Space is a vac cum.
Nobody can hear you scream in space because there is no air for sound waves to travel
through.
Empty.
Devoid.
Ish anyway.
But...what if that wasn’t the case?
Hello and welcome back to the Most Amazing channel on the internet.
I am your host, Rebecca Felgate and today I am asking What if There Was Oxygen in Space....and
like....
I want you to know that actually the answer is dramatic.
Before we get into this video, I want to ask you guys if you would ever want to go to space?
Let me know your spacey thoughts in the comments section down below.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that space is a terrifying place, but I would still be down
to go.... not many humans have ever left earth, so really it would be a privilege.
LIKE SHARE.
Stick around to the end where I will be responding to comments.
So.
Space.
It is hard for us to get our heads around space because we’re earthlings, the only
environment we know and cant understand from first hand experience is earth.
One of the things we take for granted on planet earth is our life giver, oxygen.
Air on earth is made up of 78 percent nitrogen, 0.93 percent argon, 0.4 percent carbon dioxide
and a bunch of trace gasses.... the remaining 21% is oxygen, which is what we need to survive.
If we were able to leave planet earth, we would not be able to survive in space without
a space suit for a number of reasons, but the main one is that there isn’t any oxygen.
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the video, space is a vacuum.
That is hard to get our head around because it is not what we know.
What it means is that, while there are gas particles out there in space...it is so vast
that they are few and far between.
Gasses arent dense enough to form molecules that determine air as we know it.
But that doesn’t mean there isnt oxygen in space – there is.
In 2011, Nasa found some in its more complex form.
At the time they released a statement saying: Individual atoms of oxygen are common in space,
particularly around massive stars.
But molecular oxygen, which makes up about 20 percent of the air we breathe, has eluded
astronomers until now.
It seems the molecules were found in a star-forming part of the constellation of Orion and likely
formed after starlight heated space dust and released water, which then broke down into
the detected oxygen molecules.
But of course, that is far from the entirety of space being filled with the gas.
If space was filled with oxygen... well.. things would be pretty chaotic.
Firstly, you would be able to hear stars.
The reason we cant hear stars right now is because there is no oxygen or other gas particles
to carry the sound.
If there were.... well... we would be listening to star music.
While that may sound like a lovely thought, it turns out that actually, it would be unbearably
loud.
Any sound loud and long enough can damage your hearing, and we would all be in danger
of going deaf if we could hear space.
Standing at the front of a loud rock concert exposes you to 120 decibels of sound.
The sound we would hear from our sun on earth would be 125 decibels.
LOUD.
It would be loud and it would be dark.
Very dark.
Right now light reaches earth pretty easily.
It takes 8 minutes to get to us from the sun and allows us a) to see what we are doing
and b) is crucial for photosynethesis and the like.
If space was filled with oxygen, it would take longer for light to reach us and it would
be reflected out into space along the way as it move and interacts with oxygen particles.
It would be dark, which means plant life would suffer, meaning our ability to harvest crop
would be pretty obsolete.
You know what would also be obsolete?
Us!
The oxygen gas particles in space would respond to gravity the same way they do right now
on earth.
The nearby particles would be attracted to the gravity of earth, adding to our atmosphere,
which would greatly increase the pressure for us all...sure...our ears might pop....but
we might too!
We would likely be crushed by the extra weight.
Speaking of extra weight....space itself would get heavy.
Right now, celestial bodies in space can move without friction.
That is one of the benefits of a vacuum.
Add air....and celestial bodies, like planets orbit the sun, will suddenly be met with friction
and resistance...this would majorly alter orbits.
Locally, this friction would mean that the moons orbit would be disrupted and that it
would crash into earth.
Uh oh.
But really that would be the least of our concerns.
The earth is rotating on its axis while orbiting the sun.
All this movement against the new resistance of oxygen particles would strip away the entire
surface of the earth, which would mean the earth could tear but would almost definitely
light on fire.
Eventually the Earth would spiral and fall into the sun.
Sucks for the earth... but things in the wider bounds of space a wouldnt be great.
Oxygen in all of space would mean that there is more gas mass in space that the weight
of the stars.
Theoretical Physicist Jack Fraser explains what this means.... he theorizes: The oxygen
would eventually contract under gravity into globular clusters (like when water droplets
form out of the mist on a shower door), and eventually ignite as (weird) stars - weird
because most stars start out as hydrogen, not oxygen.
The mass would probably be enough that even after ignition, the stars continue to accrete
material and turn into billions of new black holes, spread uniformly across the universe.
This would destroy pretty much every structure in the known universe - every star, planet
and galaxy would be disrupted to the point of destruction.
Oh.
Right then.
Oxygen bad.....vacuum good.
That really does confirm it.
So Oxygen in space?
For us it would be loud dark and dense, until we were all stripped from a crumbling earth...but
who cares about a bulldozed solar system when the entire universe is falling into a black
hole.
See...I told you it was dramatic.
So that answers that.
I love it when the questions we ask have answers.
What did you think to this video?
Let me know in the comments section down below!
Also don't forget to let me know if you would ever go to space.
Comments from a recent video....
What if the Meganeuropsis didnt go extinct.
Xclusive BulletzYT said: We die thats the answer, saved 7 minutes
Actually... that was not the answer!
The answer was...ahh...naaah....less bbqs and picnics... but like...if you want to over
dramatize things?
What is life without a bbq anyway?!
Thors Domenech said: That's so interesting how the earth's atmosphere affects animal
size I live to serve my friend.... or...well..I
mean I dont....
I serve to live...and once I’m clocked out...honaaaaayyy am I living... but ...glad to have brought
you intrigue through my grafting.
Great comment from Dankest of Bois...what a great username...responding to the what
if they didnt go extinct question, he said:
The neither would the other giant arthropods Meaning the atmosphere would still be juiced
to the gills Meaning life would’ve taken a different turn Meaning we might not be here
so win win situation