Abstract
The departure of a one-component planetary atmosphere from hydrostatic equilibrium is studied with a new moment method of solution of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation. The velocity distribution function of atmospheric particles is expanded in a set of half-range basis functions, that is, a set of basis functions for the velocity distribution function corresponding to upward and downward moving particles, respectively. A set of balance equations is derived from the Boltzmann equation by evaluating the equations of change of the lower order moments of the distribution function, namely the density and particle flux. An asymptotic analysis of the moment equations for the density and particle flux yields a density profile that decays as r −3 and demonstrates that the total mass of the atmosphere is finite in contrast to the usual barometric density.
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