Dr. Piers Sellers knows the Earth’s atmosphere. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in ecological science and a doctorate in biometeorology in England, Dr. Sellers studied the interaction between the Earth’s biosphere and atmosphere at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Dr. Sellers then became an astronaut and flew in three shuttle missions to the International Space Station stationed in the thin atmospheric layers 180 – 190 miles above Earth.
With 80% of the atmosphere within 10 miles of the Earth’s surface, traveling a mere 60 miles an hour, we would drive through this rich layer in 10 minutes. As Dr. Sellers observed in Leonardo DiCaprio’s recent film Before the Flood, “an astonishingly thin layer” nourishes us.