Earth & SkyGreek → English
Mesosphere
/ˈmɛzoʊˌsfɪr/noun
The atmospheric layer from roughly 50 to 85 kilometres, above the stratosphere.
The Greek roots
μέσος
mésos
middle
σφαῖρα
sphaîra
ball, sphere
Literally: “middle sphere”
The story of the word
The coldest place on Earth is not Antarctica but the top of this layer, which drops near minus 90°C. Almost every meteor burns up here, and the silvery noctilucent clouds that appear on summer nights form here too. It is too high for aircraft and too low for satellites, so it is the least directly sampled part of the atmosphere, reached mostly by sounding rockets. μέσος runs through Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, and Mesozoic, the middle life.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
MesopotamiaMesozoicmesolithicatmosphere
In a sentence
Most of what we call shooting stars never get below the mesosphere.