# Exosphere

 related topics {math, energy, light} {acid, form, water}

The exosphere is the uppermost layer of the atmosphere. In the exosphere, an upward travelling molecule moving fast enough to attain escape velocity can escape to space with a low chance of collisions; if it is moving below escape velocity it will be prevented from escaping from the celestial body by gravity. In either case, such a molecule is unlikely to collide with another molecule due to the exosphere's low density.

## Contents

### Earth's exosphere

The main gases within the Earth's exosphere are the lightest gases, mainly hydrogen, with some helium, carbon dioxide, and atomic oxygen near the exobase. The exosphere is the last layer before outer space. Since there is no clear boundary between outer space and the exosphere, the exosphere is sometimes considered a part of outer space.

### Lower boundary

The altitude of its lower boundary, known as the thermopause and exobase, ranges from about 250 to 500 kilometres (160 to 310 mi) depending on solar activity.[citation needed] Its lower boundary at the edge of the thermosphere has sometimes been estimated to be 500 to 1,000 km (310 to 620 mi) above the Earth's surface.[citation needed] The exobase is also called the critical level, the lowest altitude of the exosphere, and is typically defined in one of two ways:

If we define the exobase as the height at which upward traveling molecules experience one collision on average, then at this position the mean free path of a molecule is equal to one pressure scale height. This is shown in the following. Consider a volume of air, with horizontal area A and height equal to the mean free path l, at pressure p and temperature T. For an ideal gas, the number of molecules contained in it is:

where R is the universal gas constant. From the requirement that each molecule traveling upward undergoes on average one collision, the pressure is:

where mA is the mean molecular mass of the gas. Solving these two equations gives:

which is the equation for the pressure scale height. As the pressure scale height is almost equal to the density scale height of the primary constituent, and since the Knudsen number is the ratio of mean free path and typical density fluctuation scale, this means that the exobase lies in the region where $\mathrm{Kn}(h_{EB}) \simeq 1$.