Please somebody know what I’m talking about. If not, then please see the diving bell incident in the link provided below. I just don’t see how you are killed by air.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin
In: Physics
Basically, liquids at higher pressures are able to take in higher quantities of dissolved gasses. ‘Liquids’ includes blood. So as a body goes to a higher pressure, it ends up having more dissolved gasses (like nitrogen) in the blood.
That gas isn’t able to stay dissolved in the blood as a body goes to a lower pressure. Under normal, slow decompression, we’re able to exhale that excess gas as we breathe. But when it’s all at once, blood will let all that gas go instantly, all over the body. Mild cases of decompression sickness make people quite ill. This was an extreme case, they probably had blood vessels burst all across their body; aneurisms and internal bleeding, at the same time as their lungs trying to expand to 9x their volume, at the same time as what basically was an explosion.
To truly explain it to a 5 year old, imagine the body as a balloon. It’s able to regulate itself slowly so that it stays the same size as air pressure changes going up and down a mountain. It can also slowly regulate to go to higher pressures. As pressure increases, it lets a little more air in to stay the same size. So long as it’s slow, you can get to several times the normal air pressure without deflating the balloon. And the process is reversible. But if all the outside pressure is released at once, the balloon will then want to expand to several times its ideal size, and pop.
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