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Asked by mushixxx to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 17 Jun 2013.
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Sam Geen answered on 17 Jun 2013:
Matt probably knows more about this than me, but in theory the gases should be the same because everything is made of the same elements (although there can be more of certain types of elements than others on Earth than in space – e.g. there’s more hydrogen in space than on Earth). Sometimes you get higher pressures underground, or the temperatures are different (space can be much colder or much hotter than Earth).
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 17 Jun 2013:
Well, all the gasses in the Universe are made from elements (types of atoms) or molecules (which are just two or more atoms stuck together). That’s common everywhere you go. There are 88 naturally occurring elements which are stable for the purposes of this anwer (humans have made a couple more but they decay so we don’t really count them, and there are a couple in nature that decay quickly too so I’m not counting them). The difference is how much of those elements are present in any particular spot. For example, one of the Gas Giant planets Jupiter is mainly a gas called hydrogen. This is the same gas that is in the Sun, and in fact hydrogen is the most common gas in the Universe. On earth the conditions means hydrogen normally like to make a molecule with oxygen and they team up, 2 hydrogen to 1 oxygen – this is H2O, which you might recognise – it’s water! Water is a gas in the atmosphere, and liquid in the oceans and rivers and lakes. Water is what makes earth such a good place to live (without it life wouldn’t have evolved to be as it is). What I find amazing is what water does inside the earth – it makes rock melt – yep! It’s not water like you or I would recognise, but it’s part of the rock, and when it comes together and builds up it makes the minerals sort of dissolve and turn into liquid rock – magma! This is where volcanoes come from so I’m very happy about water being on earth 🙂 Earth is special, normally there is no-where near as much water inside rocks on other planets. I think this is the biggest difference.
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Robert Woolfson answered on 17 Jun 2013:
Space is a vacuum, so there isn’t really anything there. No atoms = no gas. If you put every atom equally in space throughout the universe, instead of having people and planets, there’d be one atom per million kilometers or something ridiculous.
Underground, we don’t really know. Humanity has never been below a few kilometers underground so we have very little idea what goes on down there. All the pressure and heat produces very different kinds of rocks, so it could just as easily produce very unusual and interesting gases.
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Robert Woolfson answered on 17 Jun 2013:
Space is a vacuum, so there isn’t really anything there. No atoms = no gas. If you put every atom equally in space throughout the universe, instead of having people and planets, there’d be one atom per million kilometers or something ridiculous.
Underground, we don’t really know. Humanity has never been below a few kilometers underground so we have very little idea what goes on down there. All the pressure and heat produces very different kinds of rocks, so it could just as easily produce very unusual and interesting gases.
Comments
mushixxx commented on :
Wow that’s really interesting! Thanks for answering 🙂