Is the World getting heavier??????

Question

Is the world gaining weight???sure when we make buildings and constructions we use materials that are already here. however the birth rate exceeds the death rate so more and more people would mean that the world is getting heavier right?

Answer 1

not at all, the material weight is just taking different forms, a person is a composition of something already here, there is not heavier planet.

:> peace
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Answer 2

Whoa, good question. I guess to answer your questions, you have to know what your boundary is, (what do you define the 'world' as? the earth along? the earth with atmosphere?)

If you ever get a chance to take advanced physics, you will learn that mass is energy, modeled with the famous Einstein's equation: energy = a*mass*(speed of light)squared, a is a constant here. Also, with simplified version of the first law of thermodynamics: energy couldn't be destroyed, it can only change forms, you can see that earth is not getting heavier.

From those two laws, you can tell that even though birth rate exceeds death rate, people still have to consume food and water which came from the earth itself. So to answer your questions the earth is not gaining any weight, because everything gained here come from somewhere else on the earth in a different form.

If you count some of the interstellar satellites and such, earth is actually loosing weight because those satellites and materials will never come back again.

I hope this helps.

Answer 3

First of all, yes!

The no answers are all right, but there are coments that hit the Earth and add to its weight.

There is a comet that is scheduled to hit the Earth in 2012, which will add a greater amount of weight to the Earth.

Some reasons why buildings and people don't add to the weight:

Humans: eat food that was already on the earth. babies are made from their mother's parts, sharing the mother's weight.

Buildings: Man made from objects already in the Earth::: steel buildings have steel mined from quarries, then smelted and smithed into blocks to make buildings.

Overall, the Earth has grown in mass (by the way, its mass, not weight...) since it first was created.

All the other planets and their moons are like this also.

Did you know that the moon actually wasn't there when the Earth was? That's right. It was a comet that chiped what is now known as the Pacific Ocean off, into outer space, and it started orbiting the Earth.

If my researches are correct, the other planets' moons formed either the way the Earth's did, or a comet went into orbit around the planet.

Thanks for your time, and have a good day!

---G_Roskamp_3
Gavin

Answer 4

The only way it can be getting heavier is if it is gaining mass from external sources (i.e. outer space.) The birth and death rates are all internal; people gain mass by eating food, which comes from the earth, so there is no change in the total mass.
However, because of gravity the world probably is gaining mass very slightly. Debris floating around in space will be sucked in if it gets too close. I don't know of any way the world is spewing out matter, so the answer to your question is probably yes.

Answer 5

When people are born, they aren't materialized out of nothingness. And when people die they don't cesae to exist.

People are born from their mothers, who eat food which contains the nutrients required to form the babies body. The first law of thermodynamics states that the baby and the food will be the same weight. (Actually it's slightly lighter due to the energy use, but that's so little it really doesn't matter, it's in the order of 10^-16 kg)

When people die, their bodies remain, and they are buried or cremated. If they are buried, they break down and become various components of the soil. If they are cremated, the gases add weight to the atmosphere.

The earth is actually getting slightly lighter due to the space program sending stuff out into space, but on a global scale, the earth is remaining the same mass, and probably will for some considerable time.

Answer 6

No, because people are made out of what's on the earth already. But that doesn't mean it's not changing weight - what about when asteroids land on the Earth? Or is it loosing weight? - All the junk we keep putting into space - and what about atmosphere - surely a tiny bit must be swept away into space? Either way, it'd be such a small change I doubt it'd make a significant difference. As you can see, I'm no astrophysicist - so don't take my word for it!

Answer 7

The world is really gaining but also loosing weight. Input: It collects small meteorites from the space which increases its weight. But, in opposite, we send so much technical equipment like rockets and satellites into the space that they may balance or even exceed this input. Release of ozone also affects. My humble opinion is that the final result is a slight decrease of the earth's weight. Very hard to measure, however...

Answer 8

Yes, the world is getting heavier, but not due to birth rates. Space dust falls to Earth each day, making it gain (roughly) 2 tons.

Answer 9

the world does not "weigh" because if u think about it, the world does not fall due to no gravity in space, and for the weight of the world to be measured it would have to be in part of another gravitational pull that expands for more then just earths o-zone layer. so tecnickly earth does not weigh at all, only the objects within and on it do. ALSO not just weight is required to actually weigh an object, gravity is also needed, so if earth could somehow be weighd, the weight would varie on how powerfull the gravity pulling earth would be (i.e a killogram on earth may weigh a gram on the moon)

Answer 10

The world is getting heavier. It is not from more people, because the stuff of which these people were made were already here; same with the buildings. The earth is heavier because we are constantly being bombarded from space by meteors and space dust.

Answer 11

Not by our devices while we are on the surface. You can yell about the birth rate all you want but that mass still comes from the stuff we eat, which eventually grows out of the ground, which gets it's mass from dirt and air already on our planet.

Meteors falling on the earth will add to its mass, and us blasting stuff into space will take away from its mass.