HYDROGEN escaping out of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Sometimes the simplest of problems aren’t addressed by scientific research for the longest time, when it could be otherwise.
Speaking of hydrogen, there are lots of articles and papers on how it is always escaping out of the Earth’s atmosphere because of its light weight/mass. These papers imply that all of the Earth’s water would have escaped into space some time ago. Water being H2O. What alarmism!
Yet other papers also indicate that the amount of water on Earth has steadily remained the same for billions of years.
Furthermore, the isotopic composition of the Sun’s protons (protium H1/ deuteron H2) is the biggest in the solar system. The second biggest is … guess what?
The Earth’s.
To my mind this indicates that the Earth is receiving massive inputs of hydrogen from the sun. This would save the oceans’ water from all escaping into outer space.
Are there mechanisms for this?
Well, indeed there are.
One, solar protons keep on getting captured by the Earth’s magnetosphere and directed above the north and south poles, a phenomenon that can be seen as the Auroras.
Two, all space dust and celestial objects adsorb varying degrees of protons from the sun. When these objects land on the Earth they carry with them these solar protons.
Saying that all the water of the world’s oceans will disappear via escape to space is like saying water evaporating from a barrel that is also receiving inputs of water from other sources will dry the barrel.
Yet, I cannot find any estimate of the amounts of protons captured into the Earth’s atmosphere via our planet’s magnetosphere and adsorbed space dust.
I also think that the steady increase of the Earth’s mass because of space dust and bolides has also significantly increased its mass and, therefore its gravity, over billions of years, which would lessen the escape of hydrogen into space.
Surely, these are topics that can still be researched on. (Send comments and suggestions to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)/PN
