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ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The pressure exerted by the atmosphere
Synonyms:
air pressure; atmospheric pressure; pressure
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural phenomena
Hypernyms ("atmospheric pressure" is a kind of...):
gas pressure (the pressure exerted by a gas)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "atmospheric pressure"):
barometric pressure (atmospheric pressure as indicated by a barometer)
compartment pressure (the air pressure maintained in an air-tight compartment (as in an aircraft))
overpressure (a transient air pressure greater than the surrounding atmospheric pressure)
sea-level pressure (the atmospheric pressure reduced by a formula to the pressure at sea level)
Context examples:
As one of the world's leading "planet hunters," San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane focuses on finding habitable zones, areas where water could exist in a liquid state on a planet's surface if there's sufficient atmospheric pressure.
(Searching for Life on Wolf 1061 Exoplanet, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
A thermometric scale named after the German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit, on which under standard atmospheric pressure the boiling point of water is at 212 degrees above the zero of the scale, the freezing point is at 32 degrees above zero, and the zero point approximates the temperature produced by mixing equal quantities by weight of snow and common salt.
(Fahrenheit Scale, NCI Thesaurus)
As it dove through the gap, Cassini came within about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Saturn's cloud tops (where the air pressure is 1 bar — comparable to the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level) and within about 200 miles (300 kilometers) of the innermost visible edge of the rings.
(Cassini Spacecraft Dives Between Saturn and Its Rings, NASA)
The Spitzer observations rule out an atmosphere with more than 10 times the pressure of Earth's. (Measured in units called bars, Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 1 bar.)
(A Rare Look at a Rocky Exoplanet's Surface, NASA)
The atmospheric pressure on Mars is around 0.6 percent of Earth’s.
(Mars Terraforming Not Possible Using Present-Day Technology, NASA)
Specifically, researcher say the atmospheric pressure on the Red Planet was about four bars, compared to one bar on Earth today.
(Heavy Rain May Have Once Fallen on Mars, VOA)
