When air evacuates from a space craft, what happens to the air/oxygen?
It doesn’t disappear to nothing right? Would it be like a air bubble in water?
In: Planetary Science
On the earth’s surface, air particles are travelling at an average speed of 500 metres per second (1100 miles per hour). But there are so many particles that they only travel about 66 nm (0.0026 thousandths of an inch) before they hit another particle and bounce off in some other direction. It’s all these tiny particles that give rise to the forces of atmospheric pressure.
But in the vacuum of space, there’s nothing for the particles to hit, so all the air scatters off at 1100 miles per hour in every direction. That’s a pretty good imitation of disappearing to nothing.
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