Weight of the earth

[andrewlee]

Is the earth getting heavier or lighter, or remaining the same?

[Shadow]

I'd say heavier. The more life on earth is increasing the weight. But the more die though. But lifespan is more than deathspan. don't worry!  It isn't like the earth will sink cause its heavier! And lifespan is definetley more than deathspan cause it started with two people and after an extremely long time. There are now over about 100 billion of us or something! So the earth is getting heavier.

[peanut]

i think the only thing that could make the earth heavier is more people. as people die they dont dissappear, they rot but all of the remains stay in the ground right?

 as things are manufactured they are only made from the earths recources, so even the monitor you are reading this on has been on this earth for millions of years but in a different form. for every pound of manufactured goods we use a pound of recources.

this is just my opinion of course.

[rekstout]

Heavier but peanut is correct in that it has nothing to do with more people being born.  The Earth gains a few tonnes per year as a result of meteorites and general space dust.  On could argue that it is offset by stuff launched into space.  Also not sure about the whole mass into energy thing which is then lost to space as light and heat.  Any physicists out there?

[New Forester]

As Peanut says, extra animals or people do not mean the earth is heavier, because the material to make new bodies (live or dead) is already part of the earth, or its atmosphere.  Everything we are made of goes round and round -- the molecules you are made of have been in other humans, in slugs, in dinosaurs, in bits of mud and rock and many many other things.

 

There are not quite 100 billion humans yet, thank heavens -- something over 6 billion (6 thousand million), which is quite bad enough.

 

The weight of spacecraft launched is only in the hundreds or possibly thousands of tons range, and so must be very much less than the space-dust and meteors swept up by our planet.  Anyway, much of the material put in orbit eventually burns up back in the atmosphere.

 

So I think "heavier" is the answer too.  However, gas from our atmosphere is also blown away by the solar wind, and this may add up to quite a bit of loss.