• Question: Whow many miles away is the end of the atmosphere

    Asked by 268evoa44 to Anthea, Chloe, Kevin, Michel, Sean on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Michel Dugon

      Michel Dugon answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      The end of the atmosphere is somewhere 700km above us… That’s a long way out, even further than the International space station! However, air gets rarer and rarer (thinner) as you get higher. That means that a human being can hardly breath above 8 km, and at 12km, you’d die pretty quickly!

    • Photo: Chloe Kinsella

      Chloe Kinsella answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      It is actually impossible to answer this question, as the atmosphere is made up of gases and it just fades away. It doesnt have a clear end point. The atmosphere gets much thinner as you go further into space. Scientists believe that 75% of the atmosphere is within 11 kilometres (6.8 miles) of the Earth’s surface. But the last few molecules of the atmosphere could be hundreds of kilometres from Earths surface.

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