Why the Earth's air is really an ocean Explore This Story The
next time you're in Carnegie Hall and the atmosphere seems
stuffy, don't blame the upper crust in their box seats. Blame
the building's air. It weighs almost 32,000 kilograms. It's one
of many little-known facts about the stuff we breathe that
British science writer Gabrielle Walker packs into the
engrossing, surprisingly light book, An Ocean of Air: Why the
Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere. Though we take
air pollution very seriously, we tend not to pay much attention
to the air itself unless it's threatening us with harmful
chemicals. Yet Walker's book tells the story of the inventive
scientists who studied the air and came to fascinating
conclusions. "We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of
air," wrote Renaissance mathematician Evangelista Torricelli,
whose experiments discovered atmospheric pressure. Walker takes
us on a buoyant tour of the brilliant, though often flawed minds
that have probed a substance so difficult to