Earth every year 'slimming' is 50 thousand tons

What loses is only equivalent to about 0.0000000000001% of the Earth's volume.

Learn about the mass of Earth lost each year

Every year has passed, like humans, the Earth has increased by 1 year. However, unlike humans who can gain weight, the Earth is losing about 50 thousand tons per year, equivalent to about 0.0000000000001% of its mass. In fact, the number of lost masses is much larger, nearly 100,000 tons but due to being offset by cosmic dust, the Earth has removed the gauze somewhat.

How heavy is the Earth?

The mass of the Earth is about 5.98 × 10 ^ 24kg, including iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), saved sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), aluminum (1.4%); and other elements 1.2%. Based on the theory of mass separation, it is assumed that the core zone is composed of iron (88.8%) with a small amount of nickel (5.8%), sulfur (4.5%), and other elements are less than 1%. FW Clarke chemist calculated that under 47% of Earth's crust contains oxygen and rock formations that make up the Earth's crust mostly contain oxides; Chlorine, sulfur and fluorine are the only important exceptions of this and their total mass in rock is 1% smaller. The oxides are silicon oxide, aluminum, iron; Carbonates of calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium. Silicon dioxide acts as an acid, forming silicates and is present in all the most common minerals.

From a calculation based on 1,672 analyzes of all rocks, Clarke deduced that 99.22% is made up of 11 oxides (see table on the right) and all the remaining components account for only a tiny amount.

Weight loss planetary style

The physicist Dr Chris Smith and Dave Ansel of Cambridge University have published results that show that within 1 year, Earth lost about 95,000 tons of Hydro and 1,600 tons of Helium. These two gases are so light that the Earth's gravity cannot hold it in the atmosphere. Another reason is that the fuel core at the center of the Earth loses mass every year , all because of the nuclear decay of the fission reaction that takes place inside the Earth's core. And every year, our planet loses 16 tons because of this problem.

The fission reaction - also known as the atomic decay reaction - is a nuclear and nuclear chemical process in which the atomic nucleus is divided into two or more smaller nuclei and several products. other side. Therefore, fission is a form of radical transformation. The by-products include neutrons, photons exist in the form of gamma rays, beta rays and alpha rays. Fission of heavy elements is an exothermic reaction and can release significant amounts of energy in the form of gamma rays and the kinetic energy of the released particles (heating up material at the place where the reaction occurs. lymph nodes.

Hydrogen is not very influential but Helium is quite a serious problem. With the current rate of loss, it must be several thousand billion years before we run out of hydrogen gas, and then Earth will no longer exist. Meanwhile, helium gas is an important gas and it only accounts for 0,00052% of our atmosphere volume. In fact, helium is often extracted from natural gas through complex distillation process. And helium is getting rare on the earth so losing 1,600 tons a year is really a pity. In fact, Nobel laureate Robert Richardson used to think that every balloon must be worth $ 100 because it contains so much helium!

Gain weight thanks to the universe

The BBC's More or Less program adds, thanks to the gravity of gravity that every year our Earth attracts 40,000 tons of cosmic dust to augment its mass. In addition, information from the US Federal Aviation and Space Administration said that each year the Earth weighs about 160 tons more because of global warming.

Does this loss of mass harm the Earth? In fact, every year the Earth only loses about 0.0000000000001% of its mass and does not affect humanity at all. This 50,000 tons is not as big as you imagine, it is only about half the weight of the sunken Costa Concordia yacht in 2012.

Only the Earth "slimming"?

The fact that not only our green planet falls into a state of continuous weight loss, but the Sun itself also loses weight at a much faster rate than Earth. In the form of a giant balloon that always glows with an oversized nuclear reactor inside the core, the Sun spreads out into space, about 4x10 ^ 26 W of energy within a second. If you calculate the amount of hydrogen lost, the scientists calculated, each Sun will lose 4 billion kilograms of hydrogen, equivalent to 370 billion tons a day.