Space & Vacum

[kermit911]

What makes space a vacum? How strong is the vacum? Will it rip the eyes right out of your head? If space is a vacum, were is the sun getting the O2 to keep burning? Why doesn't the vacume suck the O2 right out of Earths Atmosphere? Does the vacum have a direction it is pulling in? Are we all being pulled towards the vacum, I meen on a grand scale, like are solar system?

Thanx all

Dave

[Gef]

A couple of brief answers. The Earth's atmosphere is held in place by gravity. The sun is not "burning" in that it does not use oxygen - hydrogen atoms are "fused" into helium atoms in a nuclear reaction, not a chemical reaction.

[samz90]

What's a vacum?

[brachiopod]

And a few more...

Vacuums don't actually 'suck'. Gaseous matter moves from a region of higher pressure to a region of lower pressure until the pressure gradient is equalised. When the window of your aircraft goes at 35,000 feet, you will not get sucked out of the plane, but instead you will be blown out with the air of the aircraft's pressurised cabin as it equalises with the somewhat lower pressure of the upper troposphere that lies just beyond the broken window.

Should you be unlucky enough to be exposed to the extremely low pressure of the near-vacuum of space, all the gases dissolved in the liquids of your body (such as your bloodstream or the aqueous humour of your eyes) will exsolve, or come out of solution - similar to the mass of bubbles in a boiling kettle. This would cause massive embolisms throughout your brain and the fleshy parts of your body, and even within your cells themselves, as these contain liquid too. The air in your longs and intestinal tract would also expand rapidly in the reduced pressure.

And finally..

In the latter stages of their lives, stars actually create atomic oxygen. This occurs after all the hydrogen has been used up and fused to helium (the usual stellar nuclear fusion reaction), then the helium atoms themselves start to fuse to create carbon, oxygen and many of the other elements. Our star, (the sun), is still in the hydrogen fusing stage luckily, as they tend to die when that runs out.

[landie]

Brilliant answer, brachiopod.

[THECORBYLOON]

samz90, "vacum" is what you do when you get the Hover out...... 

[wollock]

thought the hover was for cutting the grass.

[THECORBYLOON]

Vacum should be vacuum so when I wrote Hover it was a joke about HOOVER.....Ah'll get ma jaiket