bbrubaker, on 14 January 2012 - 10:18 AM, said:
I thought my post was pretty GD clever, lol. No one liked that bit of humor?
What humor? It was too clever for me, maybe a smile concerning the link.

Looks like an Earth look-alike without a North Pole, cool.

I think the artist or photo-shop aficionado did a good job though.
I guess there must be some topic related humor in your link somewhere:
(form your link)
Quote
Wizard: So you see, Dorothy, you had Herpes all along!
Dorothy: But I didn't
want Herpes!
Wizard: Oh. Well... you've got it. —
Family Guy
Upon reading your link I didn't quite get how it ties in with the topic, but I probably missed something.
Moontanman, on 24 February 2012 - 02:12 AM, said:
I forgot to address this, why would you think hydrogen would float above the other gasses in the atmosphere and be stripped off? A planet that big should be able to hold on to hydrogen and it would mix with the other gases just like CO2, O2, N3, mix in the earth's atmosphere.
It depends upon how large the atmosphere is. On a hotter water planet the atmosphere would be thick with humidity, seemingly to high altitudes. This makes the atmosphere more dense/ heavy. As on the Earth the light elements would rise above a lower denser atmosphere generally absent of the lightest gases. CO2, O2, and nitrogen are heavier gases that do not easily separate so they generally mix together. CO2 is the heaviest of these but if emitted in large quantities from natural processes on Earth, it can move over like a fog, silently and quickly killing animal and human life within it before it eventually mixes in the lower atmosphere.
When the lightest gases rise to the top of any atmosphere, at this altitude the atmosphere will be very thin and unprotected from the stellar wind which can erode away the uppermost gases in time. For a hotter planet I believe one would expect that the lighter elements in the upper atmosphere would erode away more quickly than on Earth because the stellar radiation would be more influential. This is what they presently think happened to the water and most of the lighter gases that were originally thought to be on Venus. Water in the atmosphere was thought to be broken down to its elements and slowly eroded away leaving primarily the heaviest gases, primarily carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid in gas form, with only relatively small amounts of remaining water and other trace gases.
This post has been edited by pantheory: 27 February 2012 - 06:44 PM