Atmosphere is escaping – you heard me.

 

It is well known that Earth is covered with the blanket of air around itself, which what we call Atmosphere. This atmosphere is more likely to form when planets started to accumulate left-over gases from protoplanetary disk around the Sun, when there was a collision between planet and other celestial bodies. During collision a tremendous amount of energy is unleashed which unleashed the gases trapped in surface of planet subsequently making an atmosphere in immediate space.

As far as we closest planet to Sun, Mercury, has no blanket of gases around it. Second planet on list, Venus, has composition of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere which make it hottest planet in solar system. Third planet, Earth, has perfect composition of gases to support the life. Then there’s come Mars, which has so thin atmosphere which is counted as negligible. Titan is a largest moon of Saturn which has thickest atmosphere, contains mostly nitrogen. Callisto, second largest moon of Jupiter, has extremely thin layer of carbon dioxide around it. What caused these extremities?

Atmosphere escape is answer to all these unequal composition of gases on different celestial bodies. Atmosphere escape is that phenomenon which derives the atmosphere of planets or other celestial bodies into interplanetary spaces. It is caused by heating from host star, which cause molecules of gases to gain escape velocity (minimum need of velocity to break the gravitational pull of planet).

The phenomenon of atmosphere escapes works in two regimes, thermal and non-thermal. Mechanism of thermal escape is caused by radiations coming from host star which make molecules of gases more energetic. Further, thermal escape is divided into two mechanisms, Jeans escape and hydrodynamic escape. In jeans escape, escape occurs from molecule to molecule. But in hydrodynamic escape, a bulk of gases is driven from planet. In non-thermal regime, particles get energy from their own reactions.

Many observations are made, which show evidence of atmospheric escape, for example:

1.      Cluster mission show the evidence of steady flow of oxygen, hydrogen and helium ions from Earth to outer space.

2.      VISION 2 helps scientists to observe the escape of oxygen from Earth.

3.      MAVEN mission of NASA has shown that atmosphere of Mars suffered from atmospheric escape.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Encountering a 4D Creature in a 3D World: A Flip Book of Time and Dimensions

Image
  Encountering a 4D Creature in a 3D World: A Flip Book of Time and Dimensions Imagine living in a three-dimensional world where you perceive everything in terms of height, width, and depth. Now, let’s consider the possibility of encountering a being from the fourth dimension—a creature with access to an extra spatial axis. For simplicity, let’s refer to this fourth spatial dimension as W, beyond the familiar ‘X’, ‘Y’, and ‘Z’ axes of 3D space. When a 3D being encounters a 4D creature, it experiences only a slice of this being at any given time, similar to how a 2D creature would experience a slice of a 3D being. To visualize this interaction, let’s use a ‘flip book analogy’. Just as a flip book shows the movement of a figure frame-by-frame, a 3D observer would perceive the 4D being in a series of 3D “snapshots,” each representing a particular moment or view of the 4D creature. Let’s dive deeper into what this would be like. Understanding the Fourth Dimension In mathematics...
Read more
Image
  Are We Truly Living in the 3rd Dimension, or in a Sub-dimension? Humans generally perceive themselves as three-dimensional beings, moving freely in the world along three spatial axes: up and down, left and right, forward and backward. From a basic understanding of dimensions, this classification seems accurate. In the 1st dimension, movement is restricted to a single point. In the 2nd dimension, such as a hypothetical "stickman," motion is constrained to a flat plane—horizontal and vertical directions only. In our world, we move freely in all these directions, leading us to conclude that we live in a three-dimensional reality. However, this perception is only part of the story. The Fourth Axis: Time as a Dimension While we can navigate the three spatial dimensions, time, often referred to as the "fourth dimension”, remains out of our direct control. We experience time, we move forward through it, but we cannot influence its flow—pause it, reverse it, or leap ah...
Read more