Why is earth’s atmosphere not blown away into space?

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The ambiance  possesses the aforesaid  momentum arsenic  the coagulated  earth.

The ambiance possesses the aforesaid momentum arsenic the coagulated earth. | Photo Credit: ActionVance/Unsplash

GayatriChandrashekar

The superior crushed is gravity, which acts similar an invisible tether. Every molecule of state successful our atmosphere, nitrogen, oxygen, c dioxide, etc., has mass. Earth’s halfway exerts a gravitational propulsion that attracts these molecules towards the halfway of the planet. Even though world travels astatine 1,07,000 kmph astir the sun, the ambiance is trapped wrong earth’s ‘gravity well’.

Also, the ambiance possesses the aforesaid momentum arsenic the coagulated earth. Since the gases formed alongside the satellite oregon were released from it, they were already moving astatine that speed. In space, there’s nary friction to brushwood the ambiance away. Imagine being wrong a accelerated aeroplane: the aerial wrong moves with the level and you don’t consciousness a 900 kmph upwind hitting your face: due to the fact that you and the aerial stock the aforesaid motion.

While gravity holds the aerial down, the magnetosphere protects it from being stripped distant by the star wind, a watercourse of charged particles from the prima that could different stroke the ambiance away.

Published - February 04, 2026 02:31 p.m. IST

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