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.
Basically, vacuum packed, freeze dried chicken, available in your frozen food aisle of your local megamart.
Doesn't it also require air? They find perfectly preserved newspapers and even food squashed in trash dumps. 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.
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.
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 , 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.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 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.
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:
If the same experiment is also done in mars along with moon what would be the difference in the results of the experiments? regards.
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.)
Any comment or view regarding this question &/or also abt the original one... regards.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
