Comment on Metals from space junk are polluting Earth's 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?

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  • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    How many petrochemicals are there in meteors? How much hydrazine?

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    • 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.

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  • 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.

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