~150 missions to leave Earth orbit in 55 years, for a rate of a few tons per year. Add something like 10,000 tons in Earth orbit, then we have 200 tons per year, but most of that mass will fall back to Earth eventually.Cutter Ketch said:Then there's the mass of our deep space probes. Now THAT is eroding the Earth at an alarming rate!
Althepump said:Trees, plants grow. people eat, animals eat. Their dungs in ground everyday. People die. Does it have effect on the Earth mass? On its orbit around the sun?
Cutter Ketch said:Now wait, mass can be converted to energy and it doesn't require a nuclear reaction. Every chemical reaction changes the mass of the constituents by the change in the binding energy.
However there are two reasons why this is negligible. First. The Earth is in somewhat of a steady state. The chemical configuration today is not much different than yesterday. Second, and much much more importantly, the effect is minuscule. Even if you set fire to the Earth and burned every bit of the surface to its lowest energy state I don't think you would change the mass significantly. Completely irrelevant, but fun to contemplate.
I believe the most significant contribution to changing the Earth's mass is the accretion of bits and pieces from space. Much much much more relevant than the previous ... and yet still pretty negligible. Estimates vary, but it could be 60 tons per day. That sounds like a lot, but it's 20 orders of magnitude less than the mass of the earth. In a billion years it would still only change the mass by one part in 10^8. Completely irrelevant.
Then there's the mass of our deep space probes. Now THAT is eroding the Earth at an alarming rate!
Your answer: convert mass to energy may be the solution to my question.Cutter Ketch said:Now wait, mass can be converted to energy and it doesn't require a nuclear reaction. Every chemical reaction changes the mass of the constituents by the change in the binding energy.
However there are two reasons why this is negligible. First. The Earth is in somewhat of a steady state. The chemical configuration today is not much different than yesterday. Second, and much much more importantly, the effect is minuscule. Even if you set fire to the Earth and burned every bit of the surface to its lowest energy state I don't think you would change the mass significantly. Completely irrelevant, but fun to contemplate.
I believe the most significant contribution to changing the Earth's mass is the accretion of bits and pieces from space. Much much much more relevant than the previous ... and yet still pretty negligible. Estimates vary, but it could be 60 tons per day. That sounds like a lot, but it's 20 orders of magnitude less than the mass of the earth. In a billion years it would still only change the mass by one part in 10^8. Completely irrelevant.
Then there's the mass of our deep space probes. Now THAT is eroding the Earth at an alarming rate!
Cutter Ketch's reply: mass convert to energy may be the answer. Your answer is good, but I am not happy. We are aware that we defecating everyday. It should add up. Animals,too. They are doing that since dinosaurs' days.65 million years ago. It should add up by now..significantly. People die every day.. it should be lots more dead in the ground than live ones like you and me. The probability has to be 1000 to 1. Common sense will agree with me. Don't count zombies. I think mass convert to energy is the answer. We cannot weigh energy so small.Nugatory said:Imagine a large spherical surface surrounding the earth. Everything (energy, space probes, gas molecules escaping the atmosphere, ...) passing outwards through that surface reduces the mass of the earth. Everything passing in through it (energy, meteors, cosmic radiation, stray space dust, ...) increases the mass of the earth. Everything that happens inside the sphere and stays inside it (growing plants, consuming food and defecating, water falling from the sky as rain and evaporating back into clouds, ...) has no effect on the mass.
In practice, all of these effects are so small that we can take the mass of the Earth to be constant without introducing significant erros into our calculations.
Good question. I always buy food at Shoprite. Workers may be spacemen.mfb said:Does your food come from space?
Thank you for the thought.Janus said:In addition to what others have already touched on, we have to consider the second half of your question, what effect would this have on Earth's orbit. The fact is that since the Sun's mass is so much greater than the Earth's, it dominates the nature of the orbit. For example, even if we assumed that the mass of the Earth suddenly doubled, and all else(orbital speed etc.) stayed the same, the effect on the Earth's orbit would be smaller than than its present variation due to the eccentricity of its orbit.
Althepump said:Cutter Ketch's reply: mass convert to energy may be the answer. Your answer is good, but I am not happy. We are aware that we defecating everyday. It should add up. Animals,too. They are doing that since dinosaurs' days.65 million years ago. It should add up by now..significantly. People die every day.. it should be lots more dead in the ground than live ones like you and me. The probability has to be 1000 to 1. Common sense will agree with me. Don't count zombies. I think mass convert to energy is the answer. We cannot weigh energy so small.
Good thought. Maybe someone can help you about the energy because it's has no gravitational tendency like mass. Looks like to me that energy is just electrostatic, repelling and attracting each other in all directions although intact inside that it counterbalances virtually zero resulting miniscule in weight. Hidden.rootone said:Doesn't the solar energy collected by photosynthetic plants then incorporated into organic molecules add a little to the mass of Earth?
No, it is not hidden.Althepump said:Good thought. Maybe someone can help you about the energy because it's has no gravitational tendency like mass. Looks like to me that energy is just electrostatic, repelling and attracting each other in all directions although intact inside that it counterbalances virtually zero resulting miniscule in weight. Hidden.
Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.Althepump said:Cutter Ketch's reply: mass convert to energy may be the answer. Your answer is good, but I am not happy. We are aware that we defecating everyday.
Janus said:In addition to what others have already touched on, we have to consider the second half of your question, what effect would this have on Earth's orbit. The fact is that since the Sun's mass is so much greater than the Earth's, it dominates the nature of the orbit. For example, even if we assumed that the mass of the Earth suddenly doubled, and all else(orbital speed etc.) stayed the same, the effect on the Earth's orbit would be smaller than than its present variation due to the eccentricity of its orbit.
What makes you think it simply disappears? We're talking mass/energy conversion here, not disappearance.Cutter Ketch said:Hey, that brings up an interesting point. That doesn't conserve momentum. Forget the earth. Say a nuclear bomb is in orbit around the sun. When the bomb explodes suddenly a significant fraction of the mass disappears. Say the explosion is spherically symmetric so the center of mass doesn't change. How is momentum conserved? It has to be, so where would it go?
DaveC426913 said:This is a different question, and warrants its own thread so as not to derail this one.
But here's a teaser:
What makes you think it simply disappears? We're talking mass/energy conversion here, not disappearance.
(Actually, in a typical nuclear explosion only a very small amount of mass gets converted to energy - on the order of a gram or so. All the rest remains particulate and expanding rapidly. Each particle carries with it a tiny amount of the original angular momentum of the unexploded device.)Cutter Ketch said:In fact I added "is it in the momentum of the generated photons?"
No it is not. Matter on Earth is in a closed cycle for all practical purposes. All feces, all dead bodies, all organic material in general is used as resource by some species, which produce other products which are used as food by other species and so on.Althepump said:I think mass convert to energy is the answer.
I wondered about photosynthesis though, earlier in thread.mfb said:...there is no biological process where the mass would change at all.
I think the EMR part sums up to zero for it's either used by lifeforms or radiated back in space. Eventually a small amount due to global warming due to decreasing outward bound radiation. So we'll have some positive amount ##S##.DaveC426913 said:Shouldn't we be tackling the OP's confusion from a slightly more systemic vantage point?
Sources of mass/energy input:
Sources of mass/energy output:
- solar radiation (EMR), solar wind (particles)
- infalling comets, meteors, stray dust, gas
- heat loss (EM radiation)
- escaping atmosphere (particles)
Not quite all of it. Sometimes vegetation converts solar energy to chemical energy which is not released but remains stored. This is where our oil reserves came from; The energy we get from them is, in effect, stored solar energy. ( Of course, now that we are pulling it out of the Earth and burning it, we are releasing this energy back into the environment.)fresh_42 said:Why isn't it simply what @DaveC426913 suggested?
I think the EMR part sums up to zero for it's either used by lifeforms or radiated back in space
Althepump said:We are aware that we defecating everyday. It should add up. Animals,too.
As others have said, mass-energy equivalence is a drop in the bucket -- irrelevant for this purpose.Althepump said:Cutter Ketch,
Yesterday you brought up an interesting point. Mass convert to Energy. But this morning I ask myself " if it's true, why not the Earth convert to energy as well?
Bystander said:"Does Earth mass get heavier?"
"Heavier" implies "weight," or force. Should we examine the implication? Given that the sun is losing mass at 1.5 million tons per second, the Earth should be losing "weight."
Less attractive force between the Earth and the sun.davenn said:what is your reasoning there ??
Ah. I see what he did there.Bystander said:Less attractive force between the Earth and the sun.