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We've all been there. A little too much nasi lemak for lunch and your tummy starts grumbling ominously. You feel like you could explode and then, before you know it, you loudly pass gas, and it is so strong you think it could launch you straight out of your seat.
No? Is it just me?
Maybe I'm the only one who feels like a few packs of nasi lemak can fuel a private rocket launch to the Moon - like Wile E. Coyote strapped to an ACME rocket.
But while we can't propel ourselves to the Moon by letting a big one rip, can our farts - no matter how strong - actually reach the Moon on their own?
VERDICT:
TRUE
It's not a load of hot gas but actual science. So let's break it down.
Flatulence is mostly (99%) made of - believe it or not - odourless gases like oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane.
The part you can smell is usually the 1% of compounds like hydrogen sulfide and methanethiol, but we want to focus on the 99%, specifically the lightest of the gases - hydrogen.
The hydrogen, once it escapes your body, will rise through the air, as it is the lightest gas, before arriving at the edge of our atmosphere.
There, thanks to a real scientific phenomenon called the Jeans escape rule, the hydrogen molecules escape the Earth's gravity out into space.
Eventually, most of the hydrogen is then captured by the gravity of the Moon. There, the hydrogen usually does not stay on the Moon very long however, as the gravity is too weak to maintain an atmosphere, eventually drifting off further into the unknown.
So yes, thanks to the Jeans escape rule, next time a fart escapes through your jeans, you are possibly launching it to the Moon and beyond.
REFERENCES
https://www.sciencedirect.com/
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/
https://iopscience.iop.org/
