Atmosphere, Atmosphere ...

Minerve, on a summer evening. The haze rises, gradually obscuring the light coming from the stars, reflecting on the ground the radiance of the Moon.

The haze, or the visible manifestation of the intangible, of the invisible ... of the atmosphere. This envelope of gas of one hundred kilometers thick surrounds our planet, protecting it from the flow of energetic particles coming from the Sun (ultraviolet radiation), from the interstellar medium (cosmic rays), spreading and blocking to the ground the solar energy, carrying, along with the oceans, the heat and moisture from the tropics, spreading, at lower latitudes, the cold of polar regions, ...

For all these reasons, our atmosphere is essential to life on Earth ... as it turned out to be essential to the development and the diversification of life on Earth.