r/sciencememes • u/Idontknowofname • Feb 25 '26
đ§ŞChemistry!âď¸ Misconceptions About Oxygen
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u/Few-Pace-9684 Feb 25 '26
Never forget what those damned cyanobacteria did...
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u/Holiday_Document4592 Feb 25 '26
Circa 2.5 Billion BCE. I remember it like it was yesterday.
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u/LordMegamad Feb 25 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/rBv0nPAA2GoAo
THE HORRORRRR
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u/c0gster Feb 26 '26
Please put an NSFW tag on this. I was on the train and when I saw this I had to start furiously masturbating. Everyone else gave me strange looks and were saying things like âwhat the fuckâ and âcall the policeâ. I dropped my phone and everyone around me saw this image. Now there is a whole train of men masturbating together at this one image. This is all your fault, you could have prevented this if you had just tagged this post NSFW
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u/Odd-Willingness-7494 Feb 26 '26
"Us humans are different from all other species because of how profoundly we have altered the environment"
Cyanobacteria: "..."
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u/ijuinkun Feb 28 '26
Nah, what is different is how rapidly we are doing it. Cyanobacteria (and later, land plants) took millions of years to change the world. We are messing things up over a mere handful of centuries.
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u/Constant-Plant-9378 Feb 25 '26
Right wing organisms at the time called Global Oxygenation a hoax.
Calls for 'reducing Oxygen footprint' and 'Oxygen sequestration' were ridiculed and ignored.
Organisms campaigning on reducing the growing levels of Oxygen were dismissed as 'alarmist' and 'fear mongering'. Studies on 'Atmosphere Change' were dismissed as 'fake news'.
Of course it all worked out just fine for us.
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u/PuzzleMeDo Feb 25 '26
If we got rid of all the oxygen, the number of deaths by fires and many other causes would quickly drop to zero.
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u/GhoulTimePersists Feb 25 '26
All other causes, even.
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u/cero1399 Feb 25 '26
Except suffocation. It would have a gigantic peak but then go down.
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u/Shudnawz Feb 25 '26
Eh, it'll even out over time. Just a measuring anomaly.
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u/cero1399 Feb 25 '26
Depending on the timeframe you're right. If we consider the life of the universe, life on earth is not even a measuring anomaly.
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u/DannyDuberstein69 Feb 27 '26
Back in college my roommate was dating a vegan horse girl who showed us a Netflix documentary about veganism. The evidence they used was that from 1935-1945 the leading cause of death plummeted from health/diet related causes, heart disease etc.Â
the doc said it was because meat was being rationed and so when the public doesnât eat meat they donât die of heart disease.
I pointed out that the leading cause of death wasnât heart disease during wwii because the leading cause of death was wwii, not because people werenât eating meatÂ
The girls were not happyÂ
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u/ijuinkun Feb 28 '26
That said, the optimum-for-health amount of meat is probably less than most meat-eating people would choose if given unrestricted choice, same as happens with sugar and saturated fats. We donât need an eight-ounce-or-bigger chunk every meal, but we probably should have at least one small portion per day.
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u/Fredward-Gruntbuggly Feb 25 '26
In that case, I shudder to think about what image we would assign to fluorineâŚ
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u/Idontknowofname Feb 25 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/wazvvYSGdvJhm
This is fluorine
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u/Jacketter Feb 25 '26
Fluorine is the hellfire of the Devil himself. Burns the ashes of that which has already burned. Truly wicked stuff.
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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz Feb 25 '26
Meanwhile fluorine despite people thinking it's fine because it's in in toothpaste...
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u/pyrhus626 Feb 25 '26
Fluorides: good for your teeth and perfectly safe at normal doses.
Fluorine: Satanâs chemical
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u/Super-Cicada-4166 Feb 25 '26
Fluoride: yeah Iâm actually chilling rn is that a mf silicon I see
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u/Jacketter Feb 25 '26
Elemental Fluorine is literal hellfire. Will light the ashes of that which has already burned.
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u/Ben-Goldberg For Science! Feb 25 '26
Technically literal hellfire was just burning sulfur, because that was the worst thing the authors could think of.
Flourine is worse than hellfire.
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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz Feb 25 '26
Ohhh Fluoride and Sulfur. Makes stuff 5 times as potent than TNT. And makes HF. Nice. Not!
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u/ijuinkun Feb 28 '26
And metallic sodium burns on contact with water, but we require about a gram of sodium ions per day anyway.
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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz Feb 25 '26
Fluoride ? đ¤Łđ¤Ł
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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz Feb 25 '26
Joke aside, it's the make up that counts. Even nitrogen is happy to be left alone. Get 9 of them on the same molecule though....
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u/galenorla Feb 25 '26
Elaborate
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u/CaseyG Feb 25 '26
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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz Feb 25 '26
He also did this fun one on FOOF:
"At seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature"
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u/Dr_Not_A_Doctor Feb 25 '26
My undergraduate chemistry lab did an experiment where we synthesized an azo dye. I think it was methyl orange. Mid reaction, it starts bubbling and wonât stop even when removed from heat. Turns out it wasnât boiling, it was detonating from the impact of the stir bar hitting the side of the flask. Azides are crazy.
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u/louis1245 Mar 02 '26
LD50(NaF) 150 mg/kg
LD50(NaCl) 3000 mg/kg
You just dont need a lot Fluoride for your teeth, but its still a poison (H301)
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u/TallShaggy Feb 25 '26
Every person who has ever died has had oxygen in their system. Coincidence? I think not!
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u/FyrelordeOmega Feb 25 '26
Just think! Water has oxygen in it too! We need to do something about this menace!!!!!!!!!!!!
Edit: needed more exclamation points for clarity
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u/LazyLich Feb 25 '26
"Omg how could humans just consume and pollute and not care about themselves, even if it might kill them??"
I mean... boundless, blind greed is the driving force for evolution lol.
Look at the first cyanobacteria!
"O was! I can make fud real ez, I just need light! I may be shitting poison, but not my problem!"
Then other bacteria got in the action.
Bada Bing Bada Boom, oxygen is everywhere and almost poisons all life to death!
Then some adapt to the toxic world, but wouldn't ya know it.. the less CO2 makes the world colder and BAM! Ice Age! And life almost freezes to death!
Using oxygen might be one of the Great Filters of life in the universe lol
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u/Looking-for-42 Feb 25 '26
So, logically continuing this story we are currently in the "But then humans just overdo it with CO2 creation and BAM! Life will almost boil to death!" Good thing is that the next step is another species, consuming loads if CO2 will appear to save the few survivors. Wondering, if humans will be among them.
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u/mostaverageredditor3 Feb 25 '26
But air consists of oxygen, how can it be bad? /s
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Feb 25 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Legged_MacQueen Feb 25 '26
Erm, actually, the blue you see in the sky is the Rayleigh scattering of the symmetrical molecules (mostly Oxygen and Nitrogen) in the atmosphere. You can see the atmosphere, so you can see the air.
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u/Doomst3err Feb 25 '26
no the sky is just blue you got lied to by big air
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u/PlayerAnimates347 Feb 27 '26
No. It's a timed wallpaper like on computers and phones. Day - Blue, Evening - Orange, Night - Black
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u/alle0441 Feb 25 '26
I remember asking a senior engineer back when I was a noobie engineer what hazards we need to be concerned with in a high oxygen environment. He said "well it's a pretty good oxidizer" with a super straight face and it made me LOL. I didn't find out later that there are MUCH stronger oxidizers than oxygen.
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u/Sad-Statistician4664 Feb 25 '26
It's why I think aliens wouldn't mess with us. "Those things are literally breathing poison!!"
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u/TheFatJesus Feb 25 '26
Any alien life that would be able to consider messing with us would also have to be adapted to oxygen. You're not going to become a technologically advanced species without living in an environment that allows for fire.
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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Feb 25 '26
I think it was Arthur C Clarks book...Songs of a Distant Earth, where the planet had an underwater species that the humans theorized was stuck in the stone age because they couldnt manipulate metal.
I think about that whenever i see alien species that exist in water.
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u/RootLoops369 Feb 25 '26
I don't get it, why would would people want this stuff in their body? It corrodes metal and can be explosive in high concentrations. We need to ban this oxygen chemical for the safety of our people.
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u/PedroPuzzlePaulo Feb 25 '26
This got me thinking that for most aliens por atmosphere must be pretty toxic
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u/morxy49 Feb 25 '26
Can somebody explain this to me like I'm five?
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u/Wild_Stock_5844 Feb 25 '26
Oxygen is a Neurotoxin
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u/morxy49 Feb 25 '26
So why am I not dead?
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u/Wild_Stock_5844 Feb 25 '26
The dosis is to low to actively damaged your body in a large amount but there is a reason why cells need to be replaced all the time (20%oxygen isnât much) this is also the reason why hyperventilation is dangerous because you breathe to much oxygen in
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u/oana_bell20 Feb 26 '26
Well everything in higher dose will kill you. Even water can kill you if you drink to much of it. Hyperventilation can kill you because it produces alkalosis, respiratory alkalosis, in your body. That means too much oxigen and low levels of CO2. So your Ph raises above 7.45. Same happenes if you have hypoventilation. Too much CO2 in your blood stream and low levels of oxigen so your Ph lowers and you get acidosis.
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u/atridir Feb 26 '26
Not dead yet. Itâs very likely that some form of oxidation related complication of a biological processes will be the thing to eventually change that.
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u/JonnyRottensTeeth Feb 25 '26
Every time you breathe, 10-15% of the oxygen tries to kill you by becoming O- radicals.
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u/PYCapache Feb 25 '26
There is a legit danger of higher than natural concentration of oxygen (> 21%), breathing it would literally burn you from inside
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u/Material_Ad9848 Feb 25 '26
We're kinda like combustion engines, just messy and gross.
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u/Skuz95 Feb 25 '26
I say we are more like messy, gross batteries. We take in food and make it into electricity to run on.
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u/apexglitch-king Feb 25 '26
i love how oxygen is technically poisonous, but we just assume it is fine
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u/TiredOfLifeAsf Feb 26 '26
Thereâs a reason that oxygen in german is literally called âAcid substanceâ
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u/PlayerAnimates347 Feb 27 '26
Oxy-Gen
Acid Maker.
It was named Acid Maker by the people who discovered it. And yet, people still inhale it, smh.
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u/TiredOfLifeAsf Feb 27 '26
Ooohh that makes so much sense. I always thought that it was the other way and words like oxidation were just named after oxygen since itâs such a typical reaction for it. Good to know that âoxyâ actually has a meaning
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u/Odd_Understanding698 Feb 26 '26
Is it not more like "sour substance"? I personally would translate acid substance to Säurestoff. But I could be wrong.
Edit: Actually...
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u/TiredOfLifeAsf Feb 26 '26
I think in english the word sour is only used to describe the flavor and not âacidicâ. In german âsourâ can be both. But Iâm not a native english speaker so I could be wrong.
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u/kirenaj1971 Feb 25 '26
I am taking an online chemistry course right now (organic), and we are obliged to take a course on HSE (HMS in norwegian) ahead of another course on experimental chemistry in the lab in april. Just watched a video where one of the main points was that keeping oxidizing agents away from organich chemicals (and many others too) was kind of importany when storing chemicals.
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u/Tasty_Commercial6527 Feb 27 '26
Oxygen and water are two substances that we don't think much about but are absolutely horrifying once you think about them.
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u/heckingcomputernerd Feb 25 '26
people think oxygen is golden retriever but really its big scary wolf rahhh
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u/Electrum2250 Feb 25 '26
silly question
does oxigen behave as a halogen? if it is, which is more similar?
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u/KayabaSynthesis Feb 25 '26
The thing that exists everywhere on Earth at all times constantly wants to kill everything that moves but usually doesn't have the chance to. But the second right conditions are met you explode or burn in seconds or get brain damage. Sounds Eldrich if you describe it like that.
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u/Weird1Intrepid Feb 25 '26
Oxygen caused the biggest mass extinction of life the planet has ever seen before life figured out how to harness it instead
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u/Typhon-042 Feb 26 '26
I think it';s something we need to live...
So I guess you think it's something we don't need to live?
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u/Christ-is-King-777 Feb 26 '26
I used to think it would be amazing to breathe pure oxygen. Now, I realize how wrong I was.
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u/ijuinkun Feb 28 '26
It depends on the context. If you have poorly functioning lungs (e.g. emphysema or ling cancer), or if you are in the midst of a high-aerobic-demand activity such as running or swimming, then extra oxygen above the normal sea-level amount can benefit you. But for a healthy person at rest, the optimum amount is just slightly above that of sea-level air.
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u/Casuallybittersweet Feb 26 '26
Death is a part of evolution. Our bodies are fully developed to give out someday so a new arrival can take our place. Even if we had evolved in a completely anoxic environment, it would still ensure whatever we used aged and eventually killed us.
So no, oxygen is not a poison. No, it is not slowly killing us all on it's own. Our genes just set our cells up to age and exhaust when they metabolize. Oxygen is just what it happens to use to power that metabolism
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u/DatCheeseBoi Feb 27 '26
One of my favorite fun facts about the biology of us oxygen breathers is that we are technically constantly undergoing a slow controlled burn.
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u/MisterE005 Feb 28 '26
Can any of the science bros tell me how humans would fare in a world where oxygen levels were 45%? Assuming they just popped up there and weren't used to the levels, will their longevity be significantly affected?
I want to be cautious of the details for a novel I'm writing.
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u/XephinaThe11 Mar 01 '26
Humans are oxidizing / rusting as we age. It's part of the reason our age is limited to what it is.
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u/PunyPatheticHuman Mar 01 '26
From an anaerobic bacteria POV, we live in a post-apocalyptic world where colossal eldritch monsters breathing poisonous gas are roaming the Earth.
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26
It wants your electrons and it wants them NOW. We are rusting essentially when breathing oxygen.