Just thinking...Do you think that the earths weight is more, with all the procreation?

Question

Just a random thought! Like the North star changing ever so billion years. Do we " people" effect the placement of the earth by having more children? Could we fall out of orbit?

Now I understand that when cells break down they produce carbon...and so on. I have taken all to many chem. bio, and sci. classes. However think about this, the amount of people being born is huge. We all have a mass. Yes, people pass away...but in all more people = more mass?

Answer 1

NO.

To create more people (bodies, as it were) we use (consume) materials which are already existing here on Earth. So the weight/mass was already here, and now only reformed into different shapes and configurations.

People, with respect to the mass of the Earth, are a very tiny increment of the total, so small as to be essentially immaterial. There is simply no possibility of human weight or mass changing earth's orbit (this week or next).

Answer 2

The population of Earth doesn't increase its mass at all. People and all other life on our planet is constantly recycled. First comes the inanimate organic materials with mass which can eventually become life of one form or another. There's no net gain of mass involved. When the living organism dies it returns to its inanimate condition with almost the same mass, only to be recycled over and over.

Earth *does* pick up some 40,000 metric tons of mass per year, but that comes from infalling material from space like meteorites and comet dust.

Answer 3

Nothing is created on Earth, the only weight that is added to the planet is falling asteroids... Other than that we eat stuff that make us grow, so where do you think our food is going?

Answer 4

Where do you think people's mass comes from?

Answer 5

No.