If you told me that the Earth's atmosphere covers the entire Moon, would you believe it? It's true!

It turns out that humans have never surpassed the influence of mother earth.

Since the advent of scientific and logical thinking, humans have always sought to limit things to a specific number. For example, 8,848m high, 10,994m deep. although that is certainly not an exact number.

Similarly, there will also be a limit, and its boundary is called the Kármán line , 100km above the Earth's surface. Past this point, the physical properties of conventional aviation will transition to aerospace.

This layer of atmosphere is so thin that it is difficult to calculate accurately.

But the truth is, the atmosphere is more complicated than that. We have another region called the geocorona - or geoglossia - which is part of a layer of the atmosphere called the exosphere . It consists of neutral hydrogen clouds, which glow in ultraviolet light. And its limit is thought to be around 200,000km.

However, according to a recent study, the geocorona actually has a much higher coverage. It must cover the Moon - which is already more than 380,000km away from us.

This layer of atmosphere is so thin that it is difficult to calculate accurately. Previously, the figure of 200,000km was given because that is the point where the force of solar radiation overcomes the force of Earth's gravity. But with data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), experts from NASA and ESA say that this number is far from the real limit of the geocorona.

According to them, our atmosphere must extend for 630,000km - nearly twice the distance from the Moon to Earth.

The corona from Earth covers the entire Moon.

'The Moon is still flying in the Earth's atmosphere, so to speak,' says Igor Baliukin, an expert at the Russian Space Research Institute. And similarly, it turns out that humans have never set foot outside the Earth's atmosphere.

Most notably, SOHO had actually observed the corona two decades earlier—between 1996 and 1998. The data had been around for a long time, just waiting for someone to retrieve it and analyze it.

The problem with the geocorona is that we can't see it from Earth, because all traces are absorbed by the inner atmosphere. You'd have to take instruments into space to do that. The Apollo 16 astronauts took a picture of the geocorona in 1972, though they had no idea what they were seeing.

This is the geocorona taken by astronauts from Apollo 16 in 1972.

The analysis will be carried out carefully using SWAN - a special instrument that measures the ultraviolet rays emitted by hydrogen atoms. With SWAN, the rays from the geocorona will be filtered, and from there scientists will create a map of the coverage of the geocorona.

However, in general, this research will not have much significance for future space exploration missions. The atmosphere is too thin to make a difference. But by identifying a longer layer of the geoid, we can take advantage of it to observe the universe more closely.

"The space periscope allows us to observe the sky in ultraviolet wavelengths, to find out the chemical composition of more distant stars and galaxies," said Jean Loup Bertaux from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

The research was published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research: Space Physics.