6 ms·
I'm no chemist, but that does not seem plausible. Fire needs three things: fuel, oxidizer (e.g. oxygen), and heat. [1] No matter how much oxygen, the atmospher
by emiliobumachar 6y ago
I'm no chemist, but that does not seem plausible. Fire needs three things: fuel, oxidizer (e.g. oxygen), and heat. [1]
No matter how much oxygen, the atmosphere would not ignite without fuel.
Forest fires would get epic though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle
- FlyingAvatar 6y agoIf you get it hot enough, nitrogen can be oxidized. There is plenty of fuel in that sense.
- nitrogen 6y agoIs the oxidation of nitrogen exothermic, and sufficiently so to sustain a chain reaction?
- wcoenen 6y agoThe oxidation of nitrogen gas is endothermic though. It can't produce heat to sustain a runaway reaction.
- wadkar 6y agoBingo! You beat me to it. This trivia about Nitrogen used to be my favorite when I was studying chemistry in the school. Like there’s lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere and oxygen but they don’t “burn” because (almost all?) nitrogen oxidation is endothermic!
- FlyingAvatar 6y agoCool, I was actually wondering about that.
- kungato 6y agoI'm no chemist but we learned in gymnasium about the dangers of having 2:1 HHO gas https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.1907.0035 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.1907.003... I can't find a better article in English
- dreamcompiler 6y agoYeah that's the thing he left out. A heckuva lot of that lignin would have burned from said lightning strikes.
- emiliobumachar 6y agoGreat point! So probably a biosphere ignition might have been possible.