If you cut yourself you will bleed a red substance we call blood. It is so familiar, such a deep red colour, and art throughout the centuries would confirm that it has always been so. Of course there is the popular association of what is termed “blue blood” with the aristocratic classes, but this is just a throwback to the middle ages when Spanish noblemen distinguished themselves from Moorish invaders by emphasising the blue tint of veins beneath their whiter skin. No-one really has blue blood, right?
Think again. If you cut yourself in a vacuum, you will bleed BLUE!
In a vacuum, blood quickly loses the oxygen that is normally bound to it’s haemoglobin to reveal the underlying purplish colour of the deoxyhaemoglobin.
Maybe it’s just as well that in space no-one can hear you scream!
Source:
Focus magazine #192, summer 2008.
