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ArcherofFire t1_ja01csg wrote

Reply to comment by Minnakht in Water on Earth is not Constant. Why ? by ItsDivyamGupta

Excuse me, exactly which nuclear reaction do you think is taking place to convert nitrogen into oxygen?

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Minnakht t1_ja04jp5 wrote

Uhh, being hit with an alpha particle randomly somewhere where something radioactive is exposed to air? I think Patrick Blackett proved that's what happens when that happens, back in 1925 or so.

It absolutely is an incredibly insignificant amount, but I didn't want to say "the number of oxygens on Earth is perfectly fixed and they're just cycled through being part of different particles", because even the number of oxygen atoms on Earth goes up or down. Probably more down as we send it into space? I don't know.

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vasopressin334 t1_ja0dqt3 wrote

Yes, in fact about a hundred tons of atmosphere are lost to space every day, mostly on the trailing side as earth moves through space. https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-loses-hundreds-of-tons-atmosphere-to-space-every-day/amp

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Blissful_Altruism t1_ja0fp3o wrote

This is one of those things that sounds concerning until you remember it’s been happening for billions of years so clearly it’s not an issue

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mfb- t1_ja2bm7b wrote

Oxygen isn't a relevant process (although technically possible: Nitrogen-15 + neutron can become nitrogen-16 which decays to oxygen-16), but carbon is: Nitrogen-14 + neutron -> carbon-14 + proton. That's the dominant way carbon-14 is produced. It decays back to nitrogen over thousands of years, and we use that process for radiocarbon dating.

/u/Minnakht /u/ArcherofFire

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