Our blue planet is constantly undergoing very big changes, since its formation to this day, and although humans do not directly notice them, because of its very short life compared to the age of the Earth, it is possible to estimate it scientifically.
According to the “Sputnik” website, our blue planet, like the rest of the planets of the solar system, constantly receives a lot of new materials coming from the solar system, such as dust flying in space or stones, small and large meteorites, and others, but the planet loses the gases that leak from its atmosphere. regularly towards space, so it can be said that our planet is constantly losing matter and also obtaining new materials, so is the Earth expanding or contracting?
The scientific ‘Live Science’ magazine published a report in which it answered this thorny question that has preoccupied many scientists for decades, as this information would provide data on the future of the Earth and the future of humanity as well.
Earth receives ‘gifts’ and elements escape from it
The continuous leakage of gases from our planet towards space causes the Earth to shrink in size, specifically the size of the atmosphere, as the atmosphere is constantly shrinking and shrinking, according to a prominent research scientist who studies gas leakage from the atmosphere at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, the world Guillaume Gronov, in this respect, the Earth is ‘not shrinking much’.
On the other hand, planets are formed by continuous accumulation, that is, when space dust of various types collides with the Earth, which causes the Earth to increase in size more and more. After the formation of the Earth regarding 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth received a small amount of accretion in the form of meteorites and asteroids that added to the Earth’s mass, Gronov said.
But as soon as the planet is formed, another opposite process begins, which is “escape from the atmosphere”, according to Gronov, a process similar to evaporation, but on a different scale, and according to the world, the oxygen, hydrogen and helium atoms absorb enough energy from the sun to help it escape from the atmosphere .
But by monitoring the rate of meteorites falling, scientists estimate that regarding 16,500 tons (15,000 metric tons), or regarding one and a half of the Eiffel Towers, fall on the planet each year, increasing its mass, Gronov told Live Science.
Meanwhile, using satellite data, the scientists estimated the rate of atmospheric leakage. “It’s something like 82,700 tons (75,000 metric tons), which is the size of 7.5 from the Eiffel Tower,” Gronov said.
Scientists estimated the quantities leaking from the atmosphere, which were determined over the past 100 years, and according to Gronov, the Earth loses regarding 60,000 tons of atmosphere annually, meaning that the Earth will lose its atmosphere following regarding 5 billion years, if the planet does not have a way to renew it.
However, on the other hand, the ocean and other processes, such as volcanic eruptions, help replenish the Earth’s atmosphere. Therefore, it will take regarding 3000 times more than the previous period to lose the entire Earth’s atmosphere, or regarding 15.4 trillion years, for the Earth to lose its atmosphere, a time “a hundred times more than the age of the universe”, according to the scientist.
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