Is the Earth Gaining Or Losing Mass?

Hugh Pickens writes writes "BBC recently asked physicist and Cambridge University professor Dave Ansell to draw up a balance sheet of the mass that's coming in to the earth, and the mass going out to find out if the earth is gaining or losing mass. By far the biggest contributor to the world's mass is the 40,000 tonnes of dust that is falling from space to Earth every year. 'The Earth is acting like a giant vacuum cleaner powered by gravity in space, pulling in particles of dust,' says Dr. Chris Smith. Another factor increasing the earth's mass is global warming which adds about 160 tonnes a year because as the temperature of the Earth goes up, energy is added to the system, so the mass must go up. On the minus side, at the very center of the Earth, within the inner core, there exists a sphere of uranium five mile in diameter which acts as a natural nuclear reactor so these nuclear reactions cause a loss of mass of about 16 tonnes per year." (Read more, below.)

Pickens continues: "What about launching rockets and satellites into space, like Phobos-Grunt? Smith discounts this as the mass is negligible and most of it will fall back down to Earth again anyway. But by far the biggest factor in earth's weight loss are the 95,000 tonnes of hydrogen that escape from the atmosphere every year. 'The other very light gas this is happening to is helium and there is much less of that around, so it's about 1,600 tonnes a year of helium that we lose.' Taking all the factors into account, Smith reckons the Earth is getting about 50,000 tonnes lighter a year, which is just less than half the gross weight of the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise liner that recently ran aground."

Re:energy?

[ClioCJS]

Since when does "added to the system" mean created or destroyed? The earth is not the entire universe. Energy gets added to us from the sun, for example.

Re:Good grief. Religious zealots really annoy me.

[Microlith]

Can we put out a memo that EVERY SINGLE science story doesn't need a green religious hook in it?

Ah, so the earth isn't retaining an increasing amount of heat? What evidence do you base this assertion on?

Anyone remember just how much energy is in mass anymore? How one kilogram of mass directly converted to energy is so much fricking energy that it would probably power all of civilization for a year or more?

Spread throughout the whole of the Earth, combined with how much we're incapable of utilizing, that totally doesn't surprise me. Consider how much energy from the Sun hits the Earth every year that all just goes to waste, let alone what is reflected or shines off in other directions.

So now burning (hint, just a chemical action) some dead dinosaur is releasing the energy equivilent of 160 TONNES? Eh?

I think only a reactionary, kneejerk idiot would make this kind of ridiculously wrong statement.

IF one assumes AGW the mass of heating the crust and atmosphere of the earth a tiny fraction of a degree per year isn't going to give tons either. Math people, try it sometime. It works a lot better than your hokey religion.

It'd help your argument if you had something more than a tenuous grasp on thermodynamics and the processes involved with the retention of heat. Also, do consider that when working with the masses of planets and the energy output of stars, 160 tons is so easy to come across that, yes, it is highly like that this is in fact the case. Funny, though, how you get so violently worked up over it.

in situ utilization -- the greenest way to go

[Thud457]

Or just drill parallel pipes, pump cold water down one, get hot water up the other. No danger of a catastrophic meltdown, because, like, that's already happened.
Also has the beneficial side-effect of (allegedly) creating earthquakes, how cool is that?

Re:Tards

[Microlith]

You can't create mass, it's a basic concept in science.

Ok, so you're threadshitting via ignorance. Good job.

Re:Good grief. Religious zealots really annoy me.

[regularstranger]

Who mods this stuff interesting when the calculation is so many orders of magnitude off? Seriously, 22 kJ to raise the earth 1 C? It's bad enough someone (Curunir_wolf) actually wrote the comment in the first place.

as the temperature of the Earth goes up...!?

[scorp1us]

Another factor increasing the earth's mass is global warming which adds about 160 tonnes a year because as the temperature of the Earth goes up, energy is added to the system, so the mass must go up.

How does adding energy result in increasing mass, unless you're converting energy to matter? Surely if you heat something, it expands, but that does not increase mass!

Re:Good grief. Religious zealots really annoy me.

[pclminion]

Wrong. Simply raising the the temperature of an object does not raise the mass. What are you guys smoking?

We're smoking Einstein's old pajama pants. Also, we're correct and you aren't. Higher temperature means more energy in a system. More energy means more mass. Yeah, it's a little weird. It's also an inevitable consequence of the constant speed of light, and the conservation of momentum and energy. Starting with those three assumptions you can prove that E=mc^2.

Re:Good grief. Religious zealots really annoy me.

[CSMoran]

-- I am a crackpot

So you are, so you are.

Re: as the temperature of the Earth goes up...!?

[jmottram08]

Because E equals MC^2, not E sometimes equals MC^2.

Adding energy increases mass, you normally dont notice it because c^2 is pretty big.