Jeans escape

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Atmospheric escape

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

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 ${\displaystyle {\ce {H}}}$ atoms from Venus is negligible compared to other, nonthermal mechanisms, whereas Jeans escape dominates the loss of ${\displaystyle {\ce {H}}}$ from Mars. On both planets, Jeans escape of ${\displaystyle {\ce {O}}}$, ${\displaystyle {\ce {O2}}}$ and ${\displaystyle {\ce {CO2}}}$ is negligible.

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

     The simplest model of Jeans escape , 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,

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

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