We live on Earth, so has Earth always been so big? Will it get bigger or smaller?
Earth's total mass ranks fifth among the eight planets in the solar system, and is considered to have 60 trillion tons, is this value constant? Of course not! In fact, the mass of the earth is changing all the time, and this year, the American Fun Science website published a report entitled "Is the Earth Growing or Shrinking?" in early January. The article believes that the earth will lose 66,100 tons of mass every year, so it is believed that the earth is actually getting smaller.
Why do you think that? Because the earth is also a planet in space, it will exchange material with the surrounding space, such as asteroids, comets, and cosmic dust in space will be captured by the earth's gravity when it is close to the earth, and become part of the earth, which of course will cause an increase in the total mass of the earth, in addition to the solar wind (aurora) and sunlight received by the earth's poles will also make the earth mass increase slightly.
But in the process of the earth's orbit around the sun, the outer layer of the atmosphere will also have part of the air lost into space, and the solar wind blows the earth's atmosphere, and the earth's atmosphere is also counted as a part of the earth, then this will cause a reduction in the total mass of the earth, and human space launch activities will also reduce the mass of the earth, so weigh it down, is the total mass of the earth increasing or decreasing?
Guillaume Gronov, a senior researcher at NASA's Langley Research Center who studies atmospheric escape, gave his answer, arguing that the air quality of earth's atmospheric escape is greater than the mass of meteors acquired by earth.
"Although we don't have precise data to tell whether the Earth is growing or decreasing, by observing the speed of meteors, scientists estimate that about 16,500 tons of meteor material land on Earth every year," he said. "This can also be considered to be the mass of material that the Earth increases every year, after all, the aurora and sunlight add very little material mass to the Earth."
Gronov also used satellite data to count the total mass of the Earth's atmospheric escape each year, arguing that "about 82,700 tons", which is far greater than the 16,500 tons of meteor material acquired by the Earth, which also means that the Earth's mass will be reduced by about 66,100 tons per year.
The normal displacement of China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is 54,500 tons, and the full load displacement is 60,900 tons, which is more than 5,000 tons greater than the mass of the Liaoning when it is fully loaded.
How bulky is there with so much air of this mass? Calculate it, when the temperature of 0 ° C at sea level atmospheric pressure, the mass of air per liter is about 1.293 grams, the mass of air per cubic meter is about 1.293 kg, calculated to be about 772.4 cubic meters of air quality is a ton, then 82,700 tons of air mass is 63.88 million cubic meters of air, but because the outer air of the Earth's atmosphere is very thin, less than 1% of the atmospheric concentration at sea level, the volume of these atmospheres is much larger than this value.
So why is the Earth's atmosphere losing so much gas? Mainly related to human activities and global warming, scientists have pointed out that human launch rockets and some atmospheric core tests will make the earth lose air quality, because the rocket launch will bring out a part, nuclear tests will cause the air to expand rapidly, forcing the outer atmosphere to escape, and global warming has a greater impact, because it will cause the entire earth's atmosphere to expand due to higher temperatures, and the outer part of the enlarged atmosphere will be easier to escape from the earth's gravity and disperse, which is the main reason. In addition, there are forest fires, volcanic eruptions and other activities that release a lot of heat, which will also push the atmosphere to flow higher, forcing the Earth's outer atmosphere to escape.
Above the picture is a meteorological satellite photograph of the Great Eruption of the Tonga Volcano on January 15, 2022, with ash smoke columns reaching tens of kilometers high, shock waves expanding by 2,000 kilometers, and some gases being washed out of the atmosphere at the top of the smoke column.
But the annual mass of 66,100 tons is too small for the earth, this lost mass is completely negligible for the earth, and the formation of the earth has actually been increasing since the mass, mainly because the asteroids and comets have been falling to the surface of the earth continuously, Gronov said that the annual landing on the earth meteor material has a value of 16,500 tons is likely to be wrong, before the scientists pointed out that not less than 100,000 tons per year, the increase in the earth's surface material will also increase the earth's gravitational pull, and the increase in the earth's gravity will capture the adsorption of more gaseous material, which will cause the total mass of the earth to increase So simply to say that the Earth's mass is decreasing should be incorrect.
Resources:
Sichuan View News November 13 article "The Earth is slowly shrinking? NASA: Not Life-Threatening