Earth sucks tens of tons of dust from space every day, so is the blue planet getting heavier and heavier?
The answer is no. Let’s find out why.
Rotten vegetation is scattered all over the planet, but not everywhere is the same. Wind and rain cause soil erosion over time. Even leaves, accumulated vegetation (peat, delta) do not make the Earth heavier.
Is the Earth getting heavier or lighter? (Photo: New York Times).
Next, trees are formed from air and water. Water comes from rain and the ground. Carbon dioxide is a gas found in nature, they are absorbed by plants, combined with water and light to photosynthesize to create carbohydrates.
None of these processes change the size of the Earth. Matter is not appearing or disappearing, it is moving from one place to another.
Wherever the Earth goes, dust is sucked there. (Photo: New York Times).
However , the mass of the Earth does not completely stay the same. The space around the atmosphere is full of dust, which is debris from asteroids, comet tails and ionizers flying from the Sun. When our planet passes through that layer of dust, gravity will suck it up.
After being sucked in, dust particles fly into the atmosphere, hovering before lying on the Earth’s surface. Every day, Earth receives about 43 tons of dust from other planets, sometimes large meteorites. They cling to everything, including your clothes.
However, the figure of 43 tons is nothing compared to the mass of the Earth (5,972.2×10^17 tons).
Is the Earth getting heavier because of the vacuum of space? (Photo: New York Times).
Furthermore, despite receiving space dust every day, Earth is actually losing mass due to atmospheric leaks. Gravity holds the air around the Earth, but lighter gases like hydrogen and helium are constantly being blown out.
The loss of gas is also enough to reduce the weight of the Earth by hundreds of tons per day, significantly more than the amount absorbed from dust. Therefore, it can be seen that the mass of the Earth is getting lighter and lighter.
So when will the Earth’s mass be zero? Don’t worry because at the current rate, it would take millions of billions of years for our planet to evaporate, millions of times longer than the expected lifespan of the Sun.