Earth gives and receives materials with the surrounding solar system. Dust speeding through space bombards our planet in the form of shooting stars, and gases from Earth's atmosphere often show up in space.
Is Earth expanding or decreasing if it is giving away matter as well as acquiring new material?
Guillaume Gronoff, a senior research scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, says that the atmosphere is Shrinking because of Earth's gaseous gifts to space. He said that we're not decreasing by much.
What happens in outer space?
Planets are formed when space dust builds up into a larger mass. Gronoff said that after Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, a small amount of accretion continued in the form of meteorites.
The atmospheric escape process begins once a planet forms. It works on a different scale than evaporation. Oxygen, hydrogen, and helium atoms absorb enough energy from the sun to escape the atmosphere.
How do these processes affect Earth's mass? Scientists can only guess.
It's difficult to measure the mass of the Earth in real time, so it's still research. We don't have the precision to see if the Earth is losing or gaining.
Scientists estimate that about 15000 tons of meteorites impact the planet every year, adding to its mass.
Scientists have estimated the rate of atmospheric escape using satellite data. "It's about 80,000 metric tons or 7.5 Eiffel Towers," Gronoff said. Earth is losing about 66,600 tons per year. He said that it's very, very, very small in the context of the whole planet.
Gronoff calculated that it would take 5 billion years for Earth to lose its atmosphere if the planet had no way to replenish it.
The ocean and volcanic eruptions help replenish Earth's atmosphere. It will take more than 3000 times that long before Earth will lose its atmosphere, which is about 100 times the life of the universe. The sun is expected to turn into a red giant in about 5 billion years, which will make Earth uninhabitable. The escape of the atmosphere is not a problem in the long run, according to Gronoff.
Earth is a good philanthropist and gives atmospheric gases to space, but it is not endangering life on Earth.
Live Science published the original article.
