Thread: Science Buffs

Hi DJ.

A very interesting question indeed.
I don't know if anyone could calculate an answer for you, but it will be interesting to read the replies to your question.

However I think your question might be irrelevant in the long term, as the earth will die in a few million years, due to sun activity.
Check on line for the technical information of the above statement.

That is why I laugh at "Climate Change", our planet has been changing since day 1, whenever that was.

We are now, simply in a better, technological manner, able to record the daily events of earth and broadcast these events in real time around the planet.
Yes we have climate change, but earth always has.

Hope you get a good answer to your question.

Paul.

With combustion and any other chemical reaction there must be conservation of mass, so whatever mass of reactants is consumed will produce exactly the same mass in products. Therefore there will be no change in mass as a result of these chemical reactions. In fact the earth is gradually putting on weight from the stuff it traps in its gravity field. I don't know the physical effect of this on the orbit but it is likely to be vanishingly small. The Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun as it grows and dies, a long way off and it is entirely likely that mankind will be wiped out even before then by an asteroid collision or some other natural cataclysm or by self-induced destruction.

I had to check if this was in the jokes section first.
Matter cannot be created or destroyed (not totally true if you want to look up Pi and Mu Mesons).
Unless chuncks are flying off the earth or flying onto it it still has basically the same mass.
Your in more trouble from the poles shifting every squillion years or an Ice age.

Originally Posted by HOOKED.UP

However I think your question might be irrelevant in the long term, as the earth will die in a few million years, due to sun activity.
Check on line for the technical information of the above statement.

I think you mean a few billion years? (approx. 5 billion or so, we are roughly half-way through the sun's lifespan)

That is why I laugh at "Climate Change", our planet has been changing since day 1, whenever that was. We are now, simply in a better, technological manner, able to record the daily events of earth and broadcast these events in real time around the planet.
Yes we have climate change, but earth always has.

Hope you get a good answer to your question.

Paul.

It is not so much the fact that the climate is changing, but the rate of change, which is unprecedented over the lifespan of our species. (not to mention it appears to be going in the "wrong" direction)

Back on the original question, as others have mentioned, the total mass of the earth won't change, but it will be getting redistributed. Whether or not that does anything to change local gravitational conditions, I don't know.

Originally Posted by mic-d

With combustion and any other chemical reaction there must be conservation of mass, so whatever mass of reactants is consumed will produce exactly the same mass in products. Therefore there will be no change in mass as a result of these chemical reactions. In fact the earth is gradually putting on weight from the stuff it traps in its gravity field. I don't know the physical effect of this on the orbit but it is likely to be vanishingly small. The Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun as it grows and dies, a long way off and it is entirely likely that mankind will be wiped out even before then by an asteroid collision or some other natural cataclysm or by self-induced destruction.

So if you have 50kg of oil then turn that into fuel and use the fuel. With the carbon tax sorry build up and the carbon gas and you were able to weigh all that, would it still weigh 50kg?
David

Originally Posted by HOOKED.UP

... the earth will die in a few million years, due to sun activity.

Originally Posted by michael_m

I think you mean a few billion years? (approx. 5 billion or so, we are roughly half-way through the sun's lifespan)

Phew! Had me worried for a minute.

Exactly (to 50kg of fuel burnt = 50kg of byproducts). From memory, the exception is with nuclear reactions. There is some mass lost with every nuclear reaction - that's essentially what gives the enormous amounts of energy released. The amounts involved though are vanishingly small compared to the mass of the Earth

Originally Posted by petersemple

Exactly (to 50kg of fuel burnt = 50kg of byproducts). From memory, the exception is with nuclear reactions. There is some mass lost with every nuclear reaction - that's essentially what gives the enormous amounts of energy released. The amounts involved though are vanishingly small compared to the mass of the Earth

Not quite Peter, 50 kg of burnt fuel will give more than 50kg products because of the introduction of oxygen and a few other minor gaseous components, but the mass of reactants and products will be the same.

The earth is actually getting heavier, at the rate of 3-7 tonnes a year due to dust and meteorites; however the sun is loosing mass - about four million tonnes per second - via heat/light radiation (not counting solar wind losses).

It is possible to see shifts in the earth's gravitational field due to mass redistribution after major earthquakes - http://www.newscientist.com/article/...te-orbits.html

.......um......what about the increasing population, doesnt that add anything......

The numbers being quoted are on the "small side" but this explains it far better than I could.

BBC recently asked physicist and Cambridge University professor Dave Ansell to draw up a balance sheet of the mass that's coming in to the earth, and the mass going out to find out if the earth is gaining or losing mass. By far the biggest contributor to the world's mass is the 40,000 tonnes of dust that is falling from space to Earth every year. 'The Earth is acting like a giant vacuum cleaner powered by gravity in space, pulling in particles of dust,' says Dr. Chris Smith. Another factor increasing the earth's mass is global warming which adds about 160 tonnes a year because as the temperature of the Earth goes up, energy is added to the system, so the mass must go up. On the minus side, at the very center of the Earth, within the inner core, there exists a sphere of uranium five mile in diameter which acts as a natural nuclear reactor so these nuclear reactions cause a loss of mass of about 16 tonnes per year."

Pickens continues: "What about launching rockets and satellites into space, like Phobos-Grunt? Smith discounts this as the mass is negligible and most of it will fall back down to Earth again anyway. But by far the biggest factor in earth's weight loss are the 95,000 tonnes of hydrogen that escape from the atmosphere every year. 'The other very light gas this is happening to is helium and there is much less of that around, so it's about 1,600 tonnes a year of helium that we lose.' Taking all the factors into account, Smith reckons the Earth is getting about 50,000 tonnes lighter a year, which is just less than half the gross weight of the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise liner that recently ran aground."

Originally Posted by rwbuild

.......um......what about the increasing population, doesnt that add anything......

Yep..sure does...overcrowding, overuse of resources, destruction of the natural environment, poverty, famine etc etc...it's a weighty problem...but won't add weight.

Its a bit hard to get your head around the Global Warming theory when its currently Minus 6 at the moment outside.

Regards Mike

Well the Higgs bosun has been found. July 3 and the world still hasnt ended

God particle is 'found': Scientists at Cern expected to announce Higgs boson particle has been discovered on Wednesday | Mail Online