Just as an orange is surrounded by peel, the Earth is surrounded all around by a 640 km thick shell of air. This shell can be broken down into various layers and it comprises of about 20 different types of gases out of which Nitrogen and Oxygen have the highest percentage.
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Without the atmosphere it would be impossible to live on the Earth since it protects us both from the harmful rays of the Sun and from the cold in outer space. The term weight is used to measure Earth’s gravitational pull on an object. The atmosphere exerts a contant pressure of one kilogram per centimetre at sea level and this decreases as we go higher and higher. We don’t feel the pressure because it is equal from all sides and vecause our body is used to it.
If the atmosphere were weight then it would weight about 5,150,000,000,000,000 tons. During the daylight the Atmosphere scatters the blue light coming from the Sun, which explains the blue sky, and in the evenings and early morning it scatters the blue light so much that it is absorded in it thus producing the red glow in the sky.
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