Because of the Archimedes' principle, a lifting gas is required for aerostats to create buoyancy. Its density is lower than that of air (about 1.29 kg/m3, 1.29 g/L). Only certain lighter than air gases are suitable as lifting gases.
Read more about Lifting Gas: Hydrogen Versus Helium, High-altitude Ballooning, Submerged Balloons, Balloons On Other Celestial Bodies, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words lifting and/or gas:
“The symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground.... So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Papa died in the gas chamber,
slipping blue as an undressed minnow,
gulping in the shower to wash the Jew off him.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)