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Topics: Weird, World News, Science
Tom Wood
People have been left horrified after learning what would happen to your body if the earth was to suddenly lose oxygen for a few seconds.
Here's a video - by TikTok user @mulligan.tv - explaining the basic idea:
Now, we all know that we need oxygen to live, and spending too long without it is going to eventually lead us to die.
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However, we perhaps don’t realise how important it is, and if our earth’s atmosphere was to completely disappear for just five seconds, the impact would be terrifying.
Writing on Quora, reported by The Independent, Andrew Cote - a scientist from the University British Columbia - explained what would happen.
Seriously, you have no idea - yet - how bad things would be.
To start with, we’d all get sunburn, because the Ozone layer above us is made of molecular oxygen and that protects us from the bulk of the UV light coming from the Sun.
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If that goes, we’re getting burned, that’s for sure.
Combustion engines need oxygen to keep going, so they’d all stall.
That might not be a big deal if you’re in the car sitting at traffic lights, but if you’re on an aeroplane or in a truck on the motorway, you’re going to notice.
Fascinatingly, Cote says that every bit of unwelded metal would instantly weld to each other, as metal is mostly coated with a layer of oxidation, so without that oxygen they would bond without a liquid stage.
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Now, to the physical stuff.
Firstly, your inner ear would explode, as you’d lose a significant amount of air pressure.
We’re all losing quite a bit of our hearing, then.
Buildings made of concrete are in trouble, too.
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Concrete is bound by oxygen and won’t hold rigidity without it.
Geoffrey Widdinson, a Process Engineer from Texas, expanded on this mad scenario.
He said: “In terms of breathing, we probably wouldn't notice. Our bodies can't detect oxygen deficiency, we can only detect high carbon dioxide levels. As long as CO2 isn't building up in our blood, we don't feel like we're suffocating.
“Actually, it would be disappointingly undramatic.
“The phenomenon of a hundred million cars stalling at once would get some attention, and people monitoring air pressure would notice the blip there, but we'd never figure out the cause and eventually just shrug it off.”
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Now for the most terrifying bit.
Khannan Sundar, BSC Engineering majoring in Computer Science at BITS Pilani, India, said: “Many of the answers to this question will focus on what would happen during those five seconds, but after that, there would be a huge explosion due to the oxidation of all the oceans that have been converted to hydrogen (and any exothermic oxidation).
“So, the Earth would suddenly become extremely cold for five seconds followed by a Big Bang.”
Naturally, people are horrified by this information.
"It just keeps getting worse," said one person.
Another commented: “Hmmm, that’s what I needed today, existential terror. Thank you very much.”
"New fear unlocked," wrote a third.
Don't worry though, it probably won't happen.
Probably.