Does our planet weigh more now than it did 2000 years ago?

Question

Think of the weight of our planet, then take for example 500 tons of wood, if you burn the wood it doesn't weigh 500 tons anymore.

Also, when water evaporates it weighs less. There are also things that work the other way round, they weigh nothing until you add something to them then they are heavier.

So, heavier or lighter than 2000 years ago?

Answer 1

yes cause there's more fat people around

Answer 2

Gee...You seem to miss the point entirely...

When you burn wood, you create ash, liberate moisture, and send lots of smoke into the atmosphere. The combined weight of all of these things equals the weight of the wood you started with, and it is all still right here on Earth.

Take a big box of rice. Throw it way up into the air and let it fall onto the highway. Go our there and look at what is left...
There is a broken box. But, there is no longer a square mass of rice...The rice that was there before is now scattered all over the place. Did we loose anything? No we did not. Everything that was here is still here, just not in the same form. This has been a similar example.

No. the Earth is much heavier now than it was 2000 years ago. For that 2000 years dust has been falling onto the entire surface of the Earth from outer space. There have been tons and tons and tons of it falling over that period of time. So the Earth is indeed quite a bit heavier than it used to be.

You mentioned water evaporating...Where do you think it went? Well, the water changed from a liquid mass into molecules of moisture that were absorbed by the air around the water. This made the air heavier. Since gravity holds the air down close to the surface of the Earth, no moisture is lost. It just eventually falls to the Earth as Rain, Ice, Snow, Hail or Dew.

If you have something (It weighs X) and you add something to it (which weighs Y) you will get X + Y weight unless part of the mix creates a gas that escapes (and that gas weighs something = Z) and

what you wind up with is X + Y = X + Y/95 + Z
the equation i wrote has an equals sign which means that the mass on the left equals the mass on the right. Nothing is lost.

Seriously I think that you need to study a little Chemistry and a little Physics before jumping to wild conclusions. You are thinking about things, however, and that is very good. Now, just hang out with some educated people and get a good education and you will be in great shape to tackle the real problems of the world.

Answer 3

First off you can't really talk about the WEIGHT of the Earth - weight is the force of attraction of an object to it's home planet. You might suggest using the attraction of the Sun, but then people would say "it's in orbit round the Sun, so it's weightless" plus at the distances of the order of 1AU (Astronomical Unit = distance of Earth to Sun) the inverse square law becomes significant.

So what you mean to ask is about the MASS of the Earth.

Things burn; water evaporates - Duhhh! - Where do all the remains likes ashes, smoke and vapour go to? They remain on Earth with exactly the same mass as previously.

The only mass we have LOST from the Earth recently is that caused by nuclear fission/fusion - very small amounts of mass have been lost in these reactions to create energy. A few satellites have been sent outside Earth orbit. And some atoms/ions will have been stripped away by the solar wind.

The only mass we have GAINED is stardust/comet debris and meteors/meteorites (yes this includes meteors - shooting stars - 'cos they've burnt up in our atmosphere).

I'd guess the Earth might be a little bit more massive than 2000 years ago.

Answer 4

The ONLY reason the Earth would weigh more is if it collects cosmic particles ie. large meteorites, or small, cosmic dust. Everything else is still here, apart from stuff that has been sent into space on purpose. Your 500 tons of wood has been converted to a mixture of 500 tons of ash, water, and gas. And as for some answers, well, I cannot beleive that anyone could consider that to give birth, adds to the weight of the Earth, they should get an education.

Answer 5

The concept of weight when concerned with our universe is completely nonsensical. Weight is a force, and is calculated by the mass of an object (how much stuff there is on it), times by the gravity thats pulling it towards. The earth has no defined weight. On the sun, the earths weight would be gargantuous, because the suns gravity is so incredibly huge. If you got another earth, exactly the same as our earth, it onto some scales on our earth, it would weigh its mass x 10 (the gravity on earth)

What you're looking for is the mass, the amount of matter on the planet. This is measured in kilograms.
And matter, or mass, cannot be created. There is a fixed amount of matter in the universe... how ever much was created when the big bang occured... thats how much we have.

When 500 kilograms of wood are burnt, 500 kilograms of matter are given off in different forms, like ash.

When water evaporates, it does not loose mass. It retains its orginal mass, but spreads out, so that it becomes less dense. There is still the SAME amount of water that you had originally.

If you have something that with little mass, and then you add something with large mass, then yes, it has more mass. But you haven't taken or removed any mass from the earth, or added any on... you've just moved it about!
This goes for population growth as well. Whatever we are made from, comes from the earth. Proteins are strings of acids... hydrogens and salts combined.
Trees come from carbon... also found in slate. Iron, from the core. Everything that we are made of comes from the planet, and this is a collection of stuff chucked out from stars millions of years ago.

The only thing that could have made a difference to our mass is meteorites coming in, and space craft, probes and satellites leaving the earth. Everything else is just recycled around the planet.

So to your question..

I'm going to guess at more mass, (or more Massive, if you like) because I suspect that the amount of matter gained by meteorites hitting the earth for the past 2 thousand years is more than the amound we have sent out in the form of space rockets and satellites.

Answer 6

In ur question the term weight itself is relative term and not an ABSOLUTE ONE. When the re is change in the velocity there is a change in weight. Scientists are of the opinion that gravity holds together the galaxies and isolated individual galaxies are flying away from each other in an expansion of universe So heavier than 2000 years ago. when u burn wood the chemical transformation leads to physical transformation hence loss of weight

Answer 7

There is no way the mass of the planet can change without something coming in from space or being ejected from the atmosphere. Think about it - there will always be exactly the same number of atoms, they just change combinations. Lots of dust and debris come in from outer space, so the planet is in fact getting heavier.

Answer 8

From the other answers I would say Lavoisier lived and died in vain.
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26, 1743 – May 8, 1794) the "father of modern chemistry," was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics. He stated the first version of the law of conservation of mass.
The meteors that hit the Earth add to the mass.
Some atmosphere escapes the Earth.
I would guess the atmosphere loss is small compared to the meteor gain.

Answer 9

You can change matter ( including us) but you cannot create matter, so all the millions of people and millions of tons of pollutants don't count. The only things that can count are objects like space dust meteors and hopefully no asteroids, so yes over the millennium we have gained weight. we also have reduced the earths weigh by chucking our rubbish into space.

Answer 10

1

Answer 11

we are from the planet
evertything on the planet gets recycld
the atoms move from one form to another
they do not increase or decrease
we saty th same
its like a lego set
if you have 100 lego pieces you can make different things out of them but in 2000 years there will still be 100 pieces