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F. Tian, O.B. Toon, A.A. Pavlov (LASP, University of Colorado at Boulder)
Recent modeling on hydrodynamic escape shows that hydrogen escape from early Earth's atmosphere is limited by the available solar EUV radiation and should have occurred at rates about two orders of magnitude slower than the diffusion limited escape rates (Tian et al. 2005). The inefficient hydrogen escape would have resulted in a hydrogen rich early Earth's atmosphere, an environment friendly to the formation of prebiotic organic molecules and the origin of life. However, the current model contains only one single component. As a result, the effects of the existence of other heavier components on the hydrogen hydrodynamic escape process (drag force on the hydrogen escape flow by heavier components, extra heating/cooling by the heavier components, etc.) are not clear in the present study. In this work we develop a multi-component hydrodynamic escape model to study the effects of heavier gases have on the hydrogen hydrodynamic escape process.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.