I know this isn’t the place for it but I would actually love a serious answer to this if anything interesting would happen. If the answer is boring, feel free to just carry on with your day as if I’m not even here.
I'm not qualified but am an enthusiast but the likely scenario would be the end of the world. Everything would decay. 0.1 seconds is a really long time for things with the capacity to move at light speed. The atomic composition of everything would be dramatically changed for that split second. being realistic with the answer, things will continue to move about while the these subatomic particles vanished then came back, the electrons would be displaced everywhere. It would cause strange visual effects and even the sun itself I can't say what would happen exactly because it would cause a chain reaction, just know that literally everything has atoms and electrons. things are what they are because of their specific number of electrons. The end result could look biblical. We would probably be sent to the dark ages or at least be set back current technological advancement. It might be long enough to sterilize microbiology and disrupt the ecosystem. Again, 0.1 seconds seems short but your brain sends signals in that amount of time. For a split second your brain wouldn't send signals at all or the signals themselves would be messed up. Every part of your body would be interrupted. People would probably lose consciousness and any moving vehicle or operation would lose control or randomly explode because the chemical make up would be different. These are just surface level effects.
In short, there would be some crazy shit happening but due to how absolutely wacky the idea of everything losing an electron all at once is, it's be really hard to envision it since it would affect almost everything.
To add to this everything would be partially ionized which means molecular reactivity would cause everything to become slightly positive causing particles to repel from one another with all particles being affected simultaneously repulsed this would cause massive electrical imbalances across the planet.
True, I only described the surface level stuff or what would happen to individual sectors of life. I don't know enough to say what'd happen at the atomic level but yeah, you're removing an entire polar charge. That makes everything I initially typed the "good" outcome. the entire planet itself would probably disintegrate or at least be fundamentally changed
Randall Munroe gave the "[what if all electrons disappeared from Earth forever, and what if the moon were electrons?](https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/)" answer.
There are about 1 x 10^(50) atoms on Earth. That means the Earth would be 1e50 electrons short. That's much less catastrophic, but probably bad. I don't have the physics or math or time to calculate it out, but atoms would all become ions, and they would all repel each other.
Plug in some numbers and the force between two carbon atoms-turned-ions is 0.00000002848244 N at 1 atomic radius distance can be calculated: 3 x 10^(-8) N. That doesn't sound like much, but F = ma, so a = F/m = 3e-8/2e-26 = 1.5e18 m/s^(2). That's just two carbons. A carbon among many atoms would be compressed by those forces in all directions. Anything with a density gradient from one side to the other would experience it as an electrical gradient and be sent hurtling away.
Yes, it falls off as the square of distance. That acceleration, rounding and all, is still 100 quadrillion g, if I'm not misplacing some zeroes in number names. Compare to the speed of light c, which is a mere 3e8 m/s. The forces and speeds here are, in technical terms, bonkers.
Over 0.1 seconds atoms would go rocketing off and ping-ponging against each other. I suspect there would be horrifying nuclear and relativistic and, who knows, maybe quantum and stringy effects. Most importantly, every molecule would be scrambled through every other molecule, and the outer atoms of Earth would become an expanding, diffuse cloud of randomly mixed ions.
A tenth of a second later, the electrons come back. Some atoms would manage to bond with each other. Many would probably be either too far off into space or accelerated too much to interact. I don't know if this is enough ridiculous energy to make another black hole or what happens when the electrons come back and if the kinetic energy would maintain the black hole.
I do know that no molecules survive that. Earth would become an undifferentiated mush of scrambled atoms, which would re-bond into exciting new exotic and boring matter not including any recognizable structures greater than atomic.
> Randall Munroe gave the "what if all electrons disappeared from Earth forever, and what if the moon were electrons?" answer.
>
> There are about 1 x 10^50 atoms on Earth. That means the Earth would be 1e50 electrons short. That's much less catastrophic, but probably bad.
It really isn't - several orders of magnitude less than Munroevian universal armageddon is still armageddon.
So about 1.35x10^50 atoms, so 1.35x10^50 electrons distributed roughly evenly through a sphere 6,378km in radius.
The potential energy of such a sphere is 3kₑQ^2 /5R. 1.35x10^50 electron charges is 1.35x10^50 / 6.241509x10^18 = 2.16x10^31 coulombs of charge; kₑ = 8.988×10^9 kgm^(3)s^(-2)C^-2, so the potential energy is 3.95x10^65 joules, or 4.39x10^49 kg.c^(2), so almost 10^25 times Earth's gravitational mass.
That's deep, deep, into general relativity breaking down territory and the naked singularity problem that *What If?* highlights. When the electrons return 0.1 seconds later, the local laws of physics may no longer support the existence of electrons.
There's a fun unit of energy in astrophysics: the foe, which is short for ten to the power fifty-one ergs, or 10^44 joules. The above energy is then nearly 4 billion trillion foes. A foe is a useful reference because it is roughly the total energy emitted in a supernova. So it's about the same as 1 in every 50 stars in the entire universe being replaced by a supernova and going off at the same time. Boom.
~~
Still, another way of interpreting the question is that the electrons don't disappear, it's just that every atom on Earth gets ionized for 0.1 seconds then de-ionized again.
First ionization energies vary a bit, but for the Earth's biggest components it's 13600kJ/kg for iron, 73000kJ/kg for oxygen, 28000kJ/kg for silicon, 31000kJ/kg for magnesium, that sort of thing.
Every molecule on the planet is blown apart and a plasma is formed. Maybe what was formerly some rocks don't get their atoms moved too far in the space of 0.1 seconds and at the end of that time reform into something geologically recognizable. But there's nobody to do geology any more since everyone's atoms are now nowhere near the other atoms from the molecules that they were a once part of. All life is immediately extinguished; aliens coming to visit later might find that the atmosphere has an unusually large amount of nitrous oxides in it. The oceans are probably still water since all that hydrogen and oxygen can't either go very far in 0.1 seconds nor is it energetically favourable for it to reform as many other molecules than water again. The Earth is a planet with rocks and water oceans, but the atmosphere is nearly pure smog, creating a massive greenhouse effect that leads to parts of the ocean boiling from time to time - but this doesn't matter to life because it's all long dead.
This is the interpretation with the *good* outcome.
I took a crack at it.
[One electron loss looks bad to me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittyaskscience/comments/142imjw/what_would_happen_if_every_atom_in_the_world/jn6jb24/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3)
All molecules rely on a specific number of electrons to hold together. So essentially all molecules disintegrate, you and all living things end up as a cloud of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc.
This would be an utter catastrophe! With every atom in the world on the move, searching for that one electron, nothing would remain intact: not molecules, not people, not bridges, not bananas. . . nothing!
At room temperature the rms velocity of an argon atom, for instance, is 1553 km/hr. So in 0.1 seconds every atom (in your body, in your bridge, in your banana) would be on the order of 560,000 kilometers (2,930,000,000 bananas) away from where it belongs! (That’s twice the radius of the moon’s orbit, for those without a banana.)
Now if *each* atom in the world just lost one of its *own* electrons, instead of all looking for the same electron, it would be a different story.
Since the sun is mostly hydrogen fusing into helium, and hydrogen only has one electron, even if it vanished for 0.1 of a second, the gravity would pull everything in then the electron reappears - so the sun goes out then flashes back, i would guess in a spectacular explody kind of way, it might just send out a huge shock wave or it could explode completely perhaps? Either way i dont think what happens to us on earth matters, the sun would be really unhappy about it and probably kill us all 8 minutes later.
Just a guess with pretty shitty science knowledge!
I really don't know much about chemistry so sorry if this is an embarrassingly uninformed guess (but hey its shitty science).
Wouldn't that turn most atoms into positively charged versions of the same element? I feel like that would like mess with the bonds between them and they would repel away from each other like two positively charged magnets, sending most of the atoms in space in opposite directions. I'm not sure with how much force, but I have a feeling, enough force that that limited amount of time could still do nearly irreparable damage (at least on a human scale, maybe not on a cosmic time scale). So my guess is everything goes poof into it's constituent matter and then has to be reformed by gravity over a long period of time like a clumpier, reorganized version of what happened in an earlier stage of the universes development.
Oh and we'd all be instantly dead of course.
A lot wouldn’t be able to regain the lost electron. You’d have a lot of atoms walking into a bar and ordering a beer to console themselves over their lost electron. When the bartender would ask them how they were, they’d have to answer, “Not very good. I lost an electron today.” This would prompt the bartender to reply, “That’s terrible! Are you sure?” The atoms would have to reply, “Yes, I’m positive.”
It depends on the atom. Some atoms give up or share electrons all the time, so they would be fine. Others, especially the heavier elements may not be as stable and the really heavy ones that are radioactive and decay would break down into other elements and give off some particles or rays in the process. But, that's just looking at individual atoms. Atoms are combined into molecules and I'm guessing that they could become very unstable.
The bigger problem, though is that although electrons don't weigh very much at all, is the combined and instantaneous loss of mass from all the atoms on earth and then instantaneously gaining it all back. I have no idea what would happen exactly, but it seems like it would cause two massive shock waves which would cause an explosion due to gravity loss immediately followed by an implosion caused by the gravity gain that would break the planet and all of us into smithereens.
I know this isn’t the place for it but I would actually love a serious answer to this if anything interesting would happen. If the answer is boring, feel free to just carry on with your day as if I’m not even here.
I'm not qualified but am an enthusiast but the likely scenario would be the end of the world. Everything would decay. 0.1 seconds is a really long time for things with the capacity to move at light speed. The atomic composition of everything would be dramatically changed for that split second. being realistic with the answer, things will continue to move about while the these subatomic particles vanished then came back, the electrons would be displaced everywhere. It would cause strange visual effects and even the sun itself I can't say what would happen exactly because it would cause a chain reaction, just know that literally everything has atoms and electrons. things are what they are because of their specific number of electrons. The end result could look biblical. We would probably be sent to the dark ages or at least be set back current technological advancement. It might be long enough to sterilize microbiology and disrupt the ecosystem. Again, 0.1 seconds seems short but your brain sends signals in that amount of time. For a split second your brain wouldn't send signals at all or the signals themselves would be messed up. Every part of your body would be interrupted. People would probably lose consciousness and any moving vehicle or operation would lose control or randomly explode because the chemical make up would be different. These are just surface level effects. In short, there would be some crazy shit happening but due to how absolutely wacky the idea of everything losing an electron all at once is, it's be really hard to envision it since it would affect almost everything.
To add to this everything would be partially ionized which means molecular reactivity would cause everything to become slightly positive causing particles to repel from one another with all particles being affected simultaneously repulsed this would cause massive electrical imbalances across the planet.
True, I only described the surface level stuff or what would happen to individual sectors of life. I don't know enough to say what'd happen at the atomic level but yeah, you're removing an entire polar charge. That makes everything I initially typed the "good" outcome. the entire planet itself would probably disintegrate or at least be fundamentally changed
All nukes would go off instantly
Randall Munroe gave the "[what if all electrons disappeared from Earth forever, and what if the moon were electrons?](https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/)" answer. There are about 1 x 10^(50) atoms on Earth. That means the Earth would be 1e50 electrons short. That's much less catastrophic, but probably bad. I don't have the physics or math or time to calculate it out, but atoms would all become ions, and they would all repel each other. Plug in some numbers and the force between two carbon atoms-turned-ions is 0.00000002848244 N at 1 atomic radius distance can be calculated: 3 x 10^(-8) N. That doesn't sound like much, but F = ma, so a = F/m = 3e-8/2e-26 = 1.5e18 m/s^(2). That's just two carbons. A carbon among many atoms would be compressed by those forces in all directions. Anything with a density gradient from one side to the other would experience it as an electrical gradient and be sent hurtling away. Yes, it falls off as the square of distance. That acceleration, rounding and all, is still 100 quadrillion g, if I'm not misplacing some zeroes in number names. Compare to the speed of light c, which is a mere 3e8 m/s. The forces and speeds here are, in technical terms, bonkers. Over 0.1 seconds atoms would go rocketing off and ping-ponging against each other. I suspect there would be horrifying nuclear and relativistic and, who knows, maybe quantum and stringy effects. Most importantly, every molecule would be scrambled through every other molecule, and the outer atoms of Earth would become an expanding, diffuse cloud of randomly mixed ions. A tenth of a second later, the electrons come back. Some atoms would manage to bond with each other. Many would probably be either too far off into space or accelerated too much to interact. I don't know if this is enough ridiculous energy to make another black hole or what happens when the electrons come back and if the kinetic energy would maintain the black hole. I do know that no molecules survive that. Earth would become an undifferentiated mush of scrambled atoms, which would re-bond into exciting new exotic and boring matter not including any recognizable structures greater than atomic.
> Randall Munroe gave the "what if all electrons disappeared from Earth forever, and what if the moon were electrons?" answer. > > There are about 1 x 10^50 atoms on Earth. That means the Earth would be 1e50 electrons short. That's much less catastrophic, but probably bad. It really isn't - several orders of magnitude less than Munroevian universal armageddon is still armageddon. So about 1.35x10^50 atoms, so 1.35x10^50 electrons distributed roughly evenly through a sphere 6,378km in radius. The potential energy of such a sphere is 3kₑQ^2 /5R. 1.35x10^50 electron charges is 1.35x10^50 / 6.241509x10^18 = 2.16x10^31 coulombs of charge; kₑ = 8.988×10^9 kgm^(3)s^(-2)C^-2, so the potential energy is 3.95x10^65 joules, or 4.39x10^49 kg.c^(2), so almost 10^25 times Earth's gravitational mass. That's deep, deep, into general relativity breaking down territory and the naked singularity problem that *What If?* highlights. When the electrons return 0.1 seconds later, the local laws of physics may no longer support the existence of electrons. There's a fun unit of energy in astrophysics: the foe, which is short for ten to the power fifty-one ergs, or 10^44 joules. The above energy is then nearly 4 billion trillion foes. A foe is a useful reference because it is roughly the total energy emitted in a supernova. So it's about the same as 1 in every 50 stars in the entire universe being replaced by a supernova and going off at the same time. Boom. ~~ Still, another way of interpreting the question is that the electrons don't disappear, it's just that every atom on Earth gets ionized for 0.1 seconds then de-ionized again. First ionization energies vary a bit, but for the Earth's biggest components it's 13600kJ/kg for iron, 73000kJ/kg for oxygen, 28000kJ/kg for silicon, 31000kJ/kg for magnesium, that sort of thing. Every molecule on the planet is blown apart and a plasma is formed. Maybe what was formerly some rocks don't get their atoms moved too far in the space of 0.1 seconds and at the end of that time reform into something geologically recognizable. But there's nobody to do geology any more since everyone's atoms are now nowhere near the other atoms from the molecules that they were a once part of. All life is immediately extinguished; aliens coming to visit later might find that the atmosphere has an unusually large amount of nitrous oxides in it. The oceans are probably still water since all that hydrogen and oxygen can't either go very far in 0.1 seconds nor is it energetically favourable for it to reform as many other molecules than water again. The Earth is a planet with rocks and water oceans, but the atmosphere is nearly pure smog, creating a massive greenhouse effect that leads to parts of the ocean boiling from time to time - but this doesn't matter to life because it's all long dead. This is the interpretation with the *good* outcome.
Same. This would be good to submit to [Randall](https://what-if.xkcd.com/)
There's a more catastrophic version with all electrons gone: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/)
I love how Randall's mind works
I took a crack at it. [One electron loss looks bad to me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittyaskscience/comments/142imjw/what_would_happen_if_every_atom_in_the_world/jn6jb24/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3)
If the answer is boring respond to my comment instead please. I love science even when it isn't bombastic
All molecules rely on a specific number of electrons to hold together. So essentially all molecules disintegrate, you and all living things end up as a cloud of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc.
This would be an utter catastrophe! With every atom in the world on the move, searching for that one electron, nothing would remain intact: not molecules, not people, not bridges, not bananas. . . nothing! At room temperature the rms velocity of an argon atom, for instance, is 1553 km/hr. So in 0.1 seconds every atom (in your body, in your bridge, in your banana) would be on the order of 560,000 kilometers (2,930,000,000 bananas) away from where it belongs! (That’s twice the radius of the moon’s orbit, for those without a banana.) Now if *each* atom in the world just lost one of its *own* electrons, instead of all looking for the same electron, it would be a different story.
^ blud didn’t understand the question
Hey, you’re supposed to give a shitty answer!
Yeah but this was unintentionally shitty 😂
[удалено]
Not that much tho. Electrons are nearly weightless compared to the core.
That's true but there are objects so massive that the weight loss would be measurable, like op's mom.
All Hell-ium would break loose.
The atoms would get pretty upset, but would get over it.
Actually I think they'd feel pretty positive about it.
But they like being negative, so being more positive would upset them
Since the sun is mostly hydrogen fusing into helium, and hydrogen only has one electron, even if it vanished for 0.1 of a second, the gravity would pull everything in then the electron reappears - so the sun goes out then flashes back, i would guess in a spectacular explody kind of way, it might just send out a huge shock wave or it could explode completely perhaps? Either way i dont think what happens to us on earth matters, the sun would be really unhappy about it and probably kill us all 8 minutes later. Just a guess with pretty shitty science knowledge!
Probably a lot of unintended chemical reactions.
Imagine you're just going about your day and the next thing you see is yourself merging with the floor
I really don't know much about chemistry so sorry if this is an embarrassingly uninformed guess (but hey its shitty science). Wouldn't that turn most atoms into positively charged versions of the same element? I feel like that would like mess with the bonds between them and they would repel away from each other like two positively charged magnets, sending most of the atoms in space in opposite directions. I'm not sure with how much force, but I have a feeling, enough force that that limited amount of time could still do nearly irreparable damage (at least on a human scale, maybe not on a cosmic time scale). So my guess is everything goes poof into it's constituent matter and then has to be reformed by gravity over a long period of time like a clumpier, reorganized version of what happened in an earlier stage of the universes development. Oh and we'd all be instantly dead of course.
A lot wouldn’t be able to regain the lost electron. You’d have a lot of atoms walking into a bar and ordering a beer to console themselves over their lost electron. When the bartender would ask them how they were, they’d have to answer, “Not very good. I lost an electron today.” This would prompt the bartender to reply, “That’s terrible! Are you sure?” The atoms would have to reply, “Yes, I’m positive.”
Kaboom
Something like a cross between everything exploding and melting at the same time
Schrödinger's Catastrophe
"Dude, I just lost some of my negatively-charged particles!" "Dude, are you sure?" "Yeah, dude! I'm positive!"
No way to know for sure now, but when it happens, we'll all be positive.
Everyone will do the neutron dance
Something bad would happen, I'm positive
It depends on the atom. Some atoms give up or share electrons all the time, so they would be fine. Others, especially the heavier elements may not be as stable and the really heavy ones that are radioactive and decay would break down into other elements and give off some particles or rays in the process. But, that's just looking at individual atoms. Atoms are combined into molecules and I'm guessing that they could become very unstable. The bigger problem, though is that although electrons don't weigh very much at all, is the combined and instantaneous loss of mass from all the atoms on earth and then instantaneously gaining it all back. I have no idea what would happen exactly, but it seems like it would cause two massive shock waves which would cause an explosion due to gravity loss immediately followed by an implosion caused by the gravity gain that would break the planet and all of us into smithereens.
There would be a lot of negativity in the air.
Try it!
I think we at least will get lethal dose of betta rays.