It surrounds us during our entire lives, and we breathe it in and out from our first to our last moment. Without it, there would be no life on our planet. We are talking about one of the four elements, air. The air combines gases that make up the earth’s atmosphere. Dry air is mainly composed of two gases: Nitrogen (N2) is the primary air component at 78.08 percent. At 20.92 percent, oxygen (O2) is the second most crucial component.
Furthermore, air contains noble gases (0.93 percent in total), mainly argon, as well as helium, neon, krypton and xenon. In addition, carbon dioxide (CO2) makes up 0.037 percent, and is one of the main air components due to its importance for living organisms and the climate. The air also includes methane, hydrogen, nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and carbon monoxide. In this article of Gazettely, we will tell you nine interesting things about the air that you probably don’t know.
There was a time when the earth’s atmosphere was (and will be) unbreathable. It was completely devoid of oxygen four billion years ago (it is a poison to many living things). It arrived a billion years later, wiped out most of the cells that inhabited the planet at that time. Similar conditions to today stabilized about 540 million years ago. But in one billion years, the sun (which has since become brighter) will cause the oceans to evaporate, giving rise to a greenhouse effect that will make the earth uninhabitable.
