The Curious Case of Earth's Leaking Atmosphere
Earth's atmosphere is leaking. Every day, around 90 tons of material -- consisting primarily of oxygen, hydrogen, and helium ions -- escapes from our planet's upper atmosphere and streams out into space. Although missions such as ESA's fleet of four Cluster spacecraft flying in formation around Earth have long been investigating this leakage, there are still many open questions. How and why is Earth losing its atmosphere. How do the ions escape? Where do they originate? What processes are at play?
Comments:
Had no idea earth was leaking so much gas.<br>Thanks for posting. Pete
If my math is correct, and the rate remains constant (unlikely), it would take over 152 billion years for all of our atmosphere to leak away. Granted Earth would be uninhabitable long before then due to the demise of the Sun.
