5 ms·
If extracted and fully oxidized, the water would raise ocean levels maybe 4 cm. The Earth also includes vast quantities of reduced metals like iron, more than
by pfdietz 2y ago
If extracted and fully oxidized, the water would raise ocean levels maybe 4 cm.
The Earth also includes vast quantities of reduced metals like iron, more than enough to react with all the oxygen in the atmosphere. Perhaps some way could be found to exploit that, at least a little bit.
- foundart 2y agoWell there's an idea for a sci-fi disaster book: "Rustpocalypse" (if too much of that iron were to be oxidized.)
- suprfsat 2y agoRust Evangelion Strike Force
- FredPret 2y agoApocalypse (written in Rust)
- seangrogg 2y ago*rewritten in Rust
- pfdietz 2y agoAll it would take would be for photosynthesis to be terminated, and then wait a few million years for erosion and volcanism to expose enough reduced material to soak up the atmosphere's oxygen. What's weird is that, as far as I know, there's no feedback mechanism that's been identified that keeps the atmosphere's O2 level stable. It may have been stable since the Cambrian just because if it hadn't been, we wouldn't have evolved, an anthropic argument.
- Earw0rm 2y agoFire must surely have a role to play there? Too much O2 and plants burn easily, too little and fires won't take hold. And we don't know AFAIK that it's been entirely stable. There's some debate over what the level was in the Cretaceous for example.
- pfdietz 2y agoIf anything, fire would be a positive feedback. That's because fire produces charcoal, and charcoal doesn't decompose. Instead, it gets washed into the ocean and eventually buried. It's not photosynthesis itself that causes O2 accumulation in the atmosphere, it's the burial and sequestration of reduced material from photosynthesis.
- ryao 2y agoIf the metal is reduced, then it should not be reactive. How does this become relevant to all of the oxygen in the atmosphere?
- pfdietz 2y agoWhat? Carbon is reduced. Hydrogen is reduced. Any fossil fuel is reduced. All can give up electrons to oxygen and so be oxidized, liberating energy.
- ryao 2y agoI went with what you wrote since it has been a while since I took general chemistry, but upon doing a simple lookup, I found that your terminology is wrong. In redox reactions, the oxidizing agent is reduced while the reducing agent is oxidized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redox Here, the metal is the reducing agent. If it were somehow reduced in redox reactions, there not much chance of it being oxidized as that would make the metal an oxidizing agent that wants electrons, not a reducing agent that gives electrons. That said, these things have already been oxidized (not reduced) and thus there is no chance to have them consume oxygen. You need the pre-oxidized material in order to be able to consume oxygen. Finally, you failed to answer my question regarding the relevance of these metals to atmospheric oxygen. They should be inert having been oxidized long ago. That is why rocks are full of oxides, such as silicon dioxide and aluminum oxide, despite being composed of metal.
- pfdietz 2y agoI think there's confusion here between "is reduced" meaning "has been reduced" vs. "and is then reduced". Iron in the Earth is mostly in a reduced state (either Fe(+2) or even elemental iron). Upon exposure to the atmosphere it is oxidized to Fe(+3), changing from a more reduced to a more oxidized state (and similarly for other things in reduced states, such as manganese and sulfur and organics).
- ryao 2y ago
- tolciho 2y agoBanded Iron Formation: the reunion tour.