The Earth’s atmosphere is far bigger than we had realised, scientists have announced. The outermost part of our atmosphere reaches nearly twice as far as the Moon and is about 50 times as big as our own planet, new research has shown.
“The Moon flies through Earth’s atmosphere,” says Igor Baliukin of Russia’s Space Research Institute, lead author of the paper presenting the results. “We were not aware of it until we dusted off observations made over two decades ago by the SOHO spacecraft.”
At the boundary of own atmosphere and outer space, there is a cloud of hydrogen atoms that scientists refer to as the geocorona. One of the instruments on the SOHO spacecraft found the signature of that border, allowing it to detect exactly where it is. That can only be done at certain times, and the new research is the result of fortunate timing that allowed the spacecraft to spot the edge.
Well, as Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” For decades now the anti-industrial Left has been trying to convince us that the atmospheric science is settled — that the planet is either getting hotter, colder, or both, or neither, or something — and therefore we should accept their cocksure-yet-crackpot notions in order to give up our carbon-based lifestyles (never mind that we ourselves are carbon-based life forms; the Left is essentially a suicide cult), become vegans, murder our children, and die.
Now along comes this new discovery, and suddenly it’s plain to see that there’s still much so we don’t know about just about everything.
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