First of all, we assume the question does not involve Earth. You were talking about a fictional series where they landed on an alien planet with a breathable atmosphere for human life. Secondly, perhaps you’re not up on the latest science. Oxygen can be created by processes other than a waste product of life. Abiotic oxygen can be formed by UV rays breaking down carbon dioxide for example and creating molecular oxygen. And also, after many years of existence I have learned not to discount anything from being possible. We are too arrogant at times in saying something cannot happen…
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Ok, I know I am just stirring the pot and being nit-picky about terminology, but nothing that I know of creates oxygen. Oxygen is an element. There are the same number of oxygen atoms as there were 2 million years ago.
Plants absorb carbon dioxide and separate oxygen from carbon, liberating the oxygen to the environment and using the carbon to make more plant matter.
So why are some trying to eliminate carbon to kill us all in 300 years?
If it created enough to create a breathable atmosphere the UV radiation would make it deadly to human life.
PIcky, picky, picky: O2, the form necessary for our sort of life.
There was no oxygen of any kind until 3 generations of stars reached the point of fusing such large atoms. The universe started out hydrogen, which it still mostly is; the first stars fused hydrogen to make helium; the next generation fused helium to make larger atoms. And some is made from nuclear decay.
Nobody is. People who want the Earth to remain inhabitable to human life (which apparently doesn’t include the Musk Melon) want to curb excess production.
Who said anything about human life? It all started with this statement:
And even so, why is human life (as we know it) the standard for life? Don’t you think that if there was a planet close enough to its star to create molecular oxygen that life would evolve to exist under those conditions. People seem to get hung up on life being exactly like this planet evolved…
And another thought- imagine in your scenario, they landed on a planet that had enough oxygen to breath without carrying any with them. Maybe, just maybe, they landed there during the evolutionary period where anerobic life had just multiplied enough to generate the oxygen but not long enough for higher life forms to evolve. There is almost always some potential in the vastness of the universe to question the word “impossible”… that’s all I’m saying…
The difficult we do immediately. The impossible just takes a little longer.
The Star Trek crew that landed on the planet were mostly humans.
It was always a desert with no kind of life. Those anaerobes live in water, and are abundant, would have to be to create that much oxygen.
Now I just think you’re living up to your name here. This doesn’t warrant any further discourse, I’m leaving your circular argument…
Very familiar with the show. Imagine someone landing here in the middle of a desert. This place is barren with no visible life! That’s you.
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Sounds like someone is getting a fictitious show mixed up with reality…
Yep! Let’s get back to Archie’s LaSalle.
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At least the LaSalle was/is a real vehicle, the Enterprise was not a real space travel vehicle, nor was any of the places they went other than Earth…
But either way, I don’t have a dog in the fight for either one…
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If we have a need for discussing theme songs do not forget the theme song for MASH; Suicide is Painless.
Can include MASH because Hawkeye often mentioned how one of his medical school classmates just bought a new Studebaker.
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I thought they were commenting on the whole planet. There is a lot of visible life in the desert, if you look for it. I expect a tricorder would pick it up.
Yeah be careful where you walk at night. That’s when everything comes out. I remember we took a ranger guided night hike in the badlands of South Dakota. Not the desert but still pretty hot and dry. Don’t wear shorts or sandals.