Oh
boy, I actually remember hearing about that on a VOA short wave radio program in
the early eighties when I was a teenager in Argentina. The
material was a sponge impregnated with hemoglobulin, the same stuff that is
in red blood cells. The diver was not going to breathe water,
but wear a canister of hemosponge on his back instead of a HP
tank. The O2 would be extracted from the water to breathe in gaseous
form.
BTW on
the same program, they spoke of a table that had been finished in a coating
of living cells. If you scratched the table finish, it grew back and healed
itself.
How I
can remember an individual radio broadcast from over 25 years ago, I have no
idea. Normally I can't remember what
happened yesterday.
:)
Alec
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As far as I know the substance was a type of syntetic blood based on
a Fluor compound. It worked well with guinea pigs and mice but the problem
is the flour compound is also toxic so it can only be used for a short
time.
To breathe under water is not possible, the experiments with mice were
very promising but the animals died of exhaustion after a while. Water is
much dense than air and our diphragma is not strong enough to move the amount of
water needed to do the oxigen exchange. Water contains also much less oxigen
than air.
That is what I read about this topic some years ago. I hope is
usefull.
Jürgen