oxygen

If we want to live on the Moon we need oxygen and NASA already knows how to extract it: with a giant mirror

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Goodbye, Mars, the Moon has returned make it a priority. Really, except for an Elon Musk obsessed with terraform the red planetthe rest of the countries and even NASA had something between their minds: returning to the Moon. And come back in a big way, too, laying the foundations to create a settlement. For this we need oxygen, and NASA has just taken a great leap for humanity in the project to harvest oxygen from the lunar regolith. And all thanks to a giant mirror. In short. The Moon is a mine. Not only does it have enormous potential to obtain energy through photovoltaics, but it also has a huge amount of resources in its soil. The satellite is covered in ‘lunar dust’, also known as regolith, and part of its composition is oxygen. With current technology you can’t separate the chaff from the grain, but that’s where NASA’s carbothermal oxygen production reactor, or CaRD, project comes into play. The mirror | Photo: NASA The prototype installed on Earth is a reactor that has a huge precision mirror that concentrates a beam of sunlight on a reactor, heating its interior to temperatures of about 1,800ºC. The enormous amount of energy generated causes a carbothermic reaction which produces, among other elements, oxygen. It is the evolution of the high-power laser that NASA development in 2023, but unlike that tool that needs an enormous amount of energy, and other solutions based on electrolysismirrors are nourished by the sunlight they can concentrate. Regolith. According to According to the US agency, the technology “has the potential to produce several times its own weight in oxygen each year and in an automated manner, which will allow for a sustained human presence and the creation of a lunar economy.” And that lunar dust not only has oxygen. The regolith is composed of O2, but also metals. If the different components can be separated, we can obtain other resources and, in addition, the resulting dust as waste can be used as construction material for make bricks and roads. In fact, there are projects to ‘dope the regolith with bacteria to be able to cultivate directly in the lunar soil. The ESA approach. These advances by NASA occur while the rugged steps of the Artemis program which plans to take humans to lunar orbit this year, with future missions in which we will set foot on the satellite again. But as we said, the ESA also wants its piece of the pieand relies on electrolysis to separate metals from oxygen. Regolith and urine cement: the best cement | Photo: ESA The problem, as we said before, is the enormous amount of energy necessary to carry out the process. This molten salt electrolysis heats the regolith to 950ºC with calcium chloride to achieve the same objective that NASA has: release oxygen and separate it from iron and aluminum. And it is also collaborating with NASA to ensure that human presence in the medium term, experimenting with a mixture between human urine and regolith to create cement. Everyone wants a piece of cheese. But the one who has plans as ambitious as those of the United States with the Moon is… China. The Asian giant is completing phases of the space race dizzying speedwith launches every two by three and some very aggressive plans. Before 2030 it wants to send its first astronauts to orbit the satellite, with a manned moon landing scheduled for 2029/2030. Furthermore, together with Russia, they are building the International Lunar Research Station that they want to have in operation by 2030, complete by 2035 with thousands of scientists on board and with a nuclear reactor as a heart to get stable energy. When the enormous problem posed by the get oxygen stably on the Moona giant step will have been taken in international ambitions to place a long-term base on the satellite. That is, furthermore, SpaceX’s new plan. Elon Musk confirmed a few days ago that Mars was no longer the priority because quick results are needed, and the Moon is a much more favorable scenario. There are many eyes focused on the same objective, one we haven’t stepped on since 1972. Images | NASA, ESA In Xataka | Faced with the need to look for weapons against superbacteria, science has opted to send viruses into space

The bad news is that the oxygen of the Earth has an expiration date. The good is that we will not be here to see it

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We can breathe calm. Also the grandchildren of our grandchildren’s grandchildren. But the oxygen that supports complex life on Earth will not be eternal. Our oxygen -rich atmosphere has approximately one billion years. So, the change will be drastic. A rapid dexygenation. An international study published in Nature Geoscience Details the calculations. After making more than 400,000 simulations on the geological and biological evolution of our planet, Japanese and American scientists came to the conclusion that the Earth will experience rapid dexygenation that will return it to an atmospheric state similar to that of the archaic land of about 2.5 billion years ago. What the sun gives you, the sun takes it away. Until recently, the scientific community estimated the life expectancy of the Earth’s biosphere in another 2,000 million years, when global warming at geological time scales leads to the evaporation of the oceans. But this new model projects a different scenario. According to researchers, the increase in solar radiation will intensify the cycle of carbonates and silicates. This will cause a drastic decrease in carbon dioxide concentrations. With less co₂, photosynthetic organisms such as plants, the main oxygen producers, will die. The result: a vertiginous fall of atmospheric oxygen. If perhaps, anaerobic life will remain. With a millionth of the oxygen we have today, complex life forms will be extinguished long before the oceans boil and the planet is left without surface water. For the vast majority of life forms, whose metabolism depends on oxygen, this will be the end of the road. The model indicates that deoxygenation It will happen at 1,080 million years (with a deviation of ± 140 million years). By then, the earth’s atmosphere will be radically different, with high levels of methane, low carbon dioxide levels, and a total absence of ozone layer. With luck, it will be a world of anaerobic life forms. And what is this data for us. Although we will not affect us, nor the grandchildren of our grandchildren’s grandchildren, the study, funded by the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science Science project of NASA, has important implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. It suggests that an oxygenated atmosphere is not a permanent characteristic of habitable worlds. Oxygen, and its photochemical by -product, ozone, are two of the biofirms that seek space agencies in exoplanets. If the oxygen rich atmosphere of the Earth will last between 20 and 30% of the total life of the planet, other planets similar to the Earth could now have weakly oxygenated or anxic atmospheres. The search for life beyond our solar system will have to expand its scope to other biological firms. Image | POT In Xataka | 20 years of changes in the biosphere of the earth summarized in a wonderful 4K video of only two minutes

Some researchers have created a pill that mimics the effects of the lack of oxygen. They have a good reason

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Height evil is one of the problems that professional mountaineers and occasional visitors who decide to ascend to certain altitudes must face. This disorder is related to the lack of oxygen, hypoxia, which occurs in these environments, but now a pharmaceutical company wants to turn it around. Turn that “evil” into a “good.” Hypoxystat. Transform the mountain air, or rather, the absence of air of the mountain, into a pill It is the proposal of the Gladstone Institute and Maze Therapeutics laboratories. The new drug has received the name Hypoxystat and its goal is to fight against metabolic disorders such as Leigh Syndrome. Mountain air. It might seem crazy idea, but reducing the amount of oxygen that enters our body can make sense in certain senses beyond high performance sport. Living in a mountainous area can benefit people with Leight syndrome, a mitochondrial disease that affects childhood. This disorder occurs when the mitochondria, the organelle in charge of feeding the rest of the cell is not able to consume all the oxygen it receives. This leads to a dangerous accumulation of oxygen that ends with cells and tissues and, ultimately, with the patient’s life. “It is not practical for each patient with this disease to move to the mountains,” Explain in a press release Isha Jain, who has led the recent study of the drug. “But this drug could be a controlled and safe way to apply the same benefits to patients.” 2016. Almost a decade ago, a team, in which Jain herself participated, discovered that mice with this syndrome responded well when they were exposed to air with a lower amount of oxygen, the equivalent of that which can be found at heights of 4,500 meters (a upper altitude in almost a kilometer to the Teide peak). The lack of oxygen caused it to stop accumulating in the cells. The new compound could achieve a similar effect in a different way: focusing on hemoglobin, the molecule that transports oxygen in our blood. The new compound causes oxygen to be linked more easily to hemoglobin which may sound contraintuitive, they explain. However, this fact also makes it difficult for the molecule to deliver oxygen to the cells of our body. Concept test. The new drug has been developed Maze Therapeutics to fight anemia. The Gladstone Institute team, from the University of California San Francisco, found the substance when looking for a compound capable of reinforcing the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen. As a treatment, Hypoxystat is still in early development, but has already begun to succeed in mice. The details of these tests have been published recently in an article in the magazine Cell. Promising results. Although for now the studies are limited to rodents, they invite cautious optimism. The team observed, for example, that the compound had therapeutic capacity both in cases where it was administered before the appearance of symptoms and in cases where mice were already in advanced stages of the disease. In Xataka | We did not know why some superbacteria were resistant to antibiotics. This AI has found it in two days Image | Gladstone Institutes

Half a year ago we discovered oxygen in one of the most remote places on the planet. Now we want to know more

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A few months ago we knew the news of the discovery of the so -called “dark oxygen.” This oxygen form has little extraordinary from the chemical point of view: these are conventional oxygen molecules. What is not conventional in this dark oxygen is its formation process. A new project. Now, the team that announced the discovery of dark oxygen has announced a new project linked to the presence of these mysterious molecules in the oceanic depths. The objective of this new project is to answer some of the questions raised after the finding, especially the question of whether this process was given in various areas of the oceanic fund. “Our discovery of dark oxygen was a change in the paradigm of our understanding of the depths of the sea and potentially of life on Earth, but threw more questions than answers,” explained in a press release Andrew Sweetman, who will lead the new project. International collaboration. The new project is the result of the cooperation of two intitions, the Japanese Nippon Foundation, in charge of financing the project with a contribution of two million pounds; and the Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams), an institution that will lead the investigation. Dark oxygen. Let’s recap, dark oxygen? This concept was popularized last year to refer to molecular oxygen found in the depths of the oceanfar from the sun’s rays, hence the “dark” appellation. Until now, the dominant hypothesis is that oxygen is only formed on our planet through photosynthesis, a phenomenon dependent on the energy emitted by our star. The presence of oxygen in a place where photosynthesis is impossible and separate from surface marine currents, opened the search for alternative hypotheses that explained the presence of these molecules in the inhospitable environment. The response of the team responsible for the finding was in the metals that can be found in the seabed, which, according to this hypothesis they would be generating these molecules through electricity, that is, thanks to electrolysis. Verifying the hypothesis. The new project could serve to verify this theory, questioned by the mining industry, and to explore alternative hypotheses that explain the unexpected presence of oxygen in this environment. Hypothesis like that of radiolysisthat is to say the possibility that it is the radiation that, directly or indirectly, is triggering the process. The team also wants to explore if the processes that generate this dark oxygen They also release hydrogenas well as if this element is used as a source of energy by the bacterial communities that inhabit this area of ​​the ocean. In addition, the study could help us better understand the impact that climate change could have on these ecosystems. Conversations with NASA. The American space agency, NASA, has also shown interest in expanding our knowledge about dark oxygen, those responsible for the project say. “We are already in conversation with NASA experts who believe that dark oxygen could rebuild our understanding of how life is sustained on other planets without direct sunlight,” Sweetman added. Dark oxygen can also help us better understand how oxygen arose on our planet, providing us with information about the emergence of life on earth. Life and oxygen are inseparable concepts, but we do not know completely how this relationship was forged. In Xataka | When it seemed that the controversy of underwater mining was appealing, the discovery of black oxygen threatens to reactivate it Image | Biocyan Campaign

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