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Earth's atmosphere photographed from the International Space Station.The orange and green line of airglow is at roughly the altitude of the Kármán line. [1]The Kármán line (or von Kármán line / v ɒ n ˈ k ɑːr m ɑː n /) [2] is a conventional definition of the edge of space.
The upper boundary of the exosphere can be defined as the distance at which the influence of solar radiation pressure on atomic hydrogen exceeds that of Earth's gravitational pull. This happens at half the distance to the Moon or somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 kilometres (120,000 mi).
Blue light is scattered more than other wavelengths by the gases in the atmosphere, surrounding Earth in a visibly blue layer at the stratosphere, above the clouds of the troposphere, when seen from space on board the ISS at an altitude of 335 km (208 mi) (the Moon is visible as a crescent in the far background). [1]
Near Earth's surface, the acceleration due to gravity, accurate to 2 significant figures, is 9.8 m/s 2 (32 ft/s 2). This means that, ignoring the effects of air resistance, the speed of an object falling freely will increase by about 9.8 metres per second (32 ft/s) every second.
The density of the Earth's atmosphere decreases nearly exponentially with altitude. The total mass of the atmosphere is M = ρ A H ≃ 1 kg/cm 2 within a column of one square centimeter above the ground (with ρ A = 1.29 kg/m 3 the atmospheric density on the ground at z = 0 m altitude, and H ≃ 8 km the average atmospheric scale height ).
Earth’s inner core, a red-hot ball of iron 1,800 miles below our feet, stopped spinning recently, and it may now be reversing directions, according to an analysis of seismic activity.
At the 60th parallel, the air rises to the tropopause (about 8 km at this latitude) and moves poleward. As it does so, the upper-level air mass deviates toward the east. When the air reaches the polar areas, it has cooled by radiation to space and is considerably denser than the underlying air. It descends, creating a cold, dry high-pressure area.
Earth tends to pull asteroids into partial or full orbits around it regularly before they are flung back out into space. For instance, one such space rock 2022 NX 1 was a short-lived “mini-moon ...