How could you remove all the oxygen from Earth's Atmosphere? Hypothetically...

Meatbot

How about if there's a lifeform which has grown so large that it breathes all of the O2 out of the air, converting it all to CO2. It could be genetic engineering gone wrong, with runaway growth that can't be stopped. After it runs out of O2 it dies and the trees have to start replenishing the O2 again.

Dadface

The higher the temperature the faster the escape.At about 80000 degrees Celcius most of the atmospheric molecules will reach escape velocity.Yes, the earth will turn into a big marshmallow man but this time there will be no one to terrorise.

chemisttree

One could imagine a large cloud of iron gas or finely divided particles out there in space. The sun's solar wind usually keeps this dust cloud at bay near the heliopause, ploughing up and concentrating the huge iron rich cloud near that boundary but something is wrong with the sun.... Sunspot activity is at an all time low and with it the solar winds are diminishing. The heliopause approaches the outer solar system. Jupiter's immense magnetic field attracts the larger particles of the cloud and slings them inward toward the inner planets. EARTH IS DOOMED. The steady rain of finely divided iron strikes the earth's upper atmosphere and is converted to iron oxide in a steady display of a new and frightening aurora.

Dadface

That sounds great chemisttree.

Evo

A loss of a planet's magnentic field would allow solar winds to strip away the atmoshpere (over a very, very long time). As we know, the earth's magnetic field is due for a flip, which could leave the earth with an extremely weakend or little to no field for awhile. Of course this has happened many, many times in earth's history with no ill effect. That hasn't stopped wild stories about the cataclysmic effects of this flip.

Depending on how far you are willing to stretch the truth, and based on movies I've seen, stretching the truth isn't a concern, an intense solar storm at the exact time of a flip could cause devastating effects to the earth's atmosphere, well, not in reality, but it would work in a movie, maybe throw a comet strike in at the same time.

RobinsonJ

chemisttree, forgive my ignorance, but how would iron oxide doom the earth? Would it, essentially, make the air unbreathable? Poisonous? What is the effect of iron oxide when inhaled? Or does the creation of iron oxide use up the oxygen? I like the idea! I just need to fully understand the effect it would have on people...and perhaps how long it would last.

Evo, also a good idea. The effect your talking about it Polar Shift, correct. Some novels have used this where a bad guy is trying to make it happen and the good guys stop them. And I'm 100% not opposed to using it! In my novel Antarktos Rising, I start by using a similar theory that is much more far fetched--crustal displacement, where I actually shifted the physical poles of the earth (I thaw Antarctica)! So shifting the magnetic poles...not an issue. I think I'd just need to evaluate whether or not my fans would think I was rehashing old material by shifting poles again...even though they're magnetic instead of physical.

Really enjoying these ideas, everyone!

-- Jeremy

RobinsonJ

Aha! chemisttree, I was able to find out that too much iron oxide in the system would cause Iron Poisoning...which has these nasty symptoms resulting in death. Perfect!

"The first indication of iron poisoning by ingestion is a pain in the stomach, as the stomach lining becomes ulcerated. This is accompanied by nausea and vomiting. The pain then abates for 24 hours as the iron passes deeper into the body and damages internal organs, particularly the brain and the liver, and metabolic acidosis develops. The body goes into shock and death from liver failure."

So, filling the atmosphere with copious amounts of iron oxide could, in theory (in a novel ) kill all living, breathing creature on the surface of the planet in...say...two days? Day 1 = stomach pain, nausea, vomiting followed by, "Hey I feel better!" then Day 2, everyone drops like flies on a bug zapper. That might do the trick.

Eventually, I'm assuming, the iron oxide would fall to the ground...perhaps poisoning water (unless filtered). A promising lead.

-- Jeremy

Dadface

I'm sure there would be a multitude of effects with chemisttrees or anybody elses idea and it would be an enormous task to predict them all.I think,however,that chemistree was thinking mainly of a chemical reaction in the atmosphere,the iron will react with the oxygen to produce iron oxide thereby removing the oxygen.If the iron particles entered the atmosphere at speed the temperature will be high and that coupled with the fact that the iron particles are small will make the reactions very rapid.Many of the iron particles may be trapped for a while in low earth orbits and as they enter the atmosphere they will burn up giving a spectacular light show including, perhaps a glowing ring surrounding the earth.chemistrees idea is a great one and I can see some of it in my mind as I write this.

chemisttree

It has actually happened all before (in the novel). Geologists have misinterpreted the huge iron oxide deposits present throughout the world as arising from the rise of cyanobacteria producing oxygen as a byproduct. Standard theory goes that as the nascent oxygen started to 'poison' our atmosphere with oxygen the oceans of ancient earth, rich with dissolved and suspended iron salts, began to oxidize that dissolved iron producing iron oxide. This had the effect of delaying somewhat the onset of an oxygen-containing atmosphere and the iron oxide precipitated in extremely thick beds.

In actuality (in the novel) the milky way has immense regions of iron rich particles and interstellar gas. These have formed ripples and the solar system passes through one from time to time. This time it happend to occur during an unusually low solar minimum and Jupiter just happened to be in the right point in its orbit to grab it.

RobinsonJ

Awesome, chemisttree. I've actually been so inspired by the ideas here, and I'm heavily leaning toward the iron oxide idea, that I wrote the prologue today. Came out great! Now the next hardest step...a title.

-- Jeremy

chemisttree

How about "Rouge Planet" or some other play on words that uses the word 'rouge'?

Cryptonic

Jeremy, I think chemisttree has come up with a terrific & convincing way to remove O2 from our atmosphere! Much more plausible than my Proxima Centaurian anti-matter bomb lol! (Anyone remember the "Oxygen Destroyer" from Godzilla 1954?)

I'm looking forward to reading the finished product! How long does it normally take you to complete a novel?

BTW I have preordered Pulse from Amazon!

It's enjoyable having a published sci-fi author here, I must say!

(PS: chemisttree, do you mean "Rogue Planet"? Greg Bear's already written a novel by that title (a Star Wars novelization). I think it was a '50s pulp title too? What about "Rustworld"?)

sylas

Just to keep in mind the questions that will come up wrt to science. (Sorry to be a wet blanket! But someone will be pointing out things like this at some point.)

The heat of formation of iron oxide (Fe2O3) is -822.2 kJ/mol. Oxidizing iron releases a lot of energy.

Sea air pressure is 1000hPa, there are about 10 tonnes of air for every square meter of Earth's surface.

Molar mass of air is about 29 g/mol, so that's about 3.45e5 mol of air, and since air is 21% oxygen, that's about 7.24e4 mol of O2.

Putting all that into Fe2O3 requires about 4.83e4 mol of Fe2O3, and the heat of formation release is about 3.97e10 J of energy, assuming elemental Fe and O2 is used.

If this happens over, say, one year (3.16e7 seconds) then the power released is about 1260 Watts, for every square meter of the Earth.

That's about 5 times more energy than is currently being absorbed from the Sun, added continuously over a whole year.

(Someone check my figures...)

(Addendum: you also have atomic weight of Fe2O3 as about 160, and 4.83e4 mol is about 7.7 tonnes of rust for each square meter of Earth's surface.)

You're going to need something a bit less exothermic. Perhaps the iron does not arrive in a pure elemental form, but as some other compound, so that you don't just get all the energy release from burning iron. But you still need some reaction that occurs spontaneously and rapidly. Biology does mad things occasionally. I'd try to think about ways some massive bloom of weird microbes could help. Perhaps drifting extra-terrestrial microbal spoors from space, or something from deep within the Earth coming to the surface. They might metabolize oxygen in some way that balances the energy of the reactions better. I'm just thinking off the top of my head.

Cheers -- sylas

RobinsonJ

Wow, I've been busy. Slow reply!

No need to worry about wet blankets. I welcome all possibilities. The benefit of being a fiction writer is that I can choose to ignore certain facts to make a story work, or in this case, come up with a solution that works, even if its hypothetical.

-- Jeremy

Count Iblis

Oxygen catastrophe in reverse mentioned by MATLABdude would easily work. Oxygen only started to accumulatate in the oceans and then laterin the atmosphere after all the iron was oxydized. So, we just need to dig up a lot of iron from the Earth's interior and the oxygen will vanish quite rapidly.

Another option is to sterilize the planet. The oxygen will then eventually vannish because it slowly reacts with the nitrogen in the atmosphere and it won't be replaced anymore. A nearby gamma ray burst could speed up that reaction significantly and it could sterilize the planet too.

chemisttree

The August edition of Sky and Telescope features, on the cover, the title, "What's Wrong With the Sun? Our host star has gone nearly spotless for more than a year."

Astronomers are wondering what lies ahead... Could it be death from above? (in the novel)

RobinsonJ

Awesome. I actually just submitted my proposal for the book to my agent. It's a 78 page sample and a summary. If he likes it we'll start taking it out to publishers. If not, I may need to rework. But I'll definitely keep you posted on any developments!