Brian Cox TV & Horizon TV - Iain Stewart TV - David Attenborough - James Priestley - Lewis Thomas - August Krogh - Richard Dawkins - Hannah Fry: Size Matters TV -
The core will start to collapse very rapidly leaving a shell, leaving hydrogen and helium behind ... The creation process of Carbon and Oxygen is over in the blink of an eye. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe 2/4: Stardust, BBC 2011
One of Apollo 13’s oxygen tanks had exploded. And the other was leaking into space. The lunar landing was abandoned but there wasn’t enough air to get them back to Earth. Brian Cox, Moon: The Horizon Guide, BBC 2009
Oxygen changed our planet ... Geologists call it the Great Oxidation Event. Iain Stewart, How to Grow a Planet I: Life from Light, BBC 2012
Roots and the soil they created were unstoppable ... Plants create oxygen as a waste product ... Leaves were the answer to all plants’ breathing problems. ibid.
And it was this increase in oxygen that was the key to the rise of the animal kingdom. David Attenborough’s First Life 1/2, BBC 2010
My breast felt peculiarly light and easy for some time afterwards. Who can tell but that in time this pure air may become a fashionable item. Joseph Priestley
The life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today’s atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had its start with the appearance of blue-green algae among the microorganisms. Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, 1984
The absorption of oxygen and the elimination of carbon dioxide in the lungs take place by diffusion alone. There is no trustworthy evidence of any regulation of this process on the part of the organism. August Krogh, 1910
Oxygen flooded into the atmosphere as a pollutant, even a poison, until natural selection shaped living things to thrive on the stuff and, indeed, suffocate without it. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth p418
There’s a chilling irony about oxygen toxicity: too much oxygen causes irritation in the chest and a cough that over time will get worse and worse until eventually it’s so bad you can’t breathe. Hannah Fry, Size Matters I: Big Trouble, BBC 2018