Oh god I can’t breathe.
Why do I feel like the oxygen is leaving the room?
WHAT IF THE OXYGEN IS LEAVING THE PLANET
Hey Guys Julia here for DNews
Well I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news.
Bad news first.
Our atmosphere is leaking.
But so are the atmospheres of a lot of other planets.
When the solar system first formed most heavenly bodies had the same ratio of elements in their
atmosphere.
But over billions of years, things..
changed.
It’s a natural process, part of the ever changing nature of the universe.
Earth's atmosphere currently is around 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.03%
carbon dioxide.
A seemingly perfect ratio of life.
But it didn’t always look that way.
According to researchers like Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University and Professor
Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona, oxygen levels in the atmosphere in prehistoric
times averaged around 30% to 35%.
Atmospheres can change in a number of ways.
Sometimes the atmosphere lifts off in a huge chunk.
In thermal escape like "hydrodynamic escape", the gases in the atmosphere get too hot from
the intense heat of the sun, and they evaporate away.
Atmosphere can be released more slowly through nonthermal processes.
Which is basically like when molecules bounce off each other, throwing atoms into space.
And sometimes the atmosphere is blasted into space by the impact from asteroids and comets.
Take Mars for example.
One of our nearest neighbors holds some of the most enduring mysteries.
Simply because it’s so similar to Earth, yet so different.
It’s atmosphere is over 95% carbon dioxide.
So what happened to it?
Well Mars lost most of its atmosphere 3.8 billion years ago.
According to the Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments, Mars might have
lost 90% of its atmosphere over time.
It’s smaller than Earth with less mass, there’s less gravitational pull.
So it was kind of easy for the atmosphere to just dissipate into the expanse of space.
Some of it was stripped off from solar wind, while some of it got flung into space by the
crash of meteorites according to a study published in the journal Science.
So could that happen to Earth?
Well it already did.
Earth is a little different, we are wrapped up in a magnetic shield that protects us from
some of the sun’s damaging solar winds.
So our atmosphere hasn’t eroded as much as other planets.
But that doesn’t mean we’re immune, one study published in the journal Icarus suggests
that thousands of impacts from space rocks ejected most of Earth’s atmosphere 4.5 billion
years ago.
While that’s in the past, we’re still losing our atmosphere, though at a tiny rate.
Remember how I mentioned that magnetic shield?
While it does protect us from some of the most damaging solar winds, it also leaks tiny
amounts of the atmosphere into space.
As the sun’s energy gets absorbed, it’s guided into the upper atmosphere.
There it heats up some of the molecules, which leave the Earth along the same channels that
let the energy in.
So Earth is losing atmosphere at about a rate of 5×1025 (five by ten to the 25th power)
molecules per second (50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
which is faster than our neighbors like Mars are losing theirs, according to research presented
at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly meeting in 2013.
But before you freak out, you should know there’s nothing to worry about.
You can breathe easy, so says one of the lead researchers Hans Nilsson.
If that rate stays the same, we’ve got a few billion years left of a decent atmosphere.
And by then, we’ll have MUCH bigger problems to worry about.
Like the sun expanding and wiping out all life as we know it.
FUN TIMES GUYS.
Solar storms could throw us back into the stone ages by wiping out all electricity in
the world.
Alright so what kind of galactic disaster are you worried about?
Tell us your fears down in the comments below!