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What If the World Lost Oxygen for Five Seconds?

Where do you think you would be? And do you think it would do to you?

By Michelle HagenPublished 3 years ago 3 min read

Imagine if all the Earth's oxygen disappeared, not forever lets just for say five seconds, would we just hold our breath? What would happen to the atmosphere, what would happen to the environment just everything surrounding us? Here's what would happen if the world lost oxygen for just five seconds. Take a nice deep breath, are you holding it, feel how satisfying that is. What you're breathing in is oxygen and it takes up to roughly 21% of our atmosphere with 78% being nitrogen, although it's not the most abundant gas in our atmosphere it is the most important I would say. But, without oxygen plants animals water and us humans wouldn't be where we are today . Five seconds may not sound like a whole lot, even ten seconds of time to be without oxygen. Most of us can go at least thirty seconds without taking a breath so it would happen too fast for your body to even notice. Some of us even hold our breath with out even knowing it at times. Your breathing would actually remain normal, but as for everything else not so much. In just five seconds the earth would look completely different without oxygen. You can say goodbye to the Hoover Dam the Pantheon dome and anything else made of concrete these structures would instantly collapse. Crazy to think right? Oxygen acts as a special binding agent to concrete. Without it concrete is just dust in the wind. Speaking of buildings, any untreated metal would instantly be fused together, this is because there's a layer of oxidation on metals that prevents them from welding together. Without that layer metals would instantly bind to each other! All I can imagine is being in something metal at the time, who knows the out come that would bring! And If you happen to be relaxing at the beach at the time, hope you brought your sunscreen! Expect a severe sunburn, the ozone layer our protection against the sun's UV rays is made of oxygen, take away the oxygen and the earth would become extremely dangerous. There would be nothing protecting us from the sun's UV rays. Talk about a real day in the sun. In addition to a sunburn our inner ear would explode! Losing oxygen means losing 21% of our air pressure, a change in air pressure that drastic is equivalent to being at sea level and dropping down 2,000 meters instantly. Our ears wouldn't have enough time to adapt, and all that pressure would be very uncomfortable! Having a good time yet? well, don't expect it to last long without oxygen there's no fire. The combustion process and vehicles wouldn't be able to occur , any mode of transport that isn't electric will automatically fail. And watch out, because planes will fall from the sky and millions of cars will be stopped in their tracks. The sky would be completely dark before it hits the earth, light from the Sun bounces off multiple particles in the air, without oxygen in the atmosphere there are less things to bounce off and the sky will appear dark. Oh yeah, and while all this is happening the Earth's crust would completely crumble that's because Earth's crust is made up of 45% oxygen the crust would crumble and continue to crumble until there's nothing left! Sending you and everyone on the planet into a freefall. I guess its safe to say that it is not a survivable situation. Sound like fun? Probably not, but luckily you can take a deep breath of 21% oxygen knowing this will never happen.

Science

About the Creator

Michelle Hagen

Hi all! Blogger here! I use to love to blog all the time and have moved over to wanting to write articles! Follow me along on my journey here!

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