Science Memes

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submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 3 months ago (17 children)

A time traveler's survival guide. The vertical green bars are the only times in Earth's history with enough oxygen to breathe (hypoxia) and low enough to avoid oxygen toxicity (hyperoxia):

https://fedia.io/media/cache/resolve/entry_thumb/fa/a9/faa97017c09ebf7d9543fece447951844e5cfbdaa9f491c95763102e987ffc59.jpg

[–] [email protected] 65 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (12 children)

That blue bar is extremely pessimistic. Humans can survive pretty well with 15% oxygen, and do so in several places in the Andes mountains, China and India. I wouldn't recommend doing it without lengthy acclimatizing, especially not considering my last paragraph, but it's completely survivable by itself.

Humans also don't really have a problem with 25% oxygen, although that will definitely bring down the life expectancy.

On the other hand, note how those pointers talk about giant insects, megafauna and other scary things. Those are a much bigger problem than the air you're breathing.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Dumb question, but in a very oxygen rich environment, can you just breathe through a paper bag or something? Mostly just breathe your own exhaled CO2 with a bit of O2 leaking in?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

For short periods maybe. You only use a few percent of the O2 you breathe in each time. But you also increase the CO2 each time. It'd depend on the amount of leak because you need enough O2 coming in but enough CO2 going out.

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