What happens if the Earth suddenly lost its ozone layer?

[badlyburnttoast]

@mazinger_z

Yeah, but is it deadly? Doesn’t the magnetic field put a damper on it?

If I’m reading wikipedia correctly, muons already bombard earth’s surface (and of course penetrate into the ground) at the rate of about 10,000 per square meter per minute.

Since I don’t know of anyone killed by a falling muon… I think we’re OK on that front.

[ZenBeam]

@badlyburnttoast

If I’m reading wikipedia correctly, muons already bombard earth’s surface (and of course penetrate into the ground) at the rate of about 10,000 per square meter per minute.

Can you link to that? That number seems implausibly high.

ETA: Found it. I’m going to have to think about that for a bit before I believe it.

[Superfluous_Parentheses]

@mazinger_z

Yeah, but is it deadly? Doesn’t the magnetic field put a damper on it?

Death From the Skies claims that given enough muons hitting DNA, they could do enough damage that our repair systems won’t be able to keep up. Which would result in cancer and other potentially deadly situations. It does also state that you’d probably need a shitload of cosmic rays to make muons a real threat.

BTW, the depth report for muons in DFTS is about a mile in water and half a mile through rocks.

[Der_Trihs]

@solarnator

As for “what if the ozone poofed?” question. UV-b radiation would immediately start destroying any DNA in cells of exposed creatures, causing cancer for one thing. Maybe not immediately but it would end in death for many.

Also, there’d be mass blindness due to UV induced cataracts. Especially in animals which won’t know to protect their eyes even if they could.

[dtilque]

@solarnator

Ozone would eventually build back up but it would be a slow process. Too slow for it to help a few generations tho. UV radiation actually makes Ozone but only if there is oxygen to make it and if the ozone poofed…the oxygen would have to come from somewhere and that somewhere would be closer to earth. It takes too long for it to rise back up where we need it…that is why it would be too slow. If the oxygen was just converted from ozone (o3) to a single oxygen(o1) molecule or to a double molecule (o2), it would speed things up but from my guess, you meant all the oxygen (in the form of ozone) would disappear.

Where to begin to correct all the errors in the above? How about here:

Even at the ozone layer, there’s still some oxygen around. Ozone is an unstable compound. As it breaks down, it lets more UV penetrate the atmosphere, thus causing more ozone to be made. So it soon reaches an equilibrium with the oxygen. (CFCs make ozone break down faster. That changes the equilibrium position over towards there being more oxygen and less ozone.)

Now if you just broke down all the ozone to oxygen, which happens during the long nights over the Arctic and Antarctic, the ozone will all have to be remade. But this happens fairly quickly. Above I guessed it’d be minutes to hours. That may be wrong, but it’s still going to be quickly, at most a few days.

You have to understand that the reactions that make ozone happen very quickly. UV light (which the Sun provides in abundance) breaks down oxygen molecules and the free oxygen atoms are extremely reactive. They usually combine with the first thing they meet, and if that thing is an O[sub]2[/sub] molecule, you get ozone (O[sub]3[/sub]).

Now if you just made all the ozone magically disappear, then much of the remaining oxygen at that level will be converted to ozone. Furthermore more oxygen from below will fairly quickly move up. By removing some of the molecules, you’ve reduced the pressure, so the atmosphere below will quickly expand to restore the pressure.