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What would liquid nitogen do in space ?
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Question Date: 2007-01-12 | | Answer 1:
On earth, Nitrogen exists mainly as a gas. Under
a lot of pressure in a tank we can make the
nitrogen into liquid. Then when it is released
from the tank it rapidly starts to boil turning
back into a gas. The temperature in space is much
colder than it is on the earth so the nitrogen
would remain as a liquid. It is even believed that
on some of Neptune's moons there are volcanoes
that erupt liquid Nitrogen. | | Answer 2:
If you took LN2 up into space, and kept
it in a space craft with earth-like conditions,
nothing extraordinary would happen.It would behave
like it does on earth, except that the liquid
wouldn't just bubble out, it would flow out while
spreading itself out and evaporating (it wouldn't
bubble out and drop to the ground, since there is
effectively no buoyancy effect while in
free-fall).
If you actually threw that
LN2 into vacuum, then it would drop the
pressure on the liquid and it would evaporate into
nitrogen gas. As the gas cooled, it would remain
in its gas form (since at 2.73 Kelvin even solid
nitrogen would sublimate into gas at extremely low
pressure).
So in this case, it would
behave much less interesting than water, since
water would evaporate into a gas at room
temperature and low pressure, but then as it
cooled to the effective radioactive temperature of
the vacuum, it would crystallize into ice. | | Answer 3:
It would boil. Any liquid in space will
boil.
Any liquid exists in a state with the
gas above it: molecules from the gas become part
of the liquid, and molecules in the liquid leave
and become part of the gas. If there is no gas of
the liquid's molecules, the liquid creates one by
releasing some molecules, causing the liquid to
evaporate. If the gas that the liquid gives off is
of higher pressure than the gas around it, then
the gas expands and lowers its pressure, requiring
the liquid to release more molecules, and soon
there won't be any liquid left. This is what
boiling means, and this is why water boils at
lower temperatures in the mountains: the air is
thinner up there. In space, there is no air, so
any gas at all will expand away, and thus, any
liquid exposed to space would boil, regardless of
the temperature. Click Here to return to the search form.
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