will the earth fall when overweighted?

Question

what if we import materials from other planets, metal from mars for example, will it affect the relationship of sun and earth regarding their gravitational pull? will our precious earth fall?

Answer 1

With enough weight it will affect our gravity and orbit around the sun. I think it would take a lot of mass before that would happen though.

Interesting question.

Answer 2

I don't think you really understand the physics involved here. For instance, to where, exactly, are you suggesting the Earth would fall? Do you mean fall into the Sun or, as I suspect, based on your question, fall out of the gravitational field of the Sun down to . . . where? The "bottom" of the Universe, there to bounce around until it comes to rest?

Actually, the Earth is already falling toward the Sun, but that fall is balanced by the speed with which the Earth is attempting to race away from the Sun. The result is that the Earth is falling "around," or orbiting, the Sun, in the same way that the Moon, or any other satellite, space shuttle, etc., falls around the Earth when in orbit.

If we increased the mass of the Earth significantly by, for instance, importing material from another planet, that would probably affect the rotation of the Earth on its axis and/or the revolution of the Earth about the Sun, but it would take an absolutely enormous amount of material to have any significant effect.

Simply increasing the mass of the Earth would not necessarily cause it to fall, by any definition of "fall" that I can conceive you might be thinking of. Remember, Jupiter's mass is three hundred times that of the Earth, but it seems to be cruising along just fine, thank you very much.

Granted, as with any orbiting object, the speed of which is not being regularly maintained through some power source, the gravitational drag of the Sun on the Earth would eventually cause the Earth's orbit to degrade to the point that it would burn up, as a degrading satellite burns up in the Earth's atmosphere. But before that happens, the Sun will likely be dying, expanding rapidly outward to engulf the inner planets. Since that isn't expected to happen for about another five or six billion years, I wouldn't get too worried about it. By that time, if we haven't managed to kill ourselves off, we will probably have developed to the point that we've either left the planet, or could easily do so.

Answer 3

The earths weight changes all the time. (It was funny to see some of the answers you received implies that the weight of the earth never changes).

I don't know the answer to your exact question in respect to importing materials from another planet. However, the weight on our planet changes often due to many things. For example, more water from the atmosphere. More dust from the atmosphere. We also lighten the load too by burning stuff and sending the residue off into the atmosphere. The weight of the earth is ever changing.

I would think that if we imported a tremendous amount of metals from another planet - and I mean a tremendous amount - we possibly could affect the rotation of the earth.

Answer 4

The earth can never get any heavier than it is - what comes out of it goes back into it

Answer 5

Well, that would be pretty cool. but chances are by the time any of that would happen we would be long dead anyways.

Answer 6

Absolutely. Tiptoe whenever possible.