Transcription
[Music] There's another way of looking at the atmosphere. If you could unwrap the atmosphere from the surface of the Earth and put it all into a ball, this is what it would look like. Its weight is equal to a layer of water 34 ft deep covering the Earth. [Music]
The layer that we spend our lives in, the troposphere, is just a narrow band. It's a finely balanced mixture of different gases essential for life, but it also has a physical presence. To understand the troposphere we live in, you have to think of it not just as gases, but as a fluid. In effect, we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. Just like water, air has turbulence. These clouds are formed as the air creates eddy currents flowing around the tips of mountains. Tornadoes are like giant whirlpools. And just like the ocean, the troposphere even has waves. This cloud in Queensland, Australia, is one of the largest waves in the world; it can reach over a mile high. It's a solitary tropospheric wave that, combined with the humidity in the region, takes the form of a visible [Music] cloud. As the air cools, it condenses to form a cloud that rolls inland at 20-25 m/hour, visible evidence of the ocean of air above us.
And just like any fluid, the atmosphere has a weight. It presses down on each of our bodies with a force of over 14 lb per square inch. The only reason that we don't collapse in a heap is because the air inside our bodies balances the pressure outside. We're like, like lobsters walking on the seabed, oblivious to the weight of the fluid above us because we're so adjusted to it.
And if you're still in any doubt about the fluid nature of the [Music] atmosphere, some people can even surf on it. Admittedly, it's a little trickier than traditional surfing, which is why it's best left to an expert like Troy Hartman. Now the air is flowing. I'm just standing on a surface here. Troy isn't just falling vertically through the air; he can move horizontally. [Music] [Applause] Too G my Des, it's like a [Music] runner. The guy is Troy's [Music] [Applause] ocean woo.