Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Seany on 14/05/2007 18:53:23
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Our farts.. Are methane, right? Or well, some of the gas is methane.
Apparently, Venus has alot of methane!!! Would it be a different type? Or would it still stink like our farts and we can't stay on there, unless we eventually get used to the smell?!
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I think that would be the least of our worries. Wikipaedia says that the temperature at the surface is over 400 °C. If that isn't bad enough or if we find some way to overcome it with some amazingly hefty air conditioning, that temperature is too hot for water so we wouldn't be able to live there anyway.
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It is, I believe, also somewhat sulphurous.
The smell in farts is nothing to do with the methane (methane is pretty odourless, and natural gas, which is also methane, actually has to have a smell added so that people can smell when their is a gas leak). The smell in farts is due to various other additives our digestive system adds to the methane.
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The atmosphere of venus is red hot and full of sulphuric acid. I don't think there can be much methane there, the acid would oxidise it. I think it's largely CO2.
On the whole, I'd rather not stick my nose in it.
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It is, I believe, also somewhat sulphurous.
The smell in farts is nothing to do with the methane (methane is pretty odourless, and natural gas, which is also methane, actually has to have a smell added so that people can smell when their is a gas leak). The smell in farts is due to various other additives our digestive system adds to the methane.
Thanks.. So what is it that makes it smell?? The food we eat?
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Seany, do you want an experiment for making your own stink bombs?
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I'm sorry - I can't believe no on else has said this yet...
It might not smell bad if we go to Venus, but I bet it would if we go to Uranus!
Ba-Dum Tish!
sorry again
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To make up for my awful joke...
The smell of farts is largely Hydrogen Sulphide - the 'rotten egg gas' along with other volatile compounds. The gas is created mainly be the bacteria that live in our intestines.
Interestingly, there's nothing in the gases themselves that make them inherently nasty. We have evolved to think of that as an unpleasant smell, so as to encourage us keep our food and waste apart. Same reason we've evolved to be disgusted by the smell of rotting meat - in fact the rotting meat smell can make us vomit, in an attempt to void the stomach of infected food.
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The smell of farts is largely Hydrogen Sulphide
<snip>
Interestingly, there's nothing in the gases themselves that make them inherently nasty. <snip>
Actually, hydrogen sulfide is pretty toxic. To make matters worse, we can only smell it at relatively low concentrations. So, if at first you can smell it for a while, then you stop smelling it, you'd better hope there's some good ventilation around (removing the hydrogen sulfide), otherwise you could pass out at any moment.
Dick
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That having been said, I have heard it said that H2S is used by the body as a means of controlling the bodies temperature, and is used by animals that go into hibernation as a way of reducing body temperature (and has been suggested that it might be possible to develop a way of using H2S as a means of putting humans into suspended animation).