Comment on Metals from space junk are polluting Earth's upper atmosphere
xkforce@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Approximately 5,000 tons of space dust etc. enter Earth’s atmosphere every year. Which is about 50 times the amount of space junk that enters the atmosphere annually.
ElectroNeutrino@lemmy.world 1 year ago
But the composition is not the same as space dust, and could have a negative impact on the chemistry of the upper atmosphere.
xkforce@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Space dust and meteors are rich in Nickel, Iron, Cobalt and precious metals and at 50 times the concentration of the metals primarily found in satellites like Aluminum, Titanium and the like. What impact do you think Nickel and Cobalt have on the atmosphere?
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
How many petrochemicals are there in meteors? How much hydrazine?
xkforce@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Probably about as much as a satellite exposed to a 3,000 degree celsius reentry in an Oxygen rich atmosphere.
Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Honestly, I don’t know. And while this is not to say I don’t care, humanity and the world we evolved to live in have always survived under the existing conditions. Measurable amounts of man-made materials vaporizing into our atmosphere isn’t something humanity and nature have traditionally dealt with.
And sure, the earth is big, there’s a lot of space dust, and perhaps not a lot of it comes from man-made sources.
But at one point mankind also thought forests to be too big use up. We keep telling ourselves that we’re not running out of oil or that we’re not over a climate ‘tipping-point’. We thought we couldn’t punch a hole into the ozone with hair spray and air conditioning, but here we are, with one of the largest ozone holes on record this year.
A little concern is probably warranted, at least until scientists can study what the impact will be.