Word.ws English Dictionary

Jeans escape

Jeans escape noun: 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.

Noun

Jeans escape (countable and uncountable, plural Jeans escapes)

  1. 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.
    • As will be seem in Sects. 11.7.2.3 and 11.7.3.2, Jeans escape of H atoms from Venus is negligible compared to other, nonthermal mechanisms, whereas Jeans escape dominates the loss of H from Mars. On both planets, Jeans escape of O, O₂ and CO₂ is negligible.2014, Eugene F. Milone, William J. F. Wilson, Solar System Astrophysics, Springer, 2nd Edition, page 413
    • where a≡m/2k_BT, n is the number density of particles and v is the magnitude of the velocity.2017, Kevin Heng, Exoplanetary Atmospheres, Princeton University Press, page 213, The simplest model of Jeans escape [112], a mechanism named after the Englishman James H. Jeans, assumes that the...

Forms of Jeans escape

pluralJeans escapes

Origin of Jeans escape

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

Questions about Jeans escape

What does Jeans escape mean?
Jeans escape means 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.
What part of speech is Jeans escape?
Jeans escape is a noun.
What is the plural of Jeans escape?
The plural of Jeans escape is Jeans escapes.

Words near Jeans escape in the dictionary

  1. Jeanpaul
  2. Jeanpauls
  3. Jeanpierre
  4. Jeanpierres
  5. jeans
  6. Jeans escape
  7. Jeans escapes
  8. jeans jacket
  9. jeans jackets
  10. jeans-y
  11. jeansed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Jeans escape (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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