And why is it making their voices sound so deep?

What would happen if this stuff was in our atmosphere?

This is what if and here's what would happen if the atmosphere was 10% deep.

Voice gas.

Sulphur, hexafluoride.

Now that's a mouthful Shoes.

It's more commonly known as S F six or deep voice gas because lower frequency of your voice heard about a bridge.

I know what a girl sound like, But sulphur hexafluoride isn't just a expensive party trick.

It's an extremely potent greenhouse gas that's five times heavier than air.

Its density explains why your voice drops if you breathe it in, but inhale too much of it, and it won't just be your voice that gets deeper.

Sulphur hexafluoride is a non toxic gas, but if it were to suddenly comprise 10% of our atmosphere, we croak.

Not literally.

For the most part, our atmosphere is made up of 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen.

Humans need an atmosphere that's roughly 19.5% oxygen to breathe normally.

So if we were to replace 10% of the oxygen in our atmosphere with sulphur hexafluoride.

We'd be left with an oxygen level of 18.9% which is actually still enough for us to live.

But here's the problem, because S F six is five times heavier than air.

When you breathe it in, it compresses the lighter oxygen in your lungs.

This, in turn, reduces the amount of oxygen making it into your bloodstream, which means you'll eventually pass out falling prey to asphyxiation.

Our planet wouldn't fare much better.

Sulphur hexafluoride has a global warming potential that's approximately 22,200 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100 year period, and it can live in our atmosphere for as many as 3200 years.

And yet it's often used as an electrical insulator in components that are susceptible to leaks.

In fact, studies show that 15% of equipment containing S F six will develop leaks and for a little context, just one kilogram of S F six has the same warming effect as 24 people flying from London to New York and back again.

But despite the danger, the number of components using s F six is expected to increase 75% globally by 2030.

Fortunately, our atmosphere will never have 10%.

S f six Living in that kind of world would require a complete redesign of our lungs and a major leap in evolution.

But life on Earth has gone through unbelievably fortunate turns of fate.

Evolution has given us eyes, arms and intelligence and has overcome the danger of near extinction.

So it's not impossible that life wouldn't adapt to such a drastic change.

That's something that blew my mind in the documentary Siri's Leaps in Evolution, which you can watch on curiosity stream dot com.

We'll get back to the story in a second.

But in case you don't know, Curiosity Stream is a video streaming service with thousands of other award winning documentaries.

And the good news is that as a what if viewer, you get the 1st 30 days completely free.

Yep, free.

And after that it's just 2 99 a month, or just 1999 a year.

It's pretty amazing, and it's the best place to dive deeper into the topics we cover on this channel.

All you have to do is sign up at curiosity stream dot com slash What if and use the promo code.

What if, during the sign up process, come to think of it, there is one creature that could possibly survive in an atmosphere that's 10% deep voice gas that's the mighty eight legged tar degrade.

These near microscopic critters can live in ridiculous extremes, including being able to survive supernova blasts and gamma ray bursts.

But what are the odds of one of those happening anytime soon?

Well, that's a story for another.

What if?