[TML] A new tourist ship design

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 1/13/08 9:38 AM, "Knapp" <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:

> So what does keep the atmosphere warm?
> As I understood it, it was the sun shining on the land and that turns
> the sunlight into heat that keeps the Earth warm. On the other side I
> have read that the upper atmosphere is very hot. Then you have the
> fact that heat rises. If it is the land that heats the air then why is
> it could on the top of a mountain? Seems like this should be easy to
> understand but something is missing in this picture.

Air is very transparent to visible light, that's why we can see through it.
And that's where Sunlight's power is concentrated.  The land can absorb a
lot of it, and re-radiate it as infrared ("heat").  The atmosphere is a lot
less transparent to IR, so it retains a lot of the heat.  High up, the
atmosphere thins and holds the heat less.  *Way* up, other effects heat it
up, but it's really thin at that point, so it doesn't help heat Earth much.

Beyond that, I'm getting out of my depth without reasearch I can't do before
going to work.  :)