Gray Matter: A Foil Boat Floating On An Invisible Sea

Very tragic but true story. This is one lesson that should be taught in schools. You don't learn about the real hazards of "confined spaces" unless you are in an industry that encounters them. The workers are generally given sensor to detect CO2 and other harmful gases.

This does bring up a thought I had though. If gases collect due to density and gravity, then would it be possible to fill a small crater on the moon with CO2 or "Air"?

The gas should just pool there unless it gets absorbed by the crater. There isn't any wind, apart from the solar wind to disturb it. On the next moon mission perhaps someone could bring a bucket filled with gas and lower it into a crater and see how long the gas will remain in the bucket.

It could be a simple way of Terra-forming. Starting from the bottom up.

Mythbusters did a thing on this. As a side note, due to the density of the gas, it causes your voice to pitch lower greatly, much like helium which as we know is lighter than "air" that causes your voice to pitch higher. I'm pretty sure they used SF6 due to it not being poisionous. But of course like with any concentrated gas, you don't want to breath it in for long periods of time.

@All4it
Since there is very little gravity on the moon, and consequently there is no/little atmosphere the gas would simply be "vaccumed" out of the bucket. You need a planet with sufficient gravity to create atmosphere, i.e. earth mars, venus. Terraforming the moon would ahve to consist of wrapping it in something that can contain gas.

@ianredneck,
My knowledge in this field is very limited and researching it will have to wait for a very rainy, rainy day. So here comes some unreseached responses and questions.

Commets/meteriors don't have large gravitational fields and they expell gasses as the approach the sun. Ice was found in craters on the moon. If these gases turned liquid turned solid can accumulate in these places, then that would disprove your gases being "vaccumed" out into space.

O.K., I did a little research on commets. From the Commet Introduction at Solarviews.com it basically states that the gasses are only released when the "evaporated molecules boil off". The rest of the time, the gases are present, mostly in a solid mixture of dirt and other materials.

I think it would be an experiment worth conducting. I'm not sure if a scaled model in a vaccum chamber would work. How would you scale the universe?

Right expelled gases as the approaced the sun, the elements are heated and turned into gas which is then released into space. They don't form atmospheres around them.

http://www.suite101.com/content/why-there-is-no-atmosphere-on-the-moon-a102634

on atmosphere on the moon

the writter, a proffessor on physics and astrology, states that since the gravity is so weak that the ctual movement of the molecules is strong enough to break the gravity of the moon and leave the surface of the moon, unless the gravity is increased it won't hold the molecules.

My knowledge is limited on this too but that site does help.

The vaccum test woould be mute by adding gas

Diffusion, anyone? Or is that too simple an explanation?

Diffusion is exactly what would occur. The only boundary to diffusion in an example like the moon would be gravity, which is significantly lower on the moon than on an atmosphere capable object. As far as the "liquids or gas" found at the bottom of craters, they were actually frozen and upon being exposed proceeded to melt and evaporate, they are not permanent fixtures.
On meteorites, the gaseous clouds are a similar phenomenon, caused by the melting of previously frozen gas held within the meteorite or comet as it approaches sources of heat.
The experiment proposed would result in the gas floating off into the vacuum.

Thanks for the input Ianredneck, the article was informative but it doesn't quite fit all models.

I did a little more research and looked at the physical characteristics of other moons and planets in our solar system.

Consider all the moons and planets in our solar system. Some of them are only slightly larger than the our moon. Titan and Ganymede are both moons that have atmospheres. There gravitation force and escape velocities are not orders of magnitude larger than the moon. In fact, the escape velocity of Titan is 2.639 km/s and our moon is 2.38 km/s.

Also, consider Io or even Pluto, they are both smaller than our moon and both have atmospheres. The surface gravity on Pluto is almost 3 times less than the moons.

@cakesthethird, diffusion is far too simple when you are dealing with celestial bodies.

@all comments so far. It would seem that gravity plays less of a role on a body having an atmosphere than I would have expected. Once again, I am not an expert and the info we get pretty much all comes from the same place, Google.

Yes, it is raining where I am.

@All4it
read this article at the bottom about Titan

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kiefer/Education/SSRG2-Europa/europa.html

it states that Titan is losing atmosphere as methane is broken up by radiation and the hydrogen is released. Titan just has more mass in the form of a gas.

and i know i shouldn't cite wiki but

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Pluto#Atmosphere

they state that the "atmosphere" is in flux because the gas is in solid state and is released when it is heated up, just takes a while for it to disipate.

I would think you need to have mass centripetal rotation to compress the density of the gases enough to have gravity cohesion.

Now that would be an experiment that can be done outside of the ISS.
Take a ball bearing, spin it, hit it lightly with some gas, then see if it stays adhere to it.

@wingartist,

Interesting. Let me get this straight, it is not the gravitational forces that are responsible for the a planet or a moon having an atmosphere, but it is the speed of rotation.

I'll have to look at the charts of the moons and planets to compare the gravitational rotation to see it you may be right.

@All4it and others
These moons also happen to be colder than the moon (further from the Sun) therefore even if the gas hasn't become liquid or solid it is still much slower and thus is more easily contained by a weak gravity

@Rockhead,

Good point. If temperature was such a factor, then a planet like Venus with its incredible temperature should not have any form of atmosphere. Yet it does posses one.

I can not see the harm in doing a simple experiment. Perhaps I will have to design something that one of the teams doing the Google Lunar XPrize could take with them.

Where do you get sulfur hexaflouride?