system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If an enormous amount of (earth) air enclosed in an air tight container was launched into space, then released when it was far from our atmosphere, what would happen to the air in the vacuum of space?

Where would the molecules go? Are they influenced by gravitational pulls?
gpt
Depends how far they were from earth before they were released, but straight off the bat they would dissipate to a point where the individual molecules would be spread out quite evenly in the vacuum of space. As they bump into each other due to their natural momentum and heat, they will continually push themselves apart until far enough away to no longer affect each other.

At that point the only forces left to act on them would be planetary and stellar gravitational forces. For a planet the small size of earth, it doesn't take going too far (relatively) before the strength of gravity falls off enough to become insignificant, but even at their small size, the molecules would continue to orbit the earth if they were released starting from a stable orbit such as the distances and speeds at which satellites and space stations orbit.

Eventually, if close enough to the earth, their orbits would 'decay' and they would return to earth. The decay being caused by random interactions with other cosmic debris, and once close enough to the earth, the upper atmosphere. Even though they say space is a "vacuum" it isn't entirely empty. For instance, helium atoms at the upper atmosphere are sometimes knocked loose by cosmic radiation. Such an atom impacting a molecule/atom of the air could be enough to send it back to earth.

The other possibility, is that if released far enough away from earth, the air would just continue to rotate the sun until it hits something.