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Xe is the heaviest noble gas in the Earth's atmosphere. It has seven stable isotopes (126 Xe, 128 Xe, 129 Xe, 130 Xe, 131 Xe, 132 Xe, 134 Xe) and two isotopes (124 Xe, 136 Xe) with long-lived half-lives. Xe has four synthetic radioisotopes with very short half-lives, usually less than one month. Xenon-129 can be used to examine the early ...
The troposphere is the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. It extends from Earth's surface to an average height of about 12 km (7.5 mi; 39,000 ft), although this altitude varies from about 9 km (5.6 mi; 30,000 ft) at the geographic poles to 17 km (11 mi; 56,000 ft) at the Equator, [22] with some variation due
This list is sorted by boiling point of gases in ascending order, but can be sorted on different values. "sub" and "triple" refer to the sublimation point and the triple point, which are given in the case of a substance that sublimes at 1 atm; "dec" refers to decomposition. "~" means approximately.
The composition of Earth's atmosphere is determined by the by-products of the life that it sustains. Dry air (mixture of gases) from Earth's atmosphere contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and traces of hydrogen, helium, and other "noble" gases (by volume), but generally a variable amount of water vapor is ...
Argon is the third most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv). It is more than twice as abundant as water vapor (which averages about 4000 ppmv, but varies greatly), 23 times as abundant as carbon dioxide (400 ppmv), and more than 500 times as abundant as neon (18 ppmv).
The reason is that there is no primordial helium in the atmosphere; due to the small mass of the atom, helium cannot be retained by the Earth's gravitational field. [71] Helium on Earth comes from the alpha decay of heavy elements such as uranium and thorium found in the Earth's crust, and tends to accumulate in natural gas deposits. [71]
At standard temperature and pressure, it forms a monatomic gas with a density of 9.73 kg/m 3, about 8 times the density of the Earth's atmosphere at sea level, 1.217 kg/m 3. [16] It is one of the densest gases at room temperature (a few are denser, e.g. CF 3 (CF 2 ) 2 CF 3 and WF 6 ) and is the densest of the noble gases.
Early in the Earth's life, scientists have found evidence of liquid water indicating a warm world even though the Sun's output is believed to have only been 70% of what it is today. Higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the early Earth's atmosphere might help explain this faint young sun paradox.