Air everywair
April 12, 2007 11:15 AM Subscribe
Lets say someone wanted to fill the inner solar system with air, just for fun. They have an infinite source of mass with which they use to produce air molecules. How much air per second would they need to produce so that it maintains roughly 1 atmosphere of pressure? They would have gravity (lots of air falling into the sun) as well as the air just expanding into space to contend with.
Would they need to keep producing air until the universe was up to 1 atmosphere pressure? Or would solar winds, local gravity, and the previously produced air over time produce a back pressure of sorts so that you could produce less and less air each year to maintain pressure?
This post was deleted for the following reason: Please see the made up "what if" science questions clause.
Awesome question.
...maintains roughly 1 atmosphere of pressure...
You mean at the least pressurized point? It isn't going to be constant throughout. In particular, it's going to to really, really high at the surface of the Sun.
posted by DU at 11:40 AM on April 12, 2007
...maintains roughly 1 atmosphere of pressure...
You mean at the least pressurized point? It isn't going to be constant throughout. In particular, it's going to to really, really high at the surface of the Sun.
posted by DU at 11:40 AM on April 12, 2007
The average orbital radius of Pluto is 3660 million miles. I don't know if you want to consider the solar system a disc or sphere. I'll assume the larger of the two, so the volume of the solar system is roughly 205367570526 million cubic miles.
So, that's the volume you need to fill. I'm not sure how much air you need to create 1 atmosphere of pressure, but I don't think you could keep the pressure uniform throughout the entire volume anyway. We certainly don't have uniform atmospheric pressure on earth. I assume you'd only be able to standardize pressure in a closed system.
And yeah, it sounds like chatfilter, but I assume this is for a book of some kind.
posted by willnot at 11:40 AM on April 12, 2007
So, that's the volume you need to fill. I'm not sure how much air you need to create 1 atmosphere of pressure, but I don't think you could keep the pressure uniform throughout the entire volume anyway. We certainly don't have uniform atmospheric pressure on earth. I assume you'd only be able to standardize pressure in a closed system.
And yeah, it sounds like chatfilter, but I assume this is for a book of some kind.
posted by willnot at 11:40 AM on April 12, 2007
INNER solar system, so only out to the orbit of Mars (and it would only be Neptune anyway, btw).
Assuming the Sun is the only source of gravity in this region, you'd have to figure out the pressure gradient, then keep filling until you get 1 atm right where Mars is. I could probably do this problem eventually and with the right inducements, but this margin is too small to contain the diagram I'd need.
posted by DU at 11:47 AM on April 12, 2007
Assuming the Sun is the only source of gravity in this region, you'd have to figure out the pressure gradient, then keep filling until you get 1 atm right where Mars is. I could probably do this problem eventually and with the right inducements, but this margin is too small to contain the diagram I'd need.
posted by DU at 11:47 AM on April 12, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
Did you know that earth continuously loses some small amount of it's atmosphere to space each day?
posted by IronLizard at 11:35 AM on April 12, 2007