if meteors are landing on earth, does that mean its getting bigger and there for turning slower?

Question

so, if space debris such as meteors are landing on earth, does it gradually make earth heavier, and larger. There for making the earths rotation slightly slower??

Answer 1

Actually, we have far more to worry about from tidal forces. But even that is not too major... lengthening the day by 1.7 milliseconds per century. There is evidence that the day was 21.9 hours long 620 million years ago (in sandstone layering caused by tides).

Consider, too, that the mass of the Earth is 6 x10^24 kg. Any meteorite that hits the Earth with even a fraction of a percent of its mass is going to be a major, major, major event. And anything less than that is not likely to change much.

Answer 2

Yes. But it's turning slower for another reason, too. The Moon is receding from the Earth. This causes the Earth to rotate more slowly. It's to do with a conservation law called the conservation of angular momentum.

Answer 3

By the time meteors reach the earth they are rarely larger than a baseball. Technicaly they do add mass to the earth, but nothing even mesurable in comparison to the grand size of our planet. As far as making the earths rotation slower, this is nothing to even seriously contemplate. It would probably take something about the size of the moon to hit us and alter our planets rotation or orbit.

Answer 4

Earth is 6 billion trillion tonnes.

Say a million tonnes of meteorite material lands a year - (it is not as much as that). How long to add just 1% of mass to Earth:

Earth 6 x 10^21 tonnes

1% of that is 6 x 10^19 tonnes

Divide by 1 million to get number of years to accumulate 1%

6 x 10^19 divided by 10^6

= 6 x 10^13

That is 60 trillion years.

Not worth thinking about, is it?

Answer 5

Yes, no. Bigger, heavier over time, but the rotation rate infuenced by the momentum of the individual objects. What is the sum of the components of their velocity vectors in the direction of rotation? That is to say, objects which hit the air or the planet with the direction of rotation contribute to its rotational momentum, against it takes away from earth's rotational momentum.

Answer 6

Good question, it probably does but the ammount would be so small it would take billions of years for us to notice. There are also other factors which speed it up too so it kind of balances out.

I'm sure the world will have been destroyed before it starts to slow down conciderably.

Answer 7

The core of the earth is also burning its self up. Hopefully, the earth is collecting fuel from space at the same rate it is burning.

Answer 8

it gets bigger but not much to freak out about...you would probably see the deference in a few million years!!!!

Answer 9

dont worry by the time it stops spinning we will all be buried under the rubble and wont fall off