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Earth's atmosphere

Earth's atmosphere
Earth's atmosphere A beautiful diagram of Earth’s layers drawn by Jose-Luis Olivares (see more of his work here). Note that this isn’t to scale—scientists typically think of altitude logarithmically because the atmospheric density decays exponentially with height, so that 90% of the mass of the atmosphere is found in the bottom 15 km (10 miles) and 99% of the mass of the atmosphere is found in the bottom 50 km (25 miles). Trying to draw anything to scale wouldn’t show the parts of the atmosphere we’re most familiar. Click here for an animated version. Jose-Luis Olivares