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Earth's oxygen rich atmosphere is really important here-- any free hydrogen can readily combine with the free hydrogen, decreasing the chance of any being loss.


According to that wiki article, the hydrogen was mostly lost in the form of water vapor. The hydrogen and oxygen in the magnetotail are in almost a perfect 2:1 ratio. At least,

> Currently the main ion types being lost are O+, H+ and He+. The ratio of hydrogen to oxygen losses is around 2 (i.e. almost stoichiometric for water) indicating the ongoing loss of water.

Also Earth didn't have an oxygenated atmosphere until relatively late, a couple billion years in, so I didn't know if that could be the thing that saved it.


I don't have primary sources, unfortunately -- I'm recalling something I read in _Oxygen_, which I found reassuring. It said that, one of the benefits of our oxygen-rich atmosphere was that we would lose an insignificant amount of hydrogen/water over the next billion years. It's one of those things that doesn't actually matter to me in my daily life, but I still find comforting, so it's stuck with me.




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