Reading The Martian and thinking about things like depressurisation – why does air from a higher concentration feel the need to rush through a small leak with enough force to rip or blow things apart instead of staying put?
What calls it from the vacuum for it to be so obsessed in doing so?
In: Planetary Science
I think you should ask the opposite question: why would a block of air stay together? There’s no bonds holding them together so Gases fill whatever space they’re contained in. You wouldn’t have a scuba tank where all the air sinks to the bottom right? Well now you have a scuba tank in space, and pop, the scuba tank disappears.
Now you have a bunch of gas atoms bouncing off of each other but the walls that were keeping them in place are now gone, if you’re in the middle, there’s no escape, you keep bouncing around, but if you’re on the outside, you bounce against the atoms on the inner side of you and start going out. But instead of hitting the wall that’s been keeping you in to turn you around, you don’t turn around, you just keep going, and going, and going until you hit something else. The guy who bounced you out hits his inner neighbor and then starts going out. He won’t hit you because you’re not turning around, and so on and so forth.
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