Planet earth. Will we be in danger?

Question

With more and more people being born and more and more trees are grown it adds weight to our planet.
Yes people and trees die but there is still weight after buriel, cremation. As for trees they rot and grow foliage every year still adding weight.
With all this in mind do you think all the extra weight it could affect how our planet orbits the sun? Will we be in danger in generations to come?

Answer 1

No.. it can't. For example, when astronauts are in middle of space with no hard surface underneath they literally fly! so they need to be strapped to the spacecraft because gravity does not pull them down. Or when astronauts are on a planet or the moon, they jump higher because, there is no gravity, so they cannot come down or go up fast enough when they jump! Since Planet Earth is in space gravity cannot pull it down. But we are still in danger of pollution and global warming, thanks to chemicals ripping through part of the ozone layer in the atmosphere.

Answer 2

All the mass is already on the planet. When a tree grows, it uses the nutrients in the soil and the air to grow. Those nutrients are already on the planet, so they don't contribute to the mass again. People are the same way, we eat things like corn, which grows off the stuff already on the planet. The planet isn't getting mass added to it because of this. The only way the planet gets more massive is when outer stuff falls into it, like meteors. At the same time, we have recently begun moving mass off the planet, can you imagine how many tons of material we have launched into space in the last 50 years? It's rather moot though, because the formula for an orbiting body doesn't take its' own mass into account. A loose hammer orbitin the Earth uses the same calculation as the International Space Station. So no matter what we do to the mass of the Earth, it will always orbit the same way.

We could, in theory, displace enough mass to cause the moon to go awry, though. I'm not sure how much it would take to affect it, though.

Answer 3

There is massive deforestation in Brazil Indonesia and other places where logging companies are clearing jungle to grow palm oil plants, The net loss of acreage for trees is considerable, however much sustainable replanting of Northern pine trees is done.

So I think the effect on the environment of the loss of photosynthesis capacity, loss of habitat for endangered species like orang-outangs etc are the real issues here!

World population is slowing down, as far as humans are concerned. It is still growing but much more slowly than previously predicted. As medicine improves survival rates there is less pressure to have larger families so as to be sure to see at least some of your children survive into adulthood. And with the Chinese being the mosr populous nation on earth and China committed to a one-child-per-family policy, that is bound to lead to falling birthrates...

Answer 4

Actually the additional weight of people and plants are minute compared to the weight of micrometeorites (dust) that rains down from space all the time.

Scientists estimate that 100 tons of dust fall on Earth everyday. That with a tiny amount of the plant residue you mentioned adds a fraction of an inch of dirt and humus to the Earth's crust each year. That is why you have to dig to get to archaeological sites. They are buried under years of dust, volcanic debris, and humus from plants.

Humans and animals add no weight to the Earth because they are made entirely from what they eat that came from the Earth. Plants take most of their mass from the atmosphere, carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. The sunlight does add some mass as energy converted to mass, but a huge amount of energy makes only a tiny amount of mass.

No, Earth is not endangered by this additional mass at all.

Now, a MACRO meteorite might pose a threat. Any rock of about 6 kilometers would endanger life by blotting out the sunlight we depend on for light and warmth. When such a rock hits the Earth, so much dust is thrown back into the atmosphere, it would take a year for it to settle back out of the air.

Answer 5

The earth is actually spinning faster than it was even 10 years ago. Not to mention with all of the global warming and whatnot, we have more to worry about than how large the population of people and trees is. The trees are not the problem. It's the people who cut them down. Why aren't you worried about the animal population as well. Whales, hello... No, I don't think that the weight is going to affect anything. It's all of the other factors that you should be concerned with.

Answer 6

With all this weight, it prob wont be evenly spread!! this can knock off the earths spin balance, making it slightly hotter at one side then the other. take that the north pole gets any closer to the sun cause its been tilted forward! This will add even more to global warming and will be underwater in no time, but in my opinion its all bull!!! the government just making up these reports of "Global Warming" so that they can get more funding out of the European union for energy efficient cars / resources etc. I don't do recycling cause i seen it!! all my rubbish goes on the same dump pile! and its just getting bigger n bigger!

Answer 7

Since the mass for the people and trees comes from the earth, there's no increae.

Answer 8

well bearing in mind the planet doent have a weight because it is in a gravityless enviroment (space)
and even if there was way too much wieght. the earth would be able to take it any way its about 12 and half thousand miles of rock. liquid, and compressed liquid. basic physics.

Answer 9

in space every thing weighs hardly anything. if a planet weighs a few billion tons it would be as light as a jcb.if we are getting heavier it wont change for a few million years.

the earths biggest problem is the green-house gases.


SO STOP THINKING ABOUT WEIGHT

Answer 10

No extra weight. However we are aready a danger to the generations to come.