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Is Earth's Atmosphere an Import?
garg0yle writes "One of the questions about the formation of our planet is: where did the atmosphere come from? One theory is that the oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases were part of the coalescing ball, and 'seeped out' during the final stages of the planet's formation. However, a new article at Wired says isotopic analysis of krypton and xenon indicates that they (and the rest of our atmosphere) may be of extraterrestrial origin, either arriving via comets or being swept up from gas clouds."
...remove the flying saucers.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm an atmosphere skeptic.
The existence of the atmosphere is a liberal hoax perpetrated on us by the scientific community.
Can you see it? No. What are they trying to hide?
This is exactly what I would expect from a diffusion process since heavier atoms would move slower than light ones. Granted the ratios may be too large to be explained in this way, but still.
Also I dunno how large an effect it would be but in a system the radius of the entire earth, but would the mass difference make a measurable difference due to gravity ?
Honestly who cares?
This has zero relevance to our basic understanding of the formation of the planets. The atmosphere is from some part of space. Whether it is from asteroids more recently than the late stages of the earths formation is kind of useless information.
The early Earth as it was forming was probably hit with quite a few objects like comets that had volatiles like Water, Ammonia and Carbon Dioxide so it is quite possible that a great deal of the water and other volatiles found on Earth have cometary or otherwise other-worldly origins. Water and Carbon Dioxide are not rare substances in our solar system. There are entire moons with more than half of their mass consisting of water or other volatiles and comets are huge sources of volatiles in general.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I saw a documentary on this giant vacuum cleaner theory once.
...which is why he is so upset that we are destroying it
Ask Kuato
It's hard to understand how you can extrapolate a whole atmosphere's origins by looking at a couple of very rare gases like krypton and xenon.
Given that all the elements that make up the Earth were manufactured in the same solar furnace(s) why is it necessary that some originated separately from others? How do you then explain the huge atmospheres of the Gas Giants? It would take an unlikely number of very large asteroids to do the job.
This hypothesis suffers from the same shortcomings as the Transpermia idea. It just moves the problem elsewhere, at best.
Everything's from somewhere.
Why can't we do something to return the planet to it's natural state - before it was violated and exploited by these cosmic phenomena? Whose children did they destroy and what of their future?
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Adama: Where shall we go? What shall we do? "Life here began out there".
Those are the first words of the sacred scrolls.
And they were told to us by the Lords of Kobol many countless centuries ago.
And they made it perfectly clear that we are not alone in this universe.
Elosha, there's a 13th colony of humankind, is there not?
Priest Elosha: Yes. The scrolls tell us a 13th tribe left Kobol in the Early Days.
They traveled far and made their home upon a planet called Earth,
which circled a distant and unknown star.
Me: You all are nuts!
Vegetation on this planet has been here a huge amount of time. How much time? If all of human existence, in it's entirety, were a single pixel, the age of the earth would be nearly 6000 pixels long. Vegetation have been here for 1300 pixels. That's an awful long time for the plants (completely unencumbered by man) to create oxygen.
God created the earth?
How the HELL did this article get filed under "science".
Venus has a significant atmosphere. Saturn has an atmosphere. Neptune... atmosphere. Jupiter... ALL atmosphere. Hey, look at that! All the planets larger than Mars have a significantly thick atmosphere.
Maybe it's as simple as their gravity is sufficient to trap gasses.
Please refile this article under "Intellectually Bankrupt" instead.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
... indicates that they (and the rest of our atmosphere) may be of extraterrestrial origin..
Duh. Why do you suppose they call it "krypton," Kal-El?
But, I cannot remember on which day...
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
According to current theory, absolutely everything on Earth, heavier than lithium, came from extraterrestrial origin rather than from the initial Big Bang. Without supernova's there would simply be no Earth, so I fail to see any productive insight to be taken from this article. It must be a slow 'science news day' at Wired.com. Either that or they now only employ 'slow' writers that have forgotten to check their facts with any 'real' scientists.
donkey's made it i tell ya! that's all i know what the truth is and that's all the truth i will ever know how to handle gdamnit!
Plants change H2O into O2 during photosynthesis, using electrons from water to replenish those lost in the photosystems during photosynthesis and using the hydrogen ions for chemiosmosis to produce ATP. For land plants, any water they "give off" to the atmosphere is simply water they picked up from the ground but did not use.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Aren't we observing the volcanoes of Enceladus spewing gases that are forming an atmosphere? Could that be how our atmospheric elements got to the surface as well?
In the beginning, there was null.
I'm not sure if there is enough hydrogen or hydrogen compounds in the venutian atmosphere to support such organisims. The idea is something I read as a kid back in the 60's, I don't know if anyone has investigated it further.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No need for comets. This is all pretty well documented as possible with Star life cycles.
Billions and billions of years ago there were multiple stars ( YA RLY) in our neck of the woods... all super heated and close quartered like, ya dig?
Hydrogen fusion --> Helium... bang pow... eject some helium, eject some hydrogen.... simmer....
Helium4 fusion --> baryllium8->Carbon12 and Oxygen 16, whirrr spin... more ejections into cooling surrounding plasma.... CO2, O2, CO, Carbon carbon reaction yielding Magnesium Sodium , Neon, Silicon, argon..., then all the spare hyrdogen from the previous stage crashing around fusing at times... secondary Helium4 combining with these gets you other isotopes like flourine and iron and nitrogen.
The Oxygen-Oxygen fusion gets you Phosphorus, Sulfur, etc....
billions more year-ish units pass, stars explode, space expands, reactions slow... remaining young stars stablize. ... makes a ring around the sun(s). imperfect distribution of elements causes more mass to be concentrated at a couple of points.... thereby yielding local gravity... that draws adjacent particles together, and scoops up disconnected lighter elements in the orbital pathways.
All the iron and more massive elements in the local group start to clump together
Planet's external temperature starts to cool, thereby allowing other chemical weak bonds to form... the end. One atmosphere.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ~Genesis 1:1
GOD created the Earth out of hot grits like a few thousand hot actresses ago!
Earth itself is made out of materials from outer space. Some super novae transported the heavy metals to our solar system. And even that was not there all the time. Hell no. And even some people think that happened on Tuesday. I am absolutely sure the whole Earth creation stuff happened on Monday as God rested on Saturday. And on Monday he made a loud noise.
The Atmosphere came from CHEMTRAILS
I filmed electromagnetic activity (HAARP?), mysterious black lines, invisible planes, spider-web chemtrails and more.
All in a few short weeks... look up at your sky - you can see it too.
http://youtube.com/TrutherD1
How is the specific order of events that lead to the creation of our planet going to tell us anything about the creation of other planets?
I don't know but I do know that I'm glad you weren't around in the 18th century to question why on Earth anyone would ever want to waste time studying electricity. Knowing how planets form might appear useless to you today but who's to say that in 300 years time it is not extremely useful for targeting interstellar probes or identifying planets and asteroids with useful ore deposits.
We would not be where we are today if we only researched topics for which we can see the immediate applications. That's not to say that all curiosity driven research will end up being useful but it is impossible to tell which topics will be the essential ones to know in 100+ years.
would the mass difference make a measurable difference due to gravity ?
My guess would be yes since there is a well established method to measure the historic ocean temperature using the ratio of Oxygen-18 to Oxygen-16. O-16 preferentially evaporates due to its smaller mass and so during ice ages the oceans are depleted of O-16 because it evaporates and forms glacial ice.
in any vertical column region of the atmosphere there is a distribution of the molecules of a gas which should be exponential in density and a function of the partial pressure and molecular mass of the gas.
Just a theory. Why should we believe it more than Intelligent Falling?
aliens terraformed earth a long time ago
According to this book I've partly read [disclaimer below], it was only 6,000 years ago, and it was only one alien. A pretty powerful guy, but still only one of him.
[disclaimer] I never finished that book. I skipped over all the begats that establish the time line, for one thing. And frankly a lot of it is just tl;dr. Then I completely stopped reading it as I began to realize just how sick in the head that alien guy is, if one is to believe the book's descriptions of his motives and actions. He's got some serious hangups about sex and fun, for one thing. And he's prone to violence that he justifies with very selfish reasoning, in fact he really seems to fit the diagnosis of narcissistic sociopath (I think the DSM now has a different name for that).
If there is such a guy out there, presumably he is not alone, and we can hope that the others are more sane and community minded than this jerk is.
Will
If you go back far enough. This is a non-story and just an excuse to get research grants.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
it had no atmosphere.
I'm getting in my time machine right now... I'm back. The cowboy aliens, I ran into, said large scale matter transporters were used. Who knew?