Will earth eventually lose its atmosphere?

Question

Gravity is not perfect. As far as I understand, some particles are constantly lost to space.

Answer 1

As I understand it, yes, Earth will eventually lose its atmosphere. The mechanism behind this is the 'Maxwell Velocity Distribution'. Try searching that and see if any detailed information can be found. Essentially, a volume of gas will have particles traveling at various speeds. The most common speed (average speed) and the distribution of the speeds is based on temperature and other factors. However, it is a bell curve, so regardless of the average speed, because of random interactions, there will be particles traveling at very low speeds and particles traveling at very high speeds. There will be particles traveling at high enough speeds to escape Earth's gravity and will thus be lost to space. How many particles reach this speed and how many are pointed in the right direction to escape, I'm not sure of that. But we do lose atmosphere. Eventually it will be gone, even with a magnetic field blocking solar radiation, so long as the atmosphere remains heated.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

What protects us is the Earth's magnetic field. This deflects the solar wind and keeps the atmosphere from blowing away. On Mars there used to be an atmosphere but the magnetic field died away. Most of the atmosphere got blown into space.

Helium is being lost to space all the time.

Answer 3

Solar wind does effect the earth. The Northern Lights (aurora boreals ?) is one example. Interruption of radio signals during solar flares, etc. Millions (hopefully not sooner) of years in the future the sun will burn up all of its nuclear fuel and go "nova." This will mean the sun increases in size enough to burn off the earth's atmosphere and swallow the earth before it collapses on itself and becomes a black hole, or brown dwarf, or neutron star.

Answer 4

There's no such thing as gravity...

The Earth sucks.