Oxygen is so crazy that once microbiology in the ancient oceans started producing it, all life on earth nearly died. Like very nearly sterilized the earth.
At high concentrations, its still fucking awful for us. Easy to forget that the atmosphere is still only 21% Oxygen and 78% Nitrogen. Even setting aside the risks of fire and explosion at higher concentrations, this highly reactive substance degrades the nervous and musculature system.
You wouldn’t want to wander around in a fully oxygenated environment for the same reason you wouldn’t want to drive your car through a lake of gasoline.
Powerful oxidizers are dangerous stuff!
One I’ve learned about recently (and used) is potassium permanganate. One of its uses is for improving water quality in fish ponds. It oxidizes basically all organic matter. It can simultaneously knock out algae, bacteria, parasites, hormones, and other excess organic waste. And the pathogens it kills can’t build up resistance to it like they would an antibiotic or poison, so it can be used preventively without creating stronger bugs. You can’t really build resistance to BURNING outside video games.
But that also means that if you add too much, you can just as easily sterilize all life in a body of water, including fish and anything else you want to keep.
AND it means you need to be careful when handling it. If you burn your eyes or your lungs, it makes them stop working!
If you burn your eyes or your lungs, it makes them stop working!
Top tip right here.
It feels like a loading screen tip, and I’m scraping my head as to for what kind of game it would be the tip.
The more you know! 💫
Thank you mitochondria for allowing us to respirate the death element.
Everybody in this thread needs to read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
I’d add that the audiobook is amazing also.
Came here for this comment. Also the great oxidation event.
Aliens would need an oxidizer to metabolize as well, even if that oxidizer isn’t oxygen. If they want to actually efficiently get energy out of things, it’ll need to be a strong one. Even fermentation is a oxidation-reduction reaction that just doesn’t use oxygen.
So you’re telling me if I stop breathing I’ll never get older? I’m in!
Reading this I start to miss r/HFY again
Yeah, if one is so inclined,the Jenkinsverse is well worth the read.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/universes/jenkinsverse/
does lemmy have an equivalent to/r/hfy ? This has big /r/hfy energy.
Death breathers are made of electric thinking meat. Life is fucking rad.
Explains why we tend to spontaneously combust at times
Rusting your insides
Chemical damage to our bodies mostly consists of both oxidation and Maillard-like reactions. So we’re both slowly burning and getting cooked!
They say a planet like earth I’d very rare. Rarer still to find life on one. I believe life is as abundant in the universe as it is here. Which means to me, in our neck of the universe we are an oddity.
