this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
844 points (97.5% liked)

Science Memes

9984 readers
2079 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

Sister Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
844
Explain that, science nerds! (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
160 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The aluminum and other metals in the space crafts bond with the ozone, which could fuck with our magnetosphere. It turns out it’s mostly from satellites burning up on reentry, which makes way more sense though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

And a messed up ozone layer means the atmosphere will... disappear?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If the ozone layer fills with metallic alloys, it fucks with the magnetosphere, potentially to the point that the magnetosphere no longer protects us from solar winds, and that would lose us the atmosphere.

It also might not be that serious, but there’s no way to know until there’s a problem. Companies are rapidly increasing the number of artificial satellites in our orbit without any consideration to the potential consequences though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is this similar to the ozone depletion and ozone holes that were always a big deal in the early 2000s and had lead to bans of chlorofluorocarbons eg in refrigerants and other products, or is this an entirely different topic?

To me it sounds similar so I wonder why the danger of Earth losing its atmosphere "very quickly" hadn't caused panic back then, it was only things like "stay inside so you don't get sunburns". Though the atmosphere disappearing would be a way bigger deal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

It’s different because these are now metallic compounds, which can become magnetically charged and may be able to affect the magnetosphere.

The magnetosphere is basically the ball of magnetic force around the earth that insulated us from solar winds.

Solar winds can destroy planetary atmospheres, when the planet isn’t otherwise protected.

The hole in the ozone layer was also a problem, but it’s more because the ozone layer protects us from a lot of ultraviolet light. The hole (which was not exactly a hole, but that works better for marketing) would have caused a bunch of cancer and exposed us to higher levels of toxic ozone on the ground, which are both big problems, but not for all life on earth

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Nah it could leak out into space.