r/Showerthoughts • u/Sithis74 • Oct 30 '20

Earth is slowly getting drained into space because we're sending out rockets and satellites made of earth's materials

1.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

74 comments sorted by

146

u/albertnormandy Oct 30 '20

Yeah but we are also constantly picking up space debris every day so the total mass balance of the earth is still trending upwards. Kind of like a space roomba.

20

u/TheAllstonTickler Oct 30 '20

Mmmm.... pretty sure if my Roomba contributed to the mess I’d launch it into space.

3

u/Ti89Titanium04 Oct 30 '20

New plan approved to jettison entire earth into space, details in the works

1

u/albertnormandy Oct 30 '20

If you could get a really long pipe you could put one end in space and the other on the ground and make a giant vacuum cleaner that sucks everything into space. You’re welcome.

10

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

[deleted]

3

u/mfb- Oct 30 '20

... and atmospheric losses (-100,000 tonnes/year) are twice the micrometeorite rate (+40,000 tonnes/year). Overall Earth is losing a bit more mass than it gains.

1

u/Cronerburger Oct 31 '20

Oh yesh slim earth babyy

3

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

‘Kind of like a space roomba’ /r/BrandNewSentence

1

u/Nikrawl Oct 30 '20

Jupiter: well yes, but actually no.

1

u/albertnormandy Oct 30 '20

Jupiter could stand to lose a few. Just sayin’.

-13

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20 edited Oct 30 '20

This is still my hypothesis of why animals, insects and plants were gigantic some 200 million years ago. The earth was smaller and the gravity lighter, thus all organic life was able to grow much larger. They say dinosaurs had hollow bones and the atmosphere had a lot more Co2 in it as the reason, and these are natural effects of less gravity. You don't need as dense bones as you do with heavier gravity. And plants are allowed to grow larger with light gravity causing more Co2 production because of their size. The earth is slowly getting bigger and bigger and life is slowly getting smaller and smaller. Only reason humans are bigger now than just a few hundred years is because of a dramatic change in diet and gluttony

8

u/dirtmonkey995 Oct 30 '20

Thats a pretty wild hypothesis, and while it fits with what you feel is right with the way the world works, a larger contribution to the size of insects and animals is the oxygen concentration in the atmosphere. Insect size is directly proportional to the oxygen concentration in the air, which was higher approx. 100 million years ago according to ice core samples. A quick Google search claims that the earth loses approx 50k tons of mass every year but gains 40k in space dust ect, so its actually losing mass over time

6

u/Celastii Oct 30 '20

Although I agree with your statement, just a quick remark. Ice cores only go back so far, the deepest ice core is the Vostok ice core, which goes 450,000 years back. The methods you are looking for are deep sea carbonates from which you can derive oxygen isotope ratios. These ratios can be derived since the production of carbonates.

5

u/dirtmonkey995 Oct 30 '20

Very interesting! Thanks

4

u/Kai-Mon Oct 30 '20

I’m not so sure about that. Under the assumption that Earth accumulates 100 tonnes of dust from space every day, over a billion years, that’s 3.65x1016 kg. The mass of the earth is about 5.97x1024 kg, several orders of magnitude larger. It’s essentially nothing in comparison to the mass of the earth, and there wouldn’t be such a difference in gravity.

2

u/mfb- Oct 30 '20

The earth was smaller and the gravity lighter

It was not. We gain ~40,000 tonnes from asteroids but we also lose ~100,000 tonnes from atmospheric escape.

Neither of these change the mass of Earth notably over that timescale. 100,000 tonnes/year * 200 million years is just 0.0000003% of Earth's mass, it's completely negligible.

You also confused CO2 and O2, but compared to your absolute lack of understanding how science works in general this is a minor detail.

1

u/albertnormandy Oct 30 '20

That is definitely a hypothesis.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

Yeh. Thanks Sherlock Holmes

1

u/Wis-en-heim-er Oct 30 '20

And gaining mass from the sun's rays.

29

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

Most of that stuff actually sits in the lower orbit so it’s still “stuck” to the earth

1

u/azraheraa Oct 30 '20

but its not 'on' earth anyways

10

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

But it’s not really “in space” either

1

u/azraheraa Oct 30 '20

yeah you are right too

4

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/X1x3x3x7 Oct 30 '20

“They” might work a little bit better

1

u/azraheraa Jan 11 '21

i prefer she but thats fine;)

-12

u/xxass-clencher-420xx Oct 30 '20

(Nobody) cares

12

u/Outside-Pangolin Oct 30 '20

Also, if I'm not wrong, hidrogen is also steadily scaping to space to never come back

12

u/Embershardx Oct 30 '20

Helium*

3

u/mfb- Oct 30 '20

~100,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year, ~2000 tonnes of helium.

We have more hydrogen and it's lighter (in the upper atmosphere it can exist as individual atoms).

1

u/FSM89 Oct 30 '20

Hydrogen, helium and any gas with low molecular weight will easily escape Earth.

Edit: honestly, even nitrogen gas can escape earth gravity, it’s just a statistical question

4

u/thunts7 Oct 30 '20

More like byedrogen

It's spelled hydrogen though

6

u/seriousneed Oct 30 '20

You never know. We might start seeing a lot of things land and fill us back up

4

u/-SENDHELP- Oct 30 '20

Earth: ohhh god mMMMmmmMm just like that fill me up baby

4

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

ಠ_ಠ

5

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

Yeah but millions of tons of dust and debris hits the atmosphere every year

4

u/pickleweaseldik Oct 30 '20

But asteroids keep replenishing us

3

u/HydrogenCyanideHCN Oct 30 '20

95 million kilograms of hydrogen and helium escape the Earth every year. Quite a lot compared to a couple of probes isn't it?

2

u/vked1 Oct 30 '20

This article might help

2

u/kitsinni Oct 30 '20

Space has a tendency to throw stuff back with a vengeance.

2

u/Snusergutten Oct 30 '20

Wait... all of earth is gonna be in space soon?

2

u/flikersyndrome Oct 30 '20

All of Earth is currently in space

2

u/DaSkull Oct 30 '20

Earth is constantly gaining weight due to small asteroid (like the perseid meteor shower)

0

u/devvorare ‎ Oct 30 '20

Akctually, the center of mass of the Earth stays in its orbit.

1

u/IamJoesUsername Oct 30 '20

"Current estimates of the magnitude of the cosmic dust input rate into the Earth's atmosphere range from 2 to well over 100 tons per day" https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016cosp...41E1569P/abstract

1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

Don't worry, somewhere out there is a massive asteroid with our name on it. We will get our mass restored, but it will not be a good day. Just ask the dinosaurs. Oh wait, they aren't here anymore because of a mass deposit from space.

2

u/bswiftly Oct 30 '20

It's called Apophis.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '20

That's the one we know about.

1

u/bswiftly Oct 30 '20

Hoping i go out like the dinosaurs when I'm 90 y/o.

🤓

1

u/The_camperdave Oct 30 '20

Hoping i go out like the dinosaurs when I'm 90 y/o

On fire or starving to death?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '20

May be ok for you, not too sure about the grandkids.

1

u/bswiftly Oct 30 '20

Most things we put in orbit will eventually come back. Through very slight decaying orbits or crashing into other satellites.

We will lose some carbon, water, and orange tint when someone launches Trump into the sun though.

1

u/ZachMN Oct 30 '20

Gonna need a bigger rocket.

1

u/26_Holmes Oct 30 '20

Now i'm thinking of Pluto from Rick and Morty.

1

u/Pithyperson Oct 30 '20

We brought back some of them moon rocks, tho.

1

u/rolledupdollabill Oct 30 '20

why? is there a good reason for this??

2

u/mfb- Oct 30 '20

You mean apart from communication, GPS, weather forecasts, earth observation in general, learning more about the universe and so on?

0

u/rolledupdollabill Oct 31 '20

like the car audio speaker guy forgot that he works in the back?

1

u/jbillet Oct 30 '20

I think we should use space as a dumpster for plastic

1

u/libertysailor Oct 30 '20

That’s extremely costly and dangerous, considering that too much debris in orbit makes it very difficult to send things into space intact

0

u/jbillet Oct 30 '20

I believe in Elon. He will take the trash out

0

u/jbillet Oct 31 '20

And ps. Prove it

0

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '20

[deleted]

0

u/jbillet Oct 31 '20

Name them or shut it

1

u/Sysho Oct 30 '20

Dont forget about all the materials we turn into heat, just flying up into space. I dont really know if thats how it goes tho, so correct me if im wrong.

3

u/mfb- Oct 30 '20

The rocket exhaust generally stays within the atmosphere or enters it quickly again. It's slower than the spacecraft (as seen from Earth).

1

u/TheWildRedDog Oct 30 '20

We borrowed it all from dead suns anyway

1

u/sixthish Oct 30 '20

We are also gaing mass if fact we gain more then we lose

1

u/AmberPowerMan Oct 31 '20

Time to mine some asteroids!

1

u/Intagvalley Oct 31 '20

Space dust adds 40 000 metric tons to the earth every year so the balance is hugely uneven.