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I recall an article from a long time ago that basically said “astronauts report” the moon smells like spent gunpowder and outer space smell like… I think it was
by corysama 6mo ago
I recall an article from a long time ago that basically said “astronauts report” the moon smells like spent gunpowder and outer space smell like… I think it was ozone.
What they were actually reporting was the smell of the airlocks after they returned from their excursions. The moon has no atmosphere, so it has been accumulating dust from billions of years of asteroid impacts that have never come in contact with oxygen. Many of the chemicals in the dust are oxidative and so when it is exposed to air for the first time it rapidly oxidizes just like gunpowder!
And I think the outer space report was from space walks, and the explanation was that the first time the airlock itself was exposed to hard vacuum, the surfaces of the airlock would have a reaction that left a scent of ozone.
- Bender 6mo agoMy UV sterilizing lights make my room smell like O3 Ozone and that smells nothing like spent gun-powder to me. The only other time I have smelled the same thing is when there has been mass lightening events in the sky. Were they talking about actual black powder or nitrocellulose? I've smelled black powder at the range when people bring out their antique rifles and that also does not smell like Ozone to me.
- coffeebeqn 6mo agoPhotocopiers smell like ozone when they run if anyone’s forgotten the smell
- Bender 6mo agoPhotocopiers smell like ozone when they run if anyone’s forgotten the smell Those are similar but sweeter. If I sterilize a room with UV it has a very distinct smell like nothing else aside from lightening and stun guns. I would UV the bathroom right now but then I have to vent the entire house and its 34F outside right now.
- echelon 6mo agoI don't think any of you should want to be smelling Ozone. Diatomic oxygen is already a highly reactive fuel that is killing us and giving us cancer every single day. The ozone species is even more oxidative. Oxygen is how we move about the energy gradient, but it's also killing us. Ozone is worse. "Air purifiers" with ionization are probably not worth the squeeze.
- Bender 6mo agoAbsolutely. I vent the house after running UV lamps using a 4400 CFM air mover. I leave the house and run errands. I have 3 of these [1] They have a remote control that "arms" them and it starts beeping slow, the faster, then much faster then activates. It kills insects be destroying their lungs and entirely destroys mold, bacteria and even damages viral material. Hospitals run the same lamps in wings that they close down for sanitation. The entire area has to be 100% vented. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/AeraLight-Whole-Surface-UV-Sanitizer/dp/B0GHT3PBM5/ https://www.amazon.com/AeraLight-Whole-Surface-UV-Sanitizer/...
- alfiedotwtf 6mo agoI worked for a germaphobe, and he put one of these ozone-injecting air purifiers in our tiny office. Every morning I would walk in and it felt like I was walking into a thunderstorm from the smell. No gunpowder, just thick ozone
- cyberax 6mo agoIn general, if you can smell ozone, you should NOT be in that place.
- alfiedotwtf 6mo agoYep! When he refused to not turn it off each day, that was the day I updated my resume and GTFO
- 6mo ago
- saltcured 6mo agoI also associate ozone with some electric motors, I think because they have brushes that arc during operation. Older power tools I encountered in the 1980s often did this, and you could see the blue arc if you looked into the vents at the right angle.
- aduty 6mo agoBrushless motors are popular now, but if you get the cheaper cordless tools they'll still have brushed motors. I have some Black & Decker 20V ones that do it. They tend to have less torque but I don't need Milwaukee or Makita tools just for diy around the house.
- mr_toad 6mo ago‘Ozone’ is the smell of ionisation, ‘gunpowder’ the smell of oxidisation.
- IAmBroom 6mo agoHalf right. Gunpowder is mostly the smell of sulfur compounds.
- corysama 6mo agoThe ozone report was specifically about space walks. The gunpowder report was about moon walks. Presumably, moonwalks would also have some ozone like the space walk did. But, maybe the burning-moon-dust gunpowder smell was a lot stronger than the vacuumed-metal/paint ozone smell.
- lifeisstillgood 6mo agoSorry for the tangent, but you sterilise a whole room with UV light? Is that efficient ? Do you do it after tidying / cleaning ? Is there a medical reason for the extra part? Is it just cool :-)
- Bender 6mo agoThe house came with a bacteria that would normally be hard to get rid of. UV, bleach and peroxide took care of it. I just repeat the process to ensure there is no bacteria or mold. This seems to bother people in this thread which I find fascinating. A part of me wants to bring my black light to their dwelling.
- vl 6mo agoI have mold problem in one of the bathrooms. What would be your recommendation? Seal off bathroom and run UV, then vent? Or do I need to do entire house? I can also seal off bathroom and bedroom. Thanks!
- blub 6mo agoNo, UV is unrelated to your issue. First you need to figure out if it’s a surface infestation because of condensation or if it’s a constructive thermal bridge. The latter can be solved by raising the surface (wall, ceiling, etc) temperature through insulation or more inefficiently special heaters designed for this purpose. In both cases, the contaminated material is removed down to the plaster or masonry. Wood, wallpaper and similar materials will likely be deeply contaminated and must be removed. For areas larger than 1 sq meter, it’s better to get a specialized contractor which will use HEPA vacuum cleaners, special bags, etc to ensure that the mould spores don’t spread in other rooms. For small areas the agents of choice are bleach or hydrogen peroxide, both available in products for home use.
- blub 6mo agoWas it from flooding or how did it get there? How did you detect it?
- adrian_b 6mo agoI assume that they talk about black powder. The dust that comes from meteorites contains up to 4 fractions: silicates, which cannot be oxidized, metallic iron, which oxidizes, but it does not form volatile substances that can be smelled, hydrocarbons in the form of a tar or pitch, which can burn but it cannot be ignited easily, and finally a fraction made of iron sulfide (troilite) with small quantities of other sulfides. In contact with air, the sulfides will be oxidized, releasing sulfur dioxide. Burning black powder also releases sulfur dioxide, which is the main reason for its smell. Burning pure sulfur will produce the same smell.
- helterskelter 6mo agoAt least some ISS astronauts describe smelling burnt metal after returning from EVA, if memory serves. (Others may smell ozone, I've just always remembered hearing burnt metal).
- junon 6mo agoI always heard burnt steak.
- thescriptkiddie 6mo agothe exterior of the ISS is constantly exposed to small mounts of atomic oxygen, which is an incredibly strong oxidizer. probably in addition to ozone there is a huge variety of organic and inorganic oxides that get tracked in through the airlock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_International_Space_Station_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_International_Space_...
- sbierwagen 6mo agoFun trivia (well, perhaps not fun) in the second paragraph: "the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), which was retrieved in 1990 after spending 68 months in LEO" Long exposure, 68 months, right. But it was only supposed to be in orbit for 11! Challenger being destroyed on reentry made a mess of things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Duration_Exposure_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Duration_Exposure_Facilit... >It was placed in low Earth orbit by Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1984. [...] At LDEF's launch, retrieval was scheduled for March 19, 1985, eleven months after deployment.[4] Schedules slipped, postponing the retrieval mission first to 1986, then indefinitely due to the Challenger disaster. After 5.7 years its orbit had decayed to about 175 nautical miles (324 km) and it was likely to burn up on reentry in a little over a month.[6][9]: 15
- jordanb 6mo agoThere was some concern when Apollo 11 landed that when they repressurized the LEM with moon dust samples inside it would start a fire. I think they had a small test article that they blew a small stream of oxygen over to ensure it wouldn't auto-ignite.
- dotancohen 6mo agoAnd if the sample did auto-ignite, what was the procedure?
- verisimi 6mo agoEmpty out a glass of water and blow the floating blobs towards the fire.
- quotemstr 6mo agoThe moon has gravity. The blobs wouldn't float.
- Chaosvex 6mo agoPretty sure it was a joke.
- monster_truck 6mo agoNobody would joke about something as serious as moon fires dude, c'mon
- TeMPOraL 6mo agoBut you could pour water at the fire from across the room! Lower gravity is giving the defender an advantage over the elements... at least until it gets low enough for things to start floating, when this flips around. In microgravity, water turns into floating blobs, but fire turns into actual floating fireballs. Water blobs vs. fireballs. Pretty sure there's a nice videogame idea hiding in there somewhere.
- ItsClo688 6mo agothe detail that kills me is moon dust has never contacted oxygen in billions of years, so every time an astronaut came back inside they were essentially doing a chemistry experiment for the first time. the whole moon is just waiting to react with air
- stonecharioteer 6mo agoThis is what trips me up about terraforming. If we learn to create an atmosphere, are we going to instantly poison the oxygen we introduce?
- ItsClo688 6mo agogreat questionprobably not poison it directly, but you'd lose a significant chunk to oxidation reactions before reaching any stable equilibrium. the surface is essentially a massive reactive sink. mars has a similar problem, the perchlorate in the soil would react badly with a lot of things we'd want to introduce. the optimistic read is that oxidation reactions release energy and eventually reach stability. the pessimistic read is the timescale is geological.
- dotancohen 6mo agoIsn't Mars red due to oxygenation of the rocks? Is that ancient oxygenation or is there some quantity of oxygen in Mars atmosphere today? Does the atmospheric CO2 sometimes break down (maybe under sunlight) and release some small quantity of O2 or might there be another source? Might something underground be respirating atmospheric CO2?
- rigonkulous 6mo agoThe realistic read would then be, we'd be better off just blowing a giant bubble of water in any number of lagrange point and having ourselves a brand new water park to play with, bring dolphins to, etc ... Oh wait no that's a different kind of read.
- adrianN 6mo ago
- raffael_de 6mo agoi'm wondering how do people even know what ozone smells like?
- gsich 6mo agosmell during thunderstorms
- Wololooo 6mo agoEver been next to an electric arc discharging? The odour you can smell is Ozone.
- jiggawatts 6mo agoIt's the smell of photocopiers or laser printers operating.
- yubiox 6mo agoI used to have a hot tub and it had an ozone generating device for killing bacteria. I loved the smell but people here are saying if you can smell it you are getting dangerous levels of it. :(
- BFV 6mo ago[dead]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- emsign 6mo agoOuter space smells like burnt flesh is what I've heard. Space is full of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are created in novae and are everywhere in outer space in small amounts. They're the same chemicals that generate when organic compounds and fossil fuels are burnt. Makes me wonder even more why some people really want to go and live there.
- nandomrumber 6mo agoOxygen if the third most abundant element in the universe.[1] The Moon minerals contain plenty of it: The finer regolith, the lunar soil of silicon dioxide glass.[2] Minerals forming the lunar crust are made up of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum, along with small amounts of titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and hydrogen.[3] I figure you mean free oxygen or diatomic oxygen O₂, but that stuff is rare in the universe, as it’s quite reactive, and largely irrelevant for asteroid impact chemistry extreme heat and pressure, plenty of oxygen available in the rocks smashing together. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon 3. https://science.nasa.gov/moon/composition/ https://science.nasa.gov/moon/composition/
- semi-extrinsic 6mo agoEven though some minerals on the Moon contain oxygen, it doesn't mean the dust can't oxidize further when exposed to a gaseous atmosphere with high oxygen partial pressure.
- daveguy 6mo agoExactly this. Oxygen in minerals is very different than gaseous oxygen.
- nandomrumber 6mo agoThe dust is predominantly silicone dioxide (glass), which is notoriously stable / non-reactive.
- mapt 6mo agoBut does the oxidative effect of rare short-lived impact atmospheres match the other chemistry associated with being exposed to billions of years of hard (blackbody) sunlight, solar wind, and cosmic rays on the surface of a body without much of a magnetosphere? How much are those impact oxides, particularly the ones in fine dust, shorn of their chemical bonds?
- MisterTea 6mo ago> And I think the outer space report was from space walks, and the explanation was that the first time the airlock itself was exposed to hard vacuum, the surfaces of the airlock would have a reaction that left a scent of ozone. I work with industrial vacuum machinery and the big slow down in a vacuum system is coaxing out water vapor which sticks to chamber and plumbing walls like glue. My guess is dissolved oxygen in the water vapor or the water vapor itself reacting with dust particles.