A device that lets you breathe underwater without the tanks?

[crpntr133]

What about the liquid that was used on lab rats years ago. They would inhale it and was able to "breath" when submerged in this. I don't know what it was called..liquid oxygen maybe.

 

[Doppler]

What about the liquid that was used on lab rats years ago. They would inhale it and was able to "breath" when submerged in this. I don't know what it was called..liquid oxygen maybe.

Oxygen liquefies at about minus 185 degrees Celsius (can't recall the exact figure but you get the picture). So it wasn't that was it! <LOL>

In the mid 1960s saline "breathing" solutions were used on mice I think rather than rats but carbon dioxide was not eliminated so that was a problem. A little later -- but still in the 60s -- a couple of researchers (one of them Dr. Leland Clark) used a fluorinated hydrocarbon as a breathing liquid. CO2 is soluble in this medium but there was still a problem because of the viscosity of the liquid and the small size of the airways in the animal’s respiratory tract. Animals did stay alive for a while but immense damage to lungs. (Clark by the way holds the patent on the Clark oxygen electrode, which allows constant monitoring of oxygen levels in a patient's blood during surgery.)

Recent experiments have used perfluorocarbon. I am unaware of published results in the usual journals (Science for example), perhaps one of the medicos here has more details. However, one reads that things are “ready for tests on humans.”

By the way, in the 1989 movie, Abyss, that was a rat and it was breathing liquid medium.

I do hope this helps...

 

[TwoTanks]

Yeah, that should help you with that promotion you have been waiting for

But for real. Wouldn't a Nuclear fusion reactor be able to produce breathable gas from water? Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Two parts hydrogen fused should produce one part helium. That should make a 50% mix HelOx. Spliting water with electrolisis won't produce enough volume, but a high power laser with the right frequency (maby ruby?) should produce enough.
Darn, where is my drawing board.

BTW if anyone sees a bright flash in the Chicago area, take cover, it's just me testing my minature Nuclear Fusion Reactor for my own underwater city.

I know, cold fusion, thats the answer. Or is that just a myth.

Its much too dangerous to mount a Nuclear fusion reactor to your face.

The solution is simple, Call CDW, Pick up one of their wormhole generators and run a wormhole through subspace from your dive compressor at home right to your second stage.

Not only will it be small and light but it works with your current regs.

TT

 

[Buoyant1]

Yeah, but he called it "OxoGum"!

hahaha...Marine boy..showin' my age!!!!


What did Aquaman use?

Didn't marine boy chew aqua gum or something like that?

 

[00scuba]

You forgot about Gilly Weed....or am I the only one that reads Harry Potter???

 

[O2BBubbleFree]

there are devices called rebreathers today, which use the air over and over
again, cleaning it of carbon dioxide and replenishing the oxygen in the air.
mabye you could shrink those to a smaller size than today... but still, it
wouldn't be as small as the science fiction devices you're talking about

If you're OK with a max depth of 20' and a max time of about 15 min. you can come close to the sci fi size:

http://www.geocities.com/chickenheadlab/STUD_Rebreather.jpg

 

[Fly N Dive]

i want to buy what you been smoking,,.. sounds like a great escape from reality,,...lol

HAHAHAHA :rofl:
too true

 

[wheezy]

Actually, I really do have one.

It's nice and all, but I've decided to sell it. Just send $500 to my paypal account and it's yours.

 

[doctormike]

that's an interesting idea to filter the oxygen from the water, but
that's impossible with the technology available today (i'm not going to
say that it's probably impossible ever ... who would have
thought we could fly to the moon?)

That's actually a very interesting question, and fun to consider if you like to dream about future developments in technology.

Think about it, the problem is to get enough oxygen out of water to power a fairly large vertebrate (I'll assume for the sake of argument that the easier part- CO2 elimination- could be handled by whatever system brings in the O2).

Many fish are our size, suggesting that the energy requirements are not so great as to run afoul of the Square-Cube law (strength is proportionate to the square of the linear dimension, but mass is proportionate to the cube of the linear dimension).

If a human sized fish can generate enough power from plankton, other fish or whatever else it eats, then there are only two things that make this gadget difficult to develop:

1) A practical artificial gill (we have dialysis machines that do what the kidneys do, so no theoretical problem there, just a scale and engineering puzzle).

2) An interface with the bloodstream (you would have to be a REALLY hard core diver to sign up to have a atriovenous fistula created, or to have indwelling dialysis catheters implanted so that you could be hooked up to your gill.

Neither of these things seem to be impossible, just need more work...

One other thing- pressure changes. Without a gas source, you would have no way of equalizing pressure in your air-filled cavities. As a dive doc of the year 2137, I will probably recommend flooding the lungs, sinuses and ears with some sort of preservative fluid that would drain out quickly after the dive...

Who wants to fund my research?

Mike

 

[ChrisA]

I've seen in some movies and shows (Star Wars, Pokemon) these things that the people put in their mouth and they could breathe underwater while using them. I'm thinking that they work by filtering the oxygen from the water to you. If these exist, where can I get one?

WHo knows how this gadget works... At first I figured it was an air tank that had a working pressure of maybe a couple million PSI but no, then the gadget would weight about 50 pounds due the the mass of the hyper compressed air. Next idea. it extracts what it needs from water using who knows what? A mass spectrometer type thinky. But then I figured it out. It simply teleports air from above the serface down to the muthpiece and then teleports the exuasted air back. Basically it is a high tech snorkel This way the device would work in a fire too or for poision gass or whatever.

Can you buy these today? Yes and no, today's air teleporter machine use hoses to move the air
but some of these hoses on surface supplied air machines are 1000+ feet long

The harder part to believe is that they would think to carry such a device around with them 24 by 7 just in case you need to hide underwater