Scientists have estimated that despite up to 40,000 tons of space dust falling to Earth each year, the planet still loses a net of about 50,000 tons of material each year.
Invited by the BBC’s More or Less program, microbiologist Chris Smith, with the help of Dave Ansell of Cambridge University, made the interesting calculation.
Smith said about 40,000 tons of space dust fall to Earth each year. “This dust is essentially the leftover material from the solar system that was used to give birth to the Earth, some of it is asteroid debris, some of it didn’t make new planets, and this dust is still floating around the Earth. The Earth is in space like a giant vacuum cleaner driven by gravity, constantly collecting dust from its surroundings.”
The scientists believe that the recent increase in the average temperature of the Earth has led to an increase in energy, which has also added some weight to the planet, a factor that Smith and Ansell estimate adds about 160 tons of weight to the Earth each year.
They believe that the Earth is gaining about 40,000 to 41,000 tons of weight per year. They also mentioned that population growth and construction projects do not add weight to the Earth because they are derived from materials on the Earth.
There are also many factors that make the Earth lose weight, such as the fact that the Earth’s core is like a giant nuclear reactor that is gradually losing energy and therefore mass. They estimate that this part loses about 16 tons per year.
Some people think of the constant launch of liftoff rockets, spacecraft are not the Earth to lose material? But Smith believes that most of them still fall back to the ground, the loss of part can be negligible.
The important part of the loss that most people do not think of is the very light hydrogen gas, which keeps escaping away from the Earth into outer space. “Physicists believe the Earth loses about three kilograms of hydrogen per second. That’s a total loss of about 95,000 tons per year.”
“The same is true for helium, another lighter gas, with a loss of about 1,600 tons per year.”
Thus, Smith concluded that the Earth loses approximately nearly 50,000 tons of material per year, which is equivalent to 0.000000000000001% of the Earth’s total material.
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