Do you think spontaneous combustion is possible?

Question

I am asking this question in the physics section, because i m hoping for mature answers, backed by science, as I admit my ignorance on this subject

yeah, I mean spontaneous human combustion, sorry for the confusion

Answer 1

Spontaneous combustion happens all the time. Are you talking about humans spontaneously combusing? I do believe that humans MAY be able to spontaneously combust because the heat generated from you body comes from your muscles using OXYGEN in a chemical reaction to produce CARBON DIOXIDE, which, by the way, is exactly the same chemical reaction in COMBUSTION. If something were to go terribly wrong in a human body where too many simple sugars reacted with too much oxygen all at the same time, you could generate enough heat to catch on fire.

Any chemists or biologists like to refute that?

Answer 2

If and when rare Chemical disorders occurs within the body then spontaneous combustion may result. If this happens, part of the tissue of the body my explode apart with the flame coming from within the body. If this should happen, it's likely to be the chest and stomach areas of the body. It's also likely that the person will die. I believe the cause of this is unknown. What is known, the person in question was usually suffering from some kind of stress.

Answer 3

The Discovery Channel had a special on this topic about 6 months ago. They used a pig carcass (chemically similar to human) and showed that spontaneous human combustion could actually be caused by someone falling asleep with a burning cigarette. If the conditions were right the cigarette would smolder, the fumes could render the human unconscious, the fabric of the person's clothes could act as a wick, and they could burn similar to a candle.

Answer 4

My problem with spontaneous combustion is that it offers no scientific explanation. The laws of physics are clearly defined, a mass of cells doesn't just ignite without proper chemical or physical energy added to the system. Energy would have to be released without any external input, and if this were true, we would not see just humans combusting. Whole buildings would collapse, mountains crumble, and the Earth explode....not possible in my opinion.

Answer 5

No, because the majority of the body is made up of water, and unless you add a combustible substance to the body such as gasoline, spontaneously combusting is simply not feasible. Not only would you need a combustible substance, but a spark to set it off.

Unless you sweat gasoline thru' your pores, you won't catch fire spontaneously...

Answer 6

Yes ,you know almost all sorts of combustions in nature are endothermic
however there are some types of endothermic combustion at which the entropy of the reaction will be increases so gibbs free energy for this reaction is negative therefore the reaction will be spontaneous.

Answer 7

Spontaneous combustion - has not scientifically been proved as a viable fact. With that being said, most anything is possible, under the right conditions, feasible no.

Answer 8

Yes that is why it is called this.. There are many reasons for spontanious combustion but one very easy example is ignition temperature. Say a room in a house is burning. The fire is ablaze in one coroner. it has both an abundance of oxygen and fuel. The fire rages and the temp raises.. When the air reaches a certain temp along with unlit objects...poof, spontanious combustion

Answer 9

they've had many shows on this topic and the latest one i had seen makes complete sense to me. the answer is no. the pictures that we have all seen and are familiar with are easily explained. in a reenactment of these situations using pig for flesh we see that flesh burns very slow and low, thus explaing the lack of flame spread and the burning only going so far (leaving the far ends of the extremeties. So this occurs when a flames is available and in contact with flesh for X amount of time while being unnoticed (sleeping smoker) or someone attempts to burn a body. Also lack of highly flammable other materials in the direct vicinity. Keep in mind the flame off flesh burns very low so unless curtains are all over this person, nothing else would catch light.

Answer 10

well i have no scientific evidence or anything of the sort, but I've always wondered about the legend of vampires and the thought of spontaneous human combustion and why no one has ever put the 2 together.....