All Questions
Tagged with earth atmospheric-science
87
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10
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How is it that the Earth's atmosphere is not “blown away”?
The Earth moves at a high rate of speed around the Sun, and the solar system is moving quickly around the Milky Way. How is it that the Earth's atmosphere is not “blown away”?
- 109
4
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2
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Attenuation mass-thickness for sunset light
We are able to look directly at the sun near sunset and sunrise, which clearly demonstrates the fact that our atmosphere attenuates visible light. Let's imagine it follows the typical attenuation ...
- 21.1k
9
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4
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Minimum size of an asteroid to actually impact earth
From what I understand, an object entering the atmosphere will start to burn up from the tremendous resistance of the atmosphere. Presumably, for asteroids under a certain size, they will burn up ...
- 1,786
2
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1
answer
378
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Is the Earth's atmosphere a Faraday cage?
X-ray telescopes are required to be above the atmosphere as the atmosphere blocks EM waves with wavelengths < UV . Does this mean that the Earth's atmosphere can be thought of as a Faraday cage ...
- 751
9
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Why does the Sun "shine brighter" some days? [duplicate]
Today, the Sun seems extremely bright; more dazzling than usual, and even the roads seem to be brighter so it's not just when you look up in the sky. Is more light actually getting through (perhaps ...
- 605
1
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1
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Earth is rotating [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why does the atmosphere rotate along with the earth?
If i take off from land on a helicopter straight above the earth surface to a certain height and stay there for few mins/hours ...
- 13
8
votes
2
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587
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Is it possible to use a balloon to float so high in the atmosphere that you can be gravitationally pulled towards a satellite?
A recent joke on the comedy panel show 8 out of 10 cats prompted this question. I'm pretty sure the answer's no, but hopefully someone can surprise me.
If you put a person in a balloon, such that ...
- 183
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What does the phrase "limb of the earth" or "atmospheric limb" mean?
What does the term limb of the earth (see this question, for example) or atmospheric limb mean? The phrase strikes me as very odd, since earth is nearly spherical. Do other planets with atmospheres ...
- 199
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Will the earth never cool, but only get hotter?
Since the earth is in a vacuum and therefore there is no thermal transfer of heat to anything else, how can it even cool down? It seems like its average temperature would always be constant, ignoring ...
- 189
4
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Assuming that the Sun wouldn't evolve into a red giant, how long would the Earth's atmosphere last?
It's not going to last forever - Jeans Escape is going to eventually act on the atmosphere after trillions of trillions of years: see http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Catling2009_SciAm.pdf
- 3,662
4
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Ozone Hole in the South Pole
Perhaps this should be a chemistry question, but it seems to have physics attributes. There's a perennial ozone "hole" around the south pole created by destruction from Cl based chemicals like CFCs. ...
- 5,784
11
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How are the northern lights produced?
Although I've never seen it myself, I hear the northern lights are a sight to be seen! I know they're related to the Earth's magnetic field but I don't know much more about them. What is the physical ...
- 1,397