Question: what would happen happen if like loads of atoms dissapeared

Emilia Arguello answered on 4 Nov 2024:

If a substantial number of atoms suddenly went poof, the consequences would be either insignificant or very dramatic, depending on how many atoms were lost and where this happened.

Atoms make up everything, so losing atoms would means that the “thing” from which the atoms disappeared would lose mass and volume very suddenly. If enough atoms suddenly were to disappear from, say, a bridge, a car, or a plane, this would lead to structural collapses. If atoms disappeared randomly across the entire Earth, in big enough numbers, you’d get widespread structural instability in objects from which the atoms were removed, which can be as inconsequential as a pen or a book or as large as buildings and dams.

In gases, like the air or atmosphere, sudden losses of atoms could lead to changes in pressure, which can have weird consequences in lots of processes, from air travel to meteorological phenomena.

At the cellular level, the structures and functions of important biomolecules like protein, DNA, or RNA all depend on their molecular composition, so removing atoms at random would wreak havoc in cells, probably leading to cell death or dysfunction on a massive scale. It might be better, although still not great if the sudden removal of atoms/molecules is not random. For instance, if, say, we have 100 copies of a certain protein in our cells, it might be less catastrophic for 50 of those copies to disappear than for all 100 copies to suffer random losses of atoms.

Energetically, the sudden disappearance of atoms would also lead to an imbalance. Molecules and compounds are made of atoms held together by chemical bonds. Under normal circumstances, breaking these bonds requires energy. But if the atoms vanish, the bonds that held them into molecules effectively “break” without consuming energy, leading to an excess that would need to be “released” or “spent” somehow.