps.
indianmath said:
cosmictraveler, pls try to be more polite & explained.
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This is not an academy, and most of our members are either quite young, or just act that way. We're not serious all the time. A little levity is okay, so long as it doesn't insult anybody or cause the thread to lose its direction. This is our little social group and we come here to have fun as well as to learn.

Besides, most of us are Americans. You can't possibly start talking about something horrible happening to a chicken without at least two Americans jumping up and making jokes about Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken. Perhaps you've never eaten it! The last time my wife and I had some (1979) we were so sick we had to stay home from work the next day. We wrote to the company and asked politely for them to reimburse us both for a day's pay. They sent a check so fast that the door on our mailbox was still spinning. There was a little legal note on the back saying that our acceptance of the money absolved them of any further responsibility. Must have had quite a few sick customers at that location that night! They even refunded our money for the chicken.

If you've noticed, they've tried to distance themselves from those days by changing the name to KFC. And they started using "Sweet Home Alabama" as their theme song. The people in Kentucky must have complained about being associated with them!

--Fraggle Rocker, Linguistics Moderator.
 
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Fraggle Rocker said:
Doesn't it also require air? They find perfectly preserved newspapers and even food squashed in trash dumps.
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I think that without oxygen, decomposition of a chicken on Earth by bacteria would be slowed down but not by much. Obligate anaerobes can't survive without oxygen, but there are plenty of anaerobic bacteria in chicken guts that can do the job.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
Doesn't it also require air?
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Not necessarily. There can be anaerobic decomposition of organic matter (by anaerobic bacteria). The early stage of the decomposition cycle for a large animal involves anaerobic decomposition as oxygen inside the carcass is quickly depleted by aerobic bacteria. The later stages, as the carcass breaks down, revert to aerobic decomposition as air re-enters the tissues. So the complete decomposition of all the soft tissue of a large animal does require oxygen.
 
Hercules Rockefeller said:
Not necessarily. There can be anaerobic decomposition of organic matter (by anaerobic bacteria). The early stage of the decomposition cycle for a large animal involves anaerobic decomposition as oxygen inside the carcass is quickly depleted by aerobic bacteria. The later stages, as the carcass breaks down, revert to aerobic decomposition as air re-enters the tissues. So the complete decomposition of all the soft tissue of a large animal does require oxygen.
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Hercules Rockefeller , thanx for such scientific reply.I have question regarding the green portion of ur post. U said air re-enters.But in moon there is no air there.:)
regards.
 
But the temperatures and desiccating effect of hard vacuum would make any biological decomposition process unlikely, all the would decompose the chicken would be thermal-chemical, atomic oxygen and ionization radiation.

You know one of the Apollo astronauts did leave a feather on the moon if I remember correctly: he used the feather as a prop to demonstrate that a hammer and a feather fall at the same rate on the moon. I'm not sure how long bird keratin would last on the moon.
 
indianmath said:
But in moon there is no air there.
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Yes. I should have been clearer that I was referring solely to whether or not decomposition under normal conditions (that is, on Earth) requires oxygen. The Lunar surface has no atmosphere at all so, as multiple people above have indicated, there will be no organism-driven decomposition on the Moon as bacteria cannot exist in a vegetative state. (Of course, IIRC it has been shown that spore-forming bacteria can exist and remain viable in spore form on the Moon.)

I say “organism-driven decomposition” because maybe there might be some degradation of organic matter as a result of exposure to direct thermal energy and high-energy particles from the Sun. :shrug:
 
indianmath said:
Suppose 100ml of water from the chicken's body is getting dehyrated. Now suppose I keep 10^(15) chicken corpses in the moon so then it would be total 10^(17)ml of water getting dehydrated from the chicken corpses. now there are two questions of mine
1)where will such a huge amt of water will go in moon from the dead corpses of chickens?
2)what will happen to the mass of those 10^(15) corpses of chicken say after 200 yrs if we go to see those corpses after 200 yrs?
Can u answer the second question i.e. the red one.:)
regards.
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indianmath said:
2)what will happen to the mass of those 10^(15) corpses of chicken say after 200 yrs if we go to see those corpses after 200 yrs?
Can u answer the second question i.e. the red one.:)
regards.
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As most of the members in this thread had pointed out
First the water dissipates into the vacuum of space (technically space is not really that vacuum)
Next after in terms of million or billion of years, the solar radiation, cosmic radiation, asteroids impacts etc. will ionize, vaporize and atomize some of the tissues of the corpse, the corpse is now carbonize (turned into something similar to soot)
The chicken is no longer chicken, but soot and powder of a mixture of some simple moelecules (they might be a massive lost of mass because most of the substances that are used to be the tissues are now lost in space throughout the exposure to radiation in the form of gases etc.)

Therefore logically in 200 years, the chicken are dried and become mummified, but does not decompose yet. IMO it would look similar to a chicken if one suck out all the water content from it (become shriveled and jagged). It is likely in this case their mass does not change much (any lost mass is gone into space)

Site note: No questions are too silly in science.
According to Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, one of the motivation that make Einstein develop relativity is he ask a simple question in his childhood (what happen if you run side by side with light?)

Although I'm not sure whether the chicken moon question here contain potential breakthroughs, people can certainly learn something from it

Site note 2: The western community that I know of tend to make jokes. Despite I'm also a serious person and prefer people to take questions seriously, it is ok to have jokes (they relax the atmosphere and they don't do any harm at all (of course I'm ruling out scenario of insulting posts)). Btw you will never know, maybe some of the jokes actually contain something useful in it (Ever heard of the Ig Nobel prize?)

My policy of dealing with jokes is to check them out briefly, I tend to ignore the jokes that is too far fetched relative to the question. However some of the jokes do inspire some thought process, and is good for getting an alternative perspective towards the same problem

In conclusion: No science questions are too silly and jokes are fine as long they follow the rules of respecting others
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If the same experiment is also done in mars along with moon what would be the difference in the results of the experiments?
regards.
 
indianmath said:
What will happen to the corpse of a chicken if left in moon? Will it get decomposed there in moon?:shrug:
regards.
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It won't decompose. It will dry out and eventually disintegrate (fall apart to dust) as it is bombarded by the solar wind and micrometeorites.

The water will hang around in the "atmosphere" for a while until solar radiation decomposes the water into oxygen (which will stay there and end up in the regolith) and hydrogen (which will escape into space.)
 
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