Why doesn’t the atmosphere (air we breathe) just float off into space?
Some objects in space have atmospheres like Earth and Jupiter. Others like asteroids and the moon don’t have an atmosphere.
Why doesn’t earth atmosphere just drift away into space?
What am I missing about the concept of atmosphere?
In: Planetary Science
There is nothing special about air, its affected by gravity same as everything else. All the air is accelerated towards the ground at 9.81m/s^2 same as any other object on Earth. It cant just drift off any more than rocks or lakes could.
To escape earth, an object must achieve escape velocity, which is pretty fast, 11 km/s. Some molecules of air are of course accelerated to such speeds by solar storms etc, but it’s just not enough to take away all of Earth’s atmosphere.
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