"Liquid breathing" is only suitable for dogs so far. Breathe liquid: Russian scientists have made fiction a reality

Scientific research do not stop for a day, progress goes on, giving humanity more and more new discoveries. Hundreds of scientists and their assistants are working in the field of studying living beings and synthesizing unusual substances. Entire departments are experimenting, testing various theories, and sometimes the discoveries amaze the imagination - after all, what could only be dreamed of can become a reality. They develop ideas, and questions about freezing a person in a cryochamber with subsequent thawing in a century or about the ability to breathe liquid are not just a fantastic story for them. Their hard work can make these fantasies come true.

Scientists have long been concerned about the question: can a person breathe liquid?

Does a person need liquid breathing

Spare no strength, no time, no cash for such research. And one of these questions that have been worrying the most enlightened minds for decades is as follows - is liquid breathing possible for a person? Will the lungs be able to absorb oxygen not from a special liquid? For those who doubt the real need for this type of breathing, we can give at least 3 promising directions where it will serve a person in good stead. If, of course, they can implement it.

• The first direction is diving into great depths. As you know, when diving, the diver experiences the action of pressure aquatic environment which is 800 times denser than air. And it increases by 1 atmosphere every 10 meters of depth. Such a sharp increase in pressure is fraught with a very unpleasant effect - the gases dissolved in the blood begin to boil in the form of bubbles. This phenomenon is called "caisson sickness", it often affects those who are actively involved. Also, when swimming in deep waters, there is a risk of getting oxygen or nitrogen poisoning, since in such conditions these gases that are vital to us become very toxic. In order to somehow fight this, they use either special breathing mixtures or rigid spacesuits that maintain a pressure of 1 atmosphere inside themselves. But if liquid breathing were possible, it would become the third, easiest solution to the problem, because the respiratory liquid does not saturate the body with nitrogen and inert gases, and there is no need for long decompression.
• The second way of application is medicine. The use of breathing fluids in it could save the lives of premature babies, because their bronchi are underdeveloped and ventilators can easily damage them. As you know, in the womb, the lungs of the embryo are filled with liquid and by the time of birth, it accumulates pulmonary surfactant - a mixture of substances that does not allow tissues to stick together when breathing air. But with an early birth, breathing requires too much strength from the baby and this can be fatal.

History has a precedent for the use of total fluid ventilation, and it dates back to 1989. It was applied by T. Shaffer, who worked as a pediatrician at Temple University (USA), saving premature babies from death. Alas, the attempt was unsuccessful, three small patients did not survive, but it is worth mentioning that the deaths were caused by other causes, and not by the liquid breathing method itself.

Since then, fully ventilated human lungs have not dared, but in the 90s, patients with severe inflammation were subjected to partial liquid ventilation. In this case, the lungs are only partially filled. Alas, the effectiveness of the method was controversial, since conventional air ventilation worked just as well.

• Application in astronautics. With the current level of technology, an astronaut experiences g-forces up to 10 g during flight. After this threshold, it is impossible to maintain not only working capacity, but also consciousness. Yes, and the load on the body is uneven, and along the fulcrum, which can be excluded when immersed in a liquid, the pressure will spread equally to all points of the body. This principle underlies the design of the rigid Libelle spacesuit, filled with water and allowing the limit to be increased to 15-20 g, and even then because of the limitation of the density of human tissues. And if the astronaut is not only immersed in liquid, but his lungs are also filled with it, then it will be possible for him to easily endure extreme overloads far beyond the 20 g mark. Not infinite, of course, but the threshold will be very high if one condition is met - the liquid in the lungs and around the body must be equal in density to water.

The origin and development of liquid breathing

The very first experiments date back to the 60s of the last century. Be the first to experience emerging technology liquid breathing laboratory mice and rats forced to breathe not air, but saline solution, which was under a pressure of 160 atmospheres. And they breathed! But there was a problem that prevented them from surviving in such an environment for a long time - the liquid did not allow carbon dioxide to be removed.

But the experiments didn't stop there. Further, research began on organic substances whose hydrogen atoms were replaced by fluorine atoms - the so-called perfluorocarbons. The results were much better than those of the ancient and primitive liquid, because perfluorocarbon is inert, not absorbed by the body, and perfectly dissolves oxygen and hydrogen. But it was far from perfection and research in this direction continued.

Now the best achievement in this area is perflubron (commercial name - "Liquivent"). The properties of this liquid are amazing:

1. The alveoli open better when this fluid enters the lungs and gas exchange improves.
2. This liquid can carry 2 times more oxygen compared to air.
3. The low boiling point allows it to be removed from the lungs by evaporation.

But our lungs are not designed for completely liquid breathing. If you fill them completely with perflubron, you will need a membrane oxygenator, a heating element and air ventilation. And do not forget that this mixture is 2 times thicker than water. Therefore, mixed ventilation is used, in which the lungs are filled with liquid only by 40%.

But why can't we breathe liquid? All because of carbon dioxide, which is very poorly removed in a liquid medium. A person weighing 70 kg must drive 5 liters of the mixture through himself every minute, and this is in a calm state. Therefore, although our lungs are technically capable of extracting oxygen from liquids, they are too weak. So one can only hope for future research.

water like air

In order to finally proudly announce to the world - "Now a person can breathe underwater!" - scientists sometimes developed amazing devices. So, in 1976, biochemists from America created a miracle device capable of regenerating oxygen from water and providing it to a diver. With sufficient battery capacity, a diver could stay and breathe at depth almost indefinitely.

It all started with the fact that scientists began research based on the fact that hemoglobin delivers air equally well from both the gills and the lungs. They used their own venous blood mixed with polyurethane - it was immersed in water and this liquid absorbed oxygen, which is generously dissolved in water. Further, the blood was replaced with a special material, and as a result, a device was obtained that acted like the usual gills of any fish. The fate of the invention is this: it was acquired by a certain company, having spent 1 million dollars on it, and since then nothing has been heard about the device. And, of course, he did not go on sale.

But this is not main goal scientists. Their dream is not a breathing device, they want to teach the person himself to breathe liquid. And attempts to realize this dream have not been abandoned so far. So, one of the research institutes in Russia, for example, conducted tests on liquid breathing on a volunteer with a congenital pathology - the absence of the larynx. And this meant that he simply did not have the reaction of the body to the liquid, in which the smallest drop of water on the bronchi is accompanied by compression of the pharyngeal ring and suffocation. Since he simply did not have this muscle, the experiment was successful. Fluid was poured into his lungs, which he stirred throughout the experiment with the help of abdominal movements, after which it was calmly and safely pumped out. Characteristically, the salt composition of the fluid corresponded to the salt composition of the blood. This can be considered a success, and scientists claim that they will soon find a method of liquid breathing available to people without pathologies.

So myth or reality?

Despite the stubbornness of a man who passionately wants to conquer all possible environments habitats, nature itself still decides where to live. Alas, no matter how much time is spent on research, no matter how many millions are spent, it is unlikely that a person is destined to breathe under water as well as on land. people and Marine life Of course, they have a lot in common, but there are still much more differences. An amphibian man would not have endured the conditions of the ocean, and if he had managed to adapt, then the road back to land would have been closed to him. And as with scuba divers, amphibious people would go to the beach in water suits. And therefore, no matter what enthusiasts say, the verdict of scientists is still firm and disappointing - a long life of a person under water is impossible, it is unreasonable to go against mother nature in this regard, and all attempts at liquid breathing are doomed to failure.

But do not despair. Although the bottom of the sea will never become our home, we have all the mechanisms of the body and technical capabilities in order to be frequent guests on it. So is it worth it to be sad? After all, these environments have already been conquered by man to a certain extent, and now the abysses of outer space lie before him.

And for now, we can say with confidence that the depths of the ocean will be an excellent workplace for us. But perseverance can lead to a very thin line of real breathing under water, one has only to work on solving this problem. And what will be the answer to the question of whether to change land civilization to underwater, depends only on the person himself.

The Russian Foundation for Advanced Study is testing liquid breathing technology for divers on dogs, according to Vitaly Davydov, head of the Foundation.

“In one of his laboratories, work is underway on liquid breathing. While experiments are carried out on dogs. With us, a red dachshund was immersed in a large flask with water, face down. It would seem, why mock the animal, now it will choke. An no. She sat underwater for 15 minutes. The record is 30 minutes. Incredible. It turns out that the dog's lungs were filled with an oxygenated liquid, which made it possible for her to breathe underwater. When they pulled her out, she was a little lethargic - they say, due to hypothermia (and I think who likes to stick around under water in a jar in front of everyone), but after a few minutes she became quite herself. Soon, experiments will be carried out on people, ”said Igor Chernyak, a correspondent for RG.

“It all felt like a fantasy story. famous movie"Abyss", where a person could descend to a great depth in a spacesuit, the helmet of which was filled with liquid. The submariner breathed with it. Now it is no longer fantasy,” he writes.

According to the correspondent, "liquid breathing technology involves filling the lungs with a special liquid saturated with oxygen, which penetrates into the blood."

“The Advanced Research Foundation approved the implementation of a unique project, the work is being carried out by the Research Institute of Occupational Medicine. It is planned to create a special suit that will be useful not only for submariners, but also for pilots, as well as astronauts,” he says.

Davydov told the correspondent that a special capsule had been created for dogs, which is immersed in a hydro chamber with high blood pressure. "On the this moment dogs can breathe without health consequences for more than half an hour at a depth of up to 500 meters. "All test dogs survived and feel good after prolonged liquid breathing," said the head of the Foundation.

Further, the newspaper writes: “Few people know that experiments on liquid breathing on people have already been carried out in our country. Gave amazing results. Aquanauts breathed liquid at a depth of half a kilometer or more. That's just the people about their heroes did not know.

In the 1980s, the USSR developed and began to implement a serious program to save people at depth.

Designed and even commissioned special rescue submarines. The possibilities of human adaptation to depths of hundreds of meters were studied. Moreover, the aquanaut was supposed to be at such a depth not in a heavy diving suit, but in a light insulated wetsuit with scuba gear behind his back, his movements were not constrained by anything.

Because the human body consists almost entirely of water, then the terrible pressure at depth is not dangerous to him in itself. The body should simply be prepared for it by increasing the pressure in the pressure chamber to the required value. the main problem in a different. How to breathe at a pressure of tens of atmospheres? Fresh air becomes poison to the body. It must be diluted in specially prepared gas mixtures, usually nitrogen-helium-oxygen.

Their recipe - the proportions of various gases - is the most big secret in all countries where similar studies are underway. But for a very great depth and helium mixtures do not save. The lungs must be filled with fluid so that they do not burst. What is a liquid that, once in the lungs, does not lead to suffocation, but transfers oxygen through the alveoli to the body - a secret from secrets.

That is why all work with aquanauts in the USSR, and then in Russia, was carried out under the heading "top secret".

Nevertheless, there is quite reliable information that in the late 1980s there was a deep-water aqua station in the Black Sea, in which test submariners lived and worked. They went out to sea, dressed only in wetsuits, with scuba gear on their backs, and worked at depths of 300 to 500 meters. A special gas mixture was fed into their lungs under pressure.

It was assumed that if the submarine was in distress and sank to the bottom, then a rescue submarine would be sent to it. Aquanauts will be prepared in advance for work at the appropriate depth.

The hardest thing is to be able to withstand the filling of the lungs with liquid and simply not die of fear.

And when the rescue submarine approaches the disaster site, divers in light equipment will go out into the ocean, inspect the emergency boat and help evacuate the crew with the help of special deep-sea submersibles.

It was not possible to complete those works due to the collapse of the USSR. However, those who worked at depth still managed to be awarded the stars of the Heroes of the Soviet Union.

This is probably a cliche in science fiction: a certain viscous substance enters a suit or capsule very quickly, and main character suddenly discovers for himself how quickly he loses the rest of the air from his own lungs, and his insides are filled with an unusual liquid of a shade from lymph to blood. In the end, he even panics, but takes a few instinctive sips, or rather sighs, and is surprised to find that he can breathe this exotic mixture as if he were breathing ordinary air.

Are we so far from realizing the idea of ​​liquid breathing? Is it possible to breathe liquid mixture, and is there a real need for this? There are three promising ways to use this technology: medicine, diving to great depths and astronautics.

The pressure on the body of a diver increases with every ten meters by one atmosphere. Due to a sharp decrease in pressure, decompression sickness can begin, with the manifestations of which the gases dissolved in the blood begin to boil with bubbles. Also at high pressure possible oxygen and narcotic nitrogen poisoning. All this is fought with the use of special respiratory mixtures, but they do not give any guarantees, but only reduce the likelihood of unpleasant consequences. Of course, you can use diving suits that maintain pressure on the diver's body and his breathing mixture to exactly one atmosphere, but they, in turn, are large, bulky, make movement difficult, and also very expensive.

Liquid breathing could provide a third solution to this problem while maintaining the mobility of elastic wetsuits and the low risks of rigid suits. Breathing fluid, unlike expensive breathing mixtures, does not saturate the body with helium or nitrogen, so there is also no need for slow decompression to avoid decompression sickness.

In medicine, liquid breathing can be used in the treatment of premature babies in order to avoid damage to the underdeveloped bronchi of the lungs by pressure, volume and oxygen concentration in the air of ventilators. Selection and testing of various mixtures to ensure the survival of a premature fetus began already in the 90s. It is possible to use a liquid mixture with complete stops or partial respiratory insufficiencies.

Space flight is associated with large overloads, and liquids distribute pressure evenly. If a person is immersed in a liquid, then during overloads, the pressure will go to his entire body, and not specific supports (chair backs, seat belts). This principle was used to create the Libelle g-suit, which is a rigid spacesuit filled with water, which allows the pilot to remain conscious and efficient even at g-forces above 10 g.

This method is limited by the density difference between human body tissue and the immersion fluid used, so the limit is 15-20g. But you can go further and fill the lungs with a liquid close in density to water. An astronaut completely immersed in liquid and breathing liquid will feel relatively little the effect of extremely high g-forces, since the forces in the liquid are distributed evenly in all directions, but the effect will still be due to the different density of his body tissues. The limit will still remain, but it will be high.

The first experiments on liquid breathing were carried out in the 60s of the last century on laboratory mice and rats, which were forced to inhale a saline solution with high content dissolved oxygen. This primitive mixture allowed the animals to survive for a certain amount of time, but it could not remove carbon dioxide, so the lungs of the animals were irreparably damaged.

Later, work began with perfluorocarbons, and their first results were much better. better results salt solution experiments. Perfluorocarbons are organic matter, in which all hydrogen atoms are replaced by fluorine atoms. Perfluorocarbon compounds have the ability to dissolve both oxygen and carbon dioxide, they are very inert, colorless, transparent, cannot damage lung tissue and are not absorbed by the body.

Since then, breathing fluids have been improved, the most advanced solution to date is called perflubron or "Liquivent" (commercial name). This oil-like transparent liquid with a density twice that of water has many useful qualities: it can carry twice as much oxygen as ordinary air, has low temperature boiling, therefore, after use, its final removal from the lungs is carried out by evaporation. The alveoli under the influence of this liquid open better, and the substance gets access to their contents, this improves the exchange of gases.

The lungs can fill completely with fluid, which will require a membrane oxygenator, a heating element, and forced ventilation. But in clinical practice most often they do not do this, but use liquid breathing in combination with conventional gas ventilation, filling the lungs with perflubron only partially, approximately 40% of the total volume.

Frame from the movie The Abyss, 1989

What prevents us from using liquid breathing? The breathing fluid is viscous and poorly removes carbon dioxide, so forced ventilation of the lungs will be required. To remove carbon dioxide from ordinary person weighing 70 kilograms, a flow of 5 liters per minute or more will be required, and this is a lot, given the high viscosity of liquids. At physical activity the amount of flow required will only increase, and it is unlikely that a person will be able to move 10 liters of fluid per minute. Our lungs are simply not designed to breathe liquid and are not able to pump such volumes themselves.

Usage positive traits breathing fluids in aviation and astronautics may also forever remain a dream - the fluid in the lungs for a g-suit must have the density of water, and perflubron is twice as heavy.

Yes, our lungs are technically capable of "breathing" a certain oxygen-rich mixture, but unfortunately we can only do so for a few minutes at the moment, because our lungs are not strong enough to circulate the breathing mixture for extended periods of time. The situation may change in the future, it remains only to turn our hopes to researchers in this field.

December 28th, 2017

Since the Foundation for Advanced Study (FPI) approved the liquid breathing project in 2016, the public has been keenly interested in its success. A recent demonstration of the capabilities of this technology literally blew up the Internet. At a meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, the dachshund was immersed for two minutes in an aquarium with a special liquid saturated with oxygen. After the procedure, the dog, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, is alive and well.

Personally, of course, it’s not clear to me why crowds of those who pity the dog on social networks do not rush to protect, for example, mice and rabbits, which generally die in batches in institutes. And it’s also interesting, they think, for example, the Queen is also cruel and heartless - he donated more than one dog for the benefit of mankind. And here, a. Okay, we're not talking about that at all.

What was this liquid? Can liquid be breathed? And how are things in this area of ​​scientific research?

To make it clear why the discovery is called a real breakthrough. Back in the late 80s, liquid breathing was considered science fiction. It was used by the heroes of the film by American director James Cameron "The Abyss". And even in the picture it was called experimental development.

It has long been tried to teach humans and animals to breathe liquid. The first experiments in the 60s were unsuccessful, the experimental mice did not live very long. In humans, the technique of liquid lung ventilation was tested only once in the United States, to save premature babies. However, none of the three babies could be resuscitated.

Then perftoran was used to deliver oxygen to the lungs, it is also used as a blood substitute. The main problem was that this liquid could not be purified sufficiently. Carbon dioxide was poorly dissolved in it, and forced ventilation of the lungs was needed for prolonged breathing. At rest, a man of average build of average height had to pass through himself 5 liters of fluid per minute, with loads - 10 liters per minute. Lungs are not adapted for such loads. Our researchers managed to solve this problem.

Liquid breathing, liquid ventilation of the lungs - breathing with the help of a liquid that dissolves oxygen well. On the this moment only a few experiments of such technologies were carried out.

Liquid breathing involves filling the lungs with liquid, saturated with dissolved oxygen, which penetrates into the blood. The most suitable substances for this purpose are considered perfluorocarbon compounds that dissolve oxygen and carbon dioxide well, have a low surface tension, are highly inert, and are not metabolized in the body.

Partial liquid ventilation of the lungs is currently under clinical trials for various respiratory disorders. Several methods of liquid ventilation of the lungs have been developed, including ventilation with the help of vapors and aerosols of perfluorocarbons.

Full liquid ventilation of the lungs consists in the complete filling of the lungs with liquid. Experiments on complete fluid ventilation of the lungs were carried out on animals in the 1970s and 1980s in the USSR and the USA. For example, in 1975 at the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. A. N. Bakuleva, Professor F. F. Beloyartsev, for the first time in the country, performed work on long-term extrapulmonary oxygenation using fluorocarbon oxygenators and on replacing the gaseous medium in the lungs with liquid perfluorocarbon. However, these experiments have not yet left this stage. This is due to the fact that the studied compounds suitable for liquid ventilation of the lungs have a number of disadvantages that significantly limit their applicability. In particular, no methods were found that could be applied continuously.

It is assumed that liquid breathing can be used in deep-sea diving, space flights, as one of the means in the complex therapy of certain diseases.

In the Russian Federation, Andrey Viktorovich Filippenko, a scientist, doctor, technology developer and inventor of the Liquid Breathing apparatus, is engaged in experiments and developments in the field of liquid breathing. The developments of the scientist are known both in Russia and abroad. Filippenko is an active MD PhD specialist in fluid breathing, lung pathophysiology, restorative medicine, pharmacological testing, and medical device development. Produced more than 20 scientific and technical reports and published about 30 scientific articles in Russian and foreign press. He has spoken at numerous conferences on liquid breathing and submarine rescue, including in Russia, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Great Britain and Spain. He has copyright certificates for the method of ultrasonic location of decompression gas bubbles, etc. In 2014, Andrey Viktorovich Filippenko signed an agreement with the Advanced Research Foundation, work with which lasted until 2016.

"Scientists have synthesized substances that do not exist in nature - perfluorocarbons, in which the intermolecular forces are so small that they are considered something intermediate between a liquid and a gas. They dissolve oxygen in themselves 18-20 times more than water," says the doctor of medical sciences Evgeniy Mayevsky, Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Energy of Biological Systems of the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, one of the creators of perftoran, the so-called blue blood. He has been working on medical applications of perfluorocarbons since 1979.

At partial pressure Only 2.3 milliliters of oxygen dissolves in one atmosphere in 100 milliliters of water. Under the same conditions, perfluorocarbons can contain up to 50 milliliters of oxygen. This makes them potentially breathable.

"For example, when diving to a depth every 10 meters, the pressure increases by at least one atmosphere. As a result, rib cage and the lungs will shrink to such an extent that it will become impossible to breathe in a gaseous environment. And if there is a gas-carrying liquid in the lungs that is much denser than air and even water, then they will be able to function. Oxygen can be dissolved in perfluorocarbons without admixture of nitrogen, which is abundant in the air and whose dissolution in tissues is one of the most significant causes of decompression sickness when ascending from a depth,” Maevsky continues.

Oxygen will enter the blood from the fluid that fills the lungs. It can also dissolve the carbon dioxide carried in the blood.

The principle of liquid breathing is perfectly mastered by fish. Their gills pass through themselves a colossal volume of water, take away the oxygen dissolved there and give it to the blood. Man has no gills, and all gas exchange takes place through the lungs, whose surface area is about 45 times the surface area of ​​the body. To drive air through them, we inhale and exhale. The respiratory muscles help us with this. Since perfluorocarbons are denser than air, breathing on the surface with their help is very problematic.

"This is the science and art of choosing such perfluorocarbons to facilitate the work of the respiratory muscles and prevent damage to the lungs. Much depends on the duration of the process of breathing liquid, on whether it occurs forcefully or spontaneously," the researcher concludes.

However, there are no fundamental obstacles to a person breathing liquid. Evgeny Mayevsky believes that Russian scientists will bring the demonstrated technology to practical application in the next few years.

From resuscitation to rescue of submariners

Scientists began to consider perfluorocarbons as an alternative to breathing gas mixtures in the middle of the last century. In 1962, an article by the Dutch researcher Johannes Kilstra (Johannes Kylstra) "Of mice as fish" was published, which describes an experiment with a rodent placed in an oxygenated saline solution at a pressure of 160 atmospheres. The animal remained alive for 18 hours. Then Kilstra began to experiment with perfluorocarbons, and already in 1966, at the Cleveland Children's Hospital (USA), physiologist Leland C. Clark tried to use them to improve the breathing of newborns with cystic fibrosis. This is a genetic disease in which a child is born with underdeveloped lungs, his alveoli collapse, which prevents breathing. The lungs of such patients are flushed with oxygenated saline. Clark decided it was better to do it with an oxygen-containing liquid. This researcher subsequently did a lot for the development of liquid breathing.

In the early 1970s, the USSR became interested in "breathing" liquid, largely thanks to the head of the laboratory of the Leningrad Research Institute of Blood Transfusion, Zoya Aleksandrovna Chaplygina. This institute became one of the leaders in the project to create blood substitutes - oxygen carriers based on perfluorocarbon emulsions and modified hemoglobin solutions.

Felix Beloyartsev and Khalid Khapiy actively worked on the use of these substances for washing the lungs at the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery.

“In our experiments, the lungs of small animals suffered somewhat, but they all survived,” recalls Evgeny Mayevsky.

The breathing system with the help of liquid was developed on a closed topic at the institutes of Leningrad and Moscow, and since 2008 - at the Department of Aerohydrodynamics of the Samara State Aerospace University. They made a capsule of the "Mermaid" type for practicing liquid breathing in case of emergency rescue of divers from great depths. Since 2015, the development has been tested in Sevastopol on the Terek theme, supported by the FPI.

Legacy of the nuclear project

Perfluorocarbons (perfluorocarbons) are organic compounds where all hydrogen atoms are replaced by fluorine atoms. This is emphasized by the Latin prefix "per-", meaning completeness, integrity. These substances are not found in nature. They were tried to be synthesized in late XIX century, but really succeeded only after World War II, when they were needed for the nuclear industry. Their production in the USSR was established by Academician Ivan Ludwigovich Knunyants, the founder of the laboratory of organofluorine compounds at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"Perfluorocarbons were used in the technology for obtaining enriched uranium. In the USSR, their largest developer was State Institute applied chemistry in Leningrad. Currently, they are being produced in Kirovo-Chepetsk and Perm," Mayevsky says.

Externally, liquid perfluorocarbons look like water, but are noticeably denser. They do not react with alkalis and acids, do not oxidize, and decompose at temperatures above 600 degrees. In fact, they are considered chemically inert compounds. Due to these properties, perfluorocarbon materials are used in resuscitation and regenerative medicine.

"There is such an operation - bronchial lavage, when a person under anesthesia is washed with one lung, and then another. In the early 80s, together with the Volgograd surgeon A.P. Savin, we came to the conclusion that this procedure is best done with perfluorocarbon in the form of an emulsion," - Evgeny Mayevsky gives an example.

These substances are actively used in ophthalmology, to accelerate wound healing, in the diagnosis of diseases, including cancer. AT last years the method of NMR diagnostics using perfluorocarbons is being developed abroad. In our country, these studies are successfully carried out by a team of scientists from Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov under the guidance of Academician Alexei Khokhlov, INEOS, ITEB RAS and IEP (Serpukhov).

It is impossible not to mention the fact that these substances are used to make oils, lubricants for systems operating under conditions high temperatures including jet engines.

Sources:

The Russian Foundation for Advanced Study has begun testing liquid breathing technology for divers on dogs.

Vitaly Davydov, Deputy General Director of the Fund, spoke about this. According to him, full-scale tests are already underway.

In one of his laboratories, work is underway on liquid respiration. While experiments are carried out on dogs. With us, a red dachshund was immersed in a large flask with water, face down. It would seem, why mock the animal, now it will choke. An no. She sat underwater for 15 minutes. The record is 30 minutes. Incredible. It turns out that the dog's lungs were filled with an oxygenated liquid, which made it possible for her to breathe underwater. When they pulled her out, she was a little lethargic - they say, due to hypothermia (and I think who likes to stick around under water in a jar in front of everyone), but after a few minutes she became quite herself. Soon experiments will be carried out on people, - says the journalist " Russian newspaper" Igor Chernyak, who became an eyewitness to unusual tests.

All this was similar to the fantastic plot of the famous film "The Abyss", where a person could descend to a great depth in a spacesuit, the helmet of which was filled with liquid. The submariner breathed with it. Now it is no longer fantasy.

The technology of liquid breathing involves filling the lungs with a special liquid saturated with oxygen, which penetrates into the blood. The Advanced Research Foundation approved the implementation of a unique project, the work is being carried out by the Research Institute of Occupational Medicine. It is planned to create a special suit that will be useful not only for submariners, but also for pilots and astronauts.

As Vitaly Davydov told a TASS correspondent, a special capsule was created for dogs, which was immersed in a high-pressure hydrochamber. At the moment, dogs can breathe without health consequences for more than half an hour at a depth of up to 500 meters. "All test dogs survived and feel good after prolonged liquid breathing," the deputy head of the FPI assured.

Few people know that experiments on liquid breathing have already been carried out on people in our country. Gave amazing results. Aquanauts breathed liquid at a depth of half a kilometer or more. That's just the people about their heroes did not know.

In the 1980s, the USSR developed and began to implement a serious program to save people at depth.

Special rescue submarines were designed and even commissioned. The possibilities of human adaptation to depths of hundreds of meters were studied. Moreover, the aquanaut was supposed to be at such a depth not in a heavy diving suit, but in a light insulated wetsuit with scuba gear behind his back, his movements were not constrained by anything.

Since the human body consists almost entirely of water, the terrible pressure at depth is not dangerous for him in itself. The body should simply be prepared for it by increasing the pressure in the pressure chamber to the required value. The main problem is elsewhere. How to breathe at a pressure of tens of atmospheres? Clean air becomes poison for the body. It must be diluted in specially prepared gas mixtures, usually nitrogen-helium-oxygen.

Their recipe - the proportions of various gases - is the biggest secret in all countries where similar studies are underway. But at very great depths, helium mixtures do not save. The lungs must be filled with fluid so that they do not burst. What is a liquid that, once in the lungs, does not lead to suffocation, but transfers oxygen through the alveoli to the body - a secret from secrets.

That is why all work with aquanauts in the USSR, and then in Russia, was carried out under the heading "top secret".

Nevertheless, there is quite reliable information that in the late 1980s there was a deep-water aquatic station in the Black Sea, in which test submariners lived and worked. They went out to sea, dressed only in wetsuits, with scuba gear on their backs, and worked at depths of 300 to 500 meters. A special gas mixture was fed into their lungs under pressure.

It was assumed that if the submarine was in distress and sank to the bottom, then a rescue submarine would be sent to it. Aquanauts will be prepared in advance for work at the appropriate depth.

The hardest thing is to be able to withstand the filling of the lungs with liquid and just not die of fear.

And when the rescue submarine approaches the disaster site, divers in light equipment will go out into the ocean, inspect the emergency boat and help evacuate the crew with the help of special deep-sea submersibles.

It was not possible to complete those works due to the collapse of the USSR. However, those who worked at depth still managed to be awarded the stars of the Heroes of the Soviet Union.

Probably, even more interesting studies were continued in our time near St. Petersburg on the basis of one of the Naval Research Institutes.

There, too, experiments were conducted on gas mixtures for deep-sea research. But, most importantly, perhaps for the first time in the world, people there learned to breathe liquid.

In their uniqueness, those jobs were much more complex than, say, preparing astronauts for flights to the moon. The testers were subjected to enormous physical and psychological stress.

First, the body of aquanauts in an air pressure chamber was adapted to a depth of several hundred meters. Then they moved into a chamber filled with liquid, where they continued to dive to depths, they say, almost a kilometer.

The hardest part, according to those who still had a chance to talk with aquanauts, according to them, was to withstand the filling of the lungs with liquid and simply not die of fear. This is not about cowardice. Fear of choking is a natural reaction of the body. Anything could happen. Spasm of the lungs or cerebral vessels, even a heart attack.

When a person understood that the liquid in the lungs does not bring death, but bestows life at a great depth, absolutely special, truly fantastic sensations arose. But only those who have experienced such an immersion know about them.

Alas, the work, amazing in its significance, was stopped for an elementary reason - due to lack of finances. Heroes-aquanauts were given the title of Heroes of Russia and retired. The names of the submariners are classified to this day.

Although they should have been honored as the first astronauts, because they paved the way to the deep hydrospace of the Earth.

Now experiments on liquid breathing have been resumed, they are being carried out on dogs, mainly dachshunds. They also experience stress.

But researchers pity them. As a rule, after underwater experiments, they take them to live in their homes, where they are fed with yummy, surrounded by affection and care.