As far I understand gravity holds the air back down, but surely it isn’t like a seal where air can’t escape
In: Planetary Science
An air molecule needs to be moving around 11km/s to escape Earth’s gravity, otherwise it will just fall back down. The only reason all the air molecules don’t fall all the way down to the surface is because they’re constantly bouncing into each other, and the ones near the ground are bouncing off that. They’re moving fast, but a few hundred meter’s per second fast, not 10+km/s fast.
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