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."

Comments

Rubbish...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Rubbish...

[martas]

For a long time now, I have been afraid to come out with my story, but since this issue has been raised, I just can't stay quiet any longer. It is my duty as a citizen to report that for as long as I can remember, the atmosphere has been orally violating me. What's worse, my parents have known about this all along, and they have stood by and let it go on. In fact, as soon as I was born, they let the atmosphere touch me in the most inappropriate places. I also know of many other individuals who have been subjected to similar treatment by the atmosphere, though I won't name any of them - I will leave it up to them whether or not they decide to follow my example and tell the world about this horrible ongoing abuse.

I hope the authorities will act upon my testimony, and finally put an end to the atmosphere's series of crimes.

Re:Who cares?

[Kerrigann]

Maybe it would give us hints about what to look for in other solar systems when looking for rocky planets with similar atmospheres?

Maybe it would tell us something about whether or not our type of atmosphere is rare in the universe?

Who knows, it might be useful. It should be at least as useful as studying the mating habits of the short-tailed horned lizard, or a million other things scientists study.

Re:comets

[noidentity]

You forgot to capitalize an instance of "water" in your first and last sentences. I also think you should capitalize "moons", "worldly", and "substances", for good measure.

Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Science?

[MightyMartian]

None of the planets you list have the proportionally large amounts of O2 that Earth does. It's not that Earth has a large atmosphere, it's that the atmosphere is in so many ways different from even the other Earth-like bodies (hint Venus and Mars' atmospheres are dominated by CO2). The gas giants are a totally different creature; they are largely made up of hydrogen.