What exactly does the earth's atmosphere consist of?
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The Earth's atmosphere has no definite boundary, slowly becoming thinner and fading into outer space. Three-quarters of the atmosphere's mass is contained within the first 11 km of the planet's surface. This lowest layer is called the troposphere. Further up, the atmosphere is usually divided into the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. Beyond these, the exosphere thins out into the magnetosphere (where the Earth's magnetic fields interact with the solar wind). An important part of the atmosphere for life on Earth is the ozone layer.\n\nThe atmospheric pressure on the surface of the Earth averages 101.325 kPa, with a scale height of about 6 km. It is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with trace amounts of other gaseous molecules such as water vapor. The atmosphere protects the Earth's life forms by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, moderating temperature, transporting water vapor, and providing useful gases. The atmosphere is one of the principal components in determining weather and climate.\n\nBecause hydrogen gas is light and based on Earth's mean temperature, achieves escape velocity, unfixed hydrogen leaves the Earth. For this reason, the Earth's environment is oxidizing, with consequences for the chemical nature of life which developed on the planet.\n\nYou could get more information from the link below...
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The troposphere is the layer closest to the earth's surface. This is where the earth's weather phenomena occurs. The temperature gets colder as you move upwards.\n\nThe second layer up is the stratosphere. This is where jets fly & ozone occurs. B/c of the ozone layer, it is warmer as you get here.\n\nThe third layer up is the mesosphere. This is where meteorites burn up in our atmosphere. It gets colder here as you go up b/c of less air & moving away from the ozone layer.\n\nThe next layer is the thermosphere. This is the hottest layer and is sometimes called the "heat sphere". It has the least amount of air. It is subdivided into the ionosphere & the exosphere. The ionosphere is where satellites are orbiting the earth.\n\n:)
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The atmosphere is the mixture of gas molecules and other materials surrounding the earth. It is made mostly of the gases nitrogen (78%), and oxygen (21%). Argon gas and water (in the form of vapor, droplets and ice crystals) are the next most common things. There are also small amounts of other gases, plus many small solid particles, like dust, soot and ashes, pollen, and salt from the oceans. The atmosphere is densest (thickest) at the bottom, near the Earth. It gradually thins out as you go higher and higher up. There is no sharp break between the atmosphere and space.\n\nThe blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air. \n\nHowever, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.\n\nAs you look closer to the horizon, the sky appears much paler in color. To reach you, the scattered blue light must pass through more air. Some of it gets scattered away again in other directions. Less blue light reaches your eyes. The color of the sky near the horizon appears paler or white.
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I assume you mean for humans.\n\nAir (particularly Earths air mixture of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen), Water, and plants. We couldn't survive long if any of the three did not exist.
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The Sun.\n\nEDIT: Yes, what other people have said about the Earth's tilt and whatnot are true in that they affect the atmosphere, but you asked for the source of energy. That is solely the Sun.
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The atmosphere is 21% oxygen.  The process of separating the gases from each other is where the expense is.  They compress the gas and the cool it until it turns into a liquid.  Different gasses turn into a liquid at different temperatures.  Then they bottle it and ship it.
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Small, near the Sun, basic original atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide, rocky surface of silicate materials overlying a core of nickel-iron, rotate more slowly than the giant planets, have fewer moons than the giant planets, weak or no magnetic field, high density (altho that sort of duplicates the rocky with NiFe core).
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Mercury has no true atmosphere.  It only has trace amounts of whatever gases are present.  See the given link.
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They are the gases that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere.  They are Carbon Dioxide and Methane.
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Our atmosphere is considered the upper layer of our planet, meaning that it rotates with the planet.  So due to friction and gravity you will stay in the smae position relative to the ground below you basically rotating with the Earth, unless it is windy.
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As you increase in altitude there is less atmosphere. Atmosphere includes the following gases... nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, argon, methane, etc.\n\nNitrogen makes up the most of the atmospheric gases at roughly 78%. Since nitrogen is the majority of the gases, the light that reflects will be blue. Nitrogen absorbs all other colors except for blue so that is what we see.\n\nWhen you move up away from the earth, gravity has less of an effect on the gases. Most of the atmosphere is held closely to the earth. So as you go up, there is less air therefore less nitrogen. Less nitrogen means less scattering of blue light that you see.
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The Earth is surrounded by atmosphere, which is made up of many greenhouse gases. The Earths temperature\n      depends on the solar constant.\n      The Earths surface absorbs heat from the sun and re-radiates it back out to space with the help of clouds, snow,\n      atmosphere dust and sea surfaces, the rest is absorbed by other gases and aerosols, examples of these is the\n      gases from power stations and volcanoes which can be liquid or dust, some solar radiation does not reach\n      space this remains trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. \n      The temperature of the Earth has changed and is continuing to do so with the help of human activity in rising \n      Co2 levels, from 1850-1996 Co2 rose from 285 p.p.m to 360 p.p.m a 0.7ºc rise in surface temperature.\n      We know how trees and plants are vital to us as they convert Co2 into oxygen to help us breathe, but industry\n      will continue to cut and burn down forests allowing more Co2 into the air, with this decrease in vegetation this\n      means more Co2 will remain in the atmosphere and with the burning of fossil fuels we are also producing more \n      Co2, causing the Earths temperature to warm up.\n      Clouds also play a role in the surface temperature; they absorb radiation this increasing the amount of infrared\n      radiation that is emitted by the atmosphere depending on their altitude and thickness, a cloud is formed when\n      water vapor condenses.
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The exosphere is the highest layer of the atmosphere.  10,000 km above the Earth's surface.\nexosphere + ionosphere = thermosphere. \nThis is the upper limit of our atmosphere. \nextremely thin air. \nAir atoms and molecules are constantly escaping to space from the exosphere. \nprime components: hydrogen and helium at xtremely low densities\nEX is the area where many satellites orbit the Earth.
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Well, actually, the atmosphere is currently about 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen.  \n\nThere's nothing the human race could do, such as releasing balloons, that would convert the atmosphere to helium.  It's just to big!\n\nHelium has little effect on organic life, because helium is inert -- it doesn't react with anything!
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It makes up 46ish% of the crust (followed by silicon, aluminium, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium and some others).\nIt isn't as abundant in the air though (Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon Carbon dioxide, others), about 20%.\n\nThe most abundant elements are Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen, Neon, Nitrogen, Carbon, Silicon, Magnesium, Iron and Sulpher.
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Many things are in space...the are compounts of gases, metals, rock and ice...Elements you can find on earth too
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What is the Earth made of?\nhttp://www.leo.lehigh.edu/envirosci/geology/penngeo/whatis/whatis.html\n\nChemical Structure of the Earth\nhttp://www.earth.northwestern.edu/people/seth/202/lectures/Minerals/compintro.htm\n\nStructure and composition of the Earth\nhttp://www.amonline.net.au/geoscience/earth/structure.htm\n\nThe way we know what makes the earth, chemically speaking is to test for it.  Such as the composition of the atmosphere is put through a mass spectrometer (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060905084043AAQ20dx) this tells scientist exactly what elements are in the test sample and in what percent!  We do the same for tests in the earth, of course there are abundant other tests to perform, both chemical and by hand, to tell us a more rounded story of the formation of the earth's history.