Jeans escape

English

Etymology

Named after English physicist Sir James Jeans (1877–1946), who is credited with calculating the rate of such atmospheric escape.

Noun

Jeans escape (countable and uncountable, plural Jeans escapes)

1. (planetology, astrophysics) A type of atmospheric escape in which a light gas atom or molecule (typically a helium atom or hydrogen molecule) gains sufficient momentum through collision with other molecules to escape the atmosphere (and gravitational pull) of a planet.
   • 2014, Eugene F. Milone, William J. F. Wilson, Solar System Astrophysics, Springer, 2nd Edition, page 413,

     As will be seem in Sects. 11.7.2.3 and 11.7.3.2, Jeans escape of ${\ce {H}}$ atoms from Venus is negligible compared to other, nonthermal mechanisms, whereas Jeans escape dominates the loss of ${\ce {H}}$ from Mars. On both planets, Jeans escape of ${\ce {O}}$, ${\ce {O2}}$ and ${\ce {CO2}}$ is negligible.

   • 2017, Kevin Heng, Exoplanetary Atmospheres, Princeton University Press, page 213,

     The simplest model of Jeans escape [112], a mechanism named after the Englishman James H. Jeans, assumes that the constituent particles of the atmosphere may be described by a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution,

     $f_{M}=\left({\frac {a}{\pi }}\right)^{3/2}ne^{-av^{2}}$,     (13.6)

     where $a\equiv m/2k_{B}T$, $n$ is the number density of particles and $v$ is the magnitude of the velocity.

   • 2021, Mark H. Thiemens, Mang Lin, 2: Discoveries of Mass Independent Isotope Effects in the Solar System, Ilya N. Bindeman, Andreas Pack (editors), Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, Volume 86: Triple Oxygen Isotope Geochemistry, Mineralogical Society of America, page 70,

     The hydrogen is lost from the system by diffusion and Jeans escapes.

Translations

type of atmospheric escape

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