Earth & SkyGreek → English
Ionosphere
/aɪˈɒnəsfɪər/noun
The electrically charged upper atmosphere, from roughly 60 to 1000 kilometres up.
The Greek roots
ἰόν
ión
going
σφαῖρα
sphaîra
ball, sphere
Literally: “sphere of the going ones”
The story of the word
Faraday needed a name in 1834 for whatever travels through a solution during electrolysis and was handed ἰόν, going, by William Whewell, who supplied a good deal of the vocabulary of Victorian science. Robert Watson-Watt joined it to σφαῖρα in 1926 for the charged layer that reflects radio waves back to the ground, which is how shortwave reaches the far side of the world. The same man went on to build Britain's radar network.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1926
Same family
ionatmospherestratospherehemisphere
In a sentence
Solar storms disturb the ionosphere and take shortwave links with them.
Signals bounce off the ionosphere at night and travel much further.