• Question: how do planets survive if space is only a deadly vacuum?

    Asked by kizibou-bubble-boy to Stephanie, Rehemat, Christopher, Caroline, Aileen on 7 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Christopher Nankervis

      Christopher Nankervis answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      Gravity maintains our very thin layer of atmosphere close to the surface of the Earth. Its thickness is like the outer skin of an orange compared to its diameter. Many other planets have much thinner atmospheres, which can be because the surface of them is so warm that atmospheric gases are ‘boiled’ away much more easily. Mars used to have an atmosphere that could have potentially allowed life to survive. A lot of climate change happened there many millions of years ago.

    • Photo: Stephanie Mann

      Stephanie Mann answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      Pretty much every element we have on earth – the particles in the sky and teh rocks forming the ground – were made by big massive star explosions billions of years ago. Space is MOSTLY empty, mostly being important because it’s only by gravity pulling all the particles together that we even have stars and planets at all. The rest about our earth’s atmosphere has been answered very well by Chris

    • Photo: Aileen Baird

      Aileen Baird answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      Great answers here by Chris and Stephanie, nothing more for me to add here!

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