If you push two metal plates together on Earth, nothing happens. But if you take those same plates into the vacuum of space, they can fuse into a single piece of metal.
This phenomenon, called cold welding, has been a known hazard for spacecraft engineers for a long time. So what's actually happening at the atomic level, and why does space make it so much easier?
The answer comes down to a lack of oxygen in space, experts told Live Science.
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