Abstract
Since the time of Pascal and Torricelli, who ventured (already knowing the weight of air) to measure the pressure of the atmosphere in centimeters of mercury and to ascertain its variation with altitude, the science we now call aeronomy has, indeed, made a certain amount of progress. Pascal’s decisive experiment, at Puy de Dôme, took place on September 19, 1648. As a result of this experiment, he managed to calculate the total mass of the air surrounding the Earth. His treatise on the weight of the air mass concludes with these words:
Therefore the entire mass of the sphere of air around the world weighs 8283889440000000000 pounds … that is, eight million million million, two hundred eighty-three thousand eight hundred eighty-nine million million, four hundred forty thousand million pounds.
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© 1970 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Pecker, JC. (1970). The Structure of the Atmospheric Layers. In: Space Observatories. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3320-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3320-6_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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