Extremely high frequency paths. They are not reflected by the ionosphere nor do they travel along the Earth as ground waves as lower frequency radio waves do. At typical power densities they are blocked by building walls and suffer significant attenuation passing through foliage. Absorption by atmospheric gases is a significant factor throughout the band and increases with frequency. However, it is maximum at a few specific absorption lines, mainly those of oxygen at 60 GHz and water vapor at 24 GHz and 184 GHz. At frequencies in the "windows" between these absorption peaks, millimeter waves have much less atmospheric attenuation and greater
Rarefaction local medium. This expansion behaviour is in contrast to the behaviour of pressure increases, which gets narrower with time, until they steepen into shock waves. A natural example of rarefaction occurs in the layers of Earth's atmosphere. Because the atmosphere has mass, most atmospheric matter is nearer to the Earth due to the Earth's gravitation. Therefore, air at higher layers of the atmosphere is less dense, or "rarefied", relative to air at lower layers. Thus rarefaction can refer either to a reduction in density over space at a single point of time, or a reduction of density over time for