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The Purple Earth hypothesis has great implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. Historically, scientists sought out planets reflecting light in the green-yellow range as possible hosts to photosynthetic organisms, due to the implied presence of chlorophyll.
Convection cells can form in any fluid, including the Earth's atmosphere (where they are called Hadley cells), boiling water, soup (where the cells can be identified by the particles they transport, such as grains of rice), the ocean, or the surface of the Sun. The size of convection cells is largely determined by the fluid's properties.
Mantle convection is the very slow creep of Earth's solid silicate mantle as convection currents carry heat from the interior to the planet's surface. [2] [3] Mantle convection causes tectonic plates to move around the Earth's surface. [4] The Earth's lithosphere rides atop the asthenosphere, and the two form the components of the upper mantle ...
Those cells exist in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The vast bulk of the atmospheric motion occurs in the Hadley cell. The high pressure systems acting on the Earth's surface are balanced by the low pressure systems elsewhere. As a result, there is a balance of forces acting on the Earth's surface.
Diagram showing displacement of the Sun's image at sunrise and sunset Comparison of inferior and superior mirages due to differing air refractive indices, n. Atmospheric refraction is the deviation of light or other electromagnetic wave from a straight line as it passes through the atmosphere due to the variation in air density as a function of height. [1]
Sinking lithosphere at subduction zones are a part of convection cells in the underlying ductile mantle. This process of convection allows heat generated by radioactive decay to escape from the Earth's interior. [6] The lithosphere consists of the outermost light crust plus the uppermost rigid portion of the mantle.
As the CME reaches our ionosphere — a charged layer that surrounds the Earth — it will excite particles in the sky that light up to create the aurora. Expect more of these aurora-brightening ...
Earth's outer core is a fluid layer about 2,260 km (1,400 mi) in height (i.e. distance from the highest point to the lowest point at the edge of the inner core) [36% of the Earth's radius, 15.6% of the volume] and composed of mostly iron and nickel that lies above Earth's solid inner core and below its mantle. [31]