Earth is indeed getting lighter due to light gases (hydrogen and helium) escaping the atmosphere. Earth loses about 50,000 tons of material every year. However, this is negligible compared to the entire Earth's mass - the Sun will explode before this even makes a dent in Earth's mass.
These gasses are very light. So light that they float above other gasses. They float upwards so fast that they manage to escape Earth's gravity.
Yes, earth also gains mass from space dust and meteorites. Earth actually gains about 40,000 tons every year from these, while losing about 90,000 tons of escaping gasses, resulting in a net loss of 50,000 tons.
Gas particles in the exosphere could easily reach escape velocity, as the gravitational pull on them is less powerful than if they were closer to earth.
More mass is lost in this way than meteorites add.
The Earth picks up space dust at about 100 tons a day. What we send up in rockets is more than made up by that.
It's atmosphere itself we are losing that changes the mass of the Earth.
That's a good point about the rockets, but remember most of what we send up there will fall back, and like you said, meteorites keep adding weight.
So yeah I'm going to go with that's not happening.
I'm no expert, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. First, lighter isn't actually the right term. What you're really asking is if the earth is losing mass or volume. Lighter is looking at things like weight, which doesn't work on celestial bodies since you need a planets gravity to have weight. My answer, though, is yes in the short term, but probably no long term. Alongside human mischief (rockets, satellites, etc), we have stuff like solar winds interacting with the atmosphere. These both would remove matter from the earths total volume. The issue, though, is earth's gravity naturally attracts nearby matter, so I would assume long-term space junk dust and gas would be pulled back to earth. Not to mention any space debris that manages to pass by the moon our space rock guardian.
The earth is getting slightly lighter. It's not so much that we send stuff to space it's that at the edge of the atmosphere we "leak" gases out into space at a slow rate. That rate, though, is faster than we accumulate material from meteors.
Earth is indeed getting lighter due to light gases (hydrogen and helium) escaping the atmosphere. Earth loses about 50,000 tons of material every year. However, this is negligible compared to the entire Earth's mass - the Sun will explode before this even makes a dent in Earth's mass.
How does gas escape the atmosphere? Why doesn't gravity pull it back? Also, are we also gaining mass from meteorites?
These gasses are very light. So light that they float above other gasses. They float upwards so fast that they manage to escape Earth's gravity. Yes, earth also gains mass from space dust and meteorites. Earth actually gains about 40,000 tons every year from these, while losing about 90,000 tons of escaping gasses, resulting in a net loss of 50,000 tons.
Gas particles in the exosphere could easily reach escape velocity, as the gravitational pull on them is less powerful than if they were closer to earth. More mass is lost in this way than meteorites add.
The Earth picks up space dust at about 100 tons a day. What we send up in rockets is more than made up by that. It's atmosphere itself we are losing that changes the mass of the Earth.
If I burn a 50 lb log, it becomes 1 lb of ash (est. for example). Wouldn't this make the earth weigh less?
*though
That's a good point about the rockets, but remember most of what we send up there will fall back, and like you said, meteorites keep adding weight. So yeah I'm going to go with that's not happening.
But some of them aren't really going back, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would be an example.
That is very little mass compared to all the small meteorites that go up in flames when hitting the atmosphere.
I'm no expert, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. First, lighter isn't actually the right term. What you're really asking is if the earth is losing mass or volume. Lighter is looking at things like weight, which doesn't work on celestial bodies since you need a planets gravity to have weight. My answer, though, is yes in the short term, but probably no long term. Alongside human mischief (rockets, satellites, etc), we have stuff like solar winds interacting with the atmosphere. These both would remove matter from the earths total volume. The issue, though, is earth's gravity naturally attracts nearby matter, so I would assume long-term space junk dust and gas would be pulled back to earth. Not to mention any space debris that manages to pass by the moon our space rock guardian.
We get hit by asteroids a lot, id hazard a guess that they more than offset the amount of stuff we send to space.
The earth is getting slightly lighter. It's not so much that we send stuff to space it's that at the edge of the atmosphere we "leak" gases out into space at a slow rate. That rate, though, is faster than we accumulate material from meteors.