A Beautiful Planet calls Earth's atmosphere "a delicate cocoon of air that shields us from our star's radiation." Of course, the atmosphere doesn't completely block electromagnetic radiation from the Sun; without some sunlight reaching the surface, plants could not harvest the Sun's energy, and practically no life as we know it could exist. The atmosphere's ozone layer does filter out much of the harmful ultraviolet light (or "UV rays") produced by the Sun. UV rays can cause skin cancer, and catastrophic damage to the ozone layer may have contributed to Earth's most extensive mass extinction of species ever, the End-Permian extinction (also known
Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas) Zaret from Tom Glazer's 1959 album, "Space Songs". The lyrics for the refrain appear verbatim in the 1951 Golden Guide "Stars". They Might Be Giants re-arranged the song in an uptempo version for their 1998 live album, "Severe Tire Damage", and their 2009 children's album, "Here Comes Science", on which they added the self-penned "Why Does The Sun Really Shine? (The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma)", which corrects several factual inaccuracies in the original song. It was also included on the soundtrack to the children's game show "". The second track, "Jessica", was originally recorded by The Allman