Energy is mass. The sun is radiating a lot of heat, so of course it's losing mass.
Energy is mass. The sun is radiating a lot of heat, so of course it's losing mass.
Last edited by Sang-drax : Tomorrow at 02:21 AM. Reason: Time travelling
If you're not a creationist, the question is still imprecise, because the earth gradually came into existence by cosmic dust clumping together.
But taking the end of this process as a starting point, I'm pretty sure the mass has decreased. Why? Well, while asteroids hitting the earth generally increase its weight, at one point it was hit by one so large that it broke off a very large chunk: the moon. I don't think the combined weight of all the asteroid dust that remained on earth can make up for that loss.
So I think the mass has decreased overall, although it is increasing gradually.
All the buzzt!
CornedBee
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>at one point it was hit by one so large that it broke off a very large chunk: the moon.
i took a full year of astronomy courses and ive never even heard that mentioned as a theory. I was told the moon was most likely a large asteroid that was caught by the earths gravity and pulled into orbit.
+1 increasionalists.
I've heard of it. Seen computer models too (or rather, videos or computer screens running the simulations). Seems like a viable theory.
At any rate, it is probably increasing, but at a truly, remarkably negligible rate (barring any large meteor strikes, of course ).
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In other news, thirty seconds with Google trumps a year of education.Originally Posted by Perspective
http://www.psi.edu/projects/moon/moon.html
At the time Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, other smaller planetary bodies were also growing. One of these hit earth late in Earth's growth process, blowing out rocky debris. A fraction of that debris went into orbit around the Earth and aggregated into the moon.
...
Thus, the giant impact hypothesis continues to be the leading hypothesis on how the moon formed. Is it right? Can it be disproven by more careful research? Only time will tell, but so far it has stood up to 25 years of scrutiny.24 Hours of Chaos: The Day The Moon Was Made
For 25 years, scientists have pondered a theory that the Moon was created when an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth less than 100 million years after the Sun was born, some 4.6 billion years ago. The general idea has been run through the paces and massaged into shape and is now the favored explanation.
>In other news, thirty seconds with Google trumps a year of education.
hey, i said i was in the classes, i didnt say anything about being awake...
edit: but i actually hadnt heard that once in either course, though we didnt talk all that much about earth. Next thing you'll be telling me that man has actually visited the moon
Last edited by Perspective; 12-08-2004 at 08:52 PM.
The earth slowly leaks air into outer space.
It also picks up a small amount of material from falling rocks (meteorites).
But that's offset by the material we sent out into space on rockets.
The earth picks up some radiation from the sun (which as has been stated is mass), but also radiates itself.
There's probably a slight net loss in mass/energy but it may take geological timespans to see any significant amount.
oh, oh. this one im sure about
>>It also picks up a small amount of material from falling rocks (meteorites).
This is incorrect. A meteroite is a meteor (or piece of meteor) that resides on earth. The falling rock that hits the earth is a meteor, the resulting peice of rock on earth is a meteorite
oh yeah, that year of astronomy wasnt wasted after all, it helped me point out a grammer errorMeteorite Me"te*or*ite, n. Cf. F. m'et'eorite. (Min.)
A mass of stone or iron which has fallen to the earth from
space
So, if we send a meteorite back out into space, does it become a meteor again? Or are our top scientists still working on this one?
it becomes a meteroriteor. then if it comes back to earth its a meteoriteorite, and so on...Originally Posted by PJYelton
I have a good elementary Astronomy question.
If our Sun was replaced with a 1 solar-mass Black Hole, How would this change Earth's orbit?
Hmm
Originally Posted by B0bDole
Since the mass is the same, the gravitational forces it would exert would be the same so I would say that it wouldn't. At the current distance, the sun can be considered a gravitational point source and just replacing it with a true gravitational point source wouldn't seem to have any impact on us. That's my guess anyway, I could be wrong.
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Shouldn't change the orbit at all. Might get a little dark though.
well, considering a black hole is a star that becomes so massive it collapses on itself, id say this isnt feasable. Not just the replacement but the existance of the entity itself. Now, if our sun was replaced by a one solar mass fork, it would have no effect on our orbit.Originally Posted by B0bDole
To be totally pedantic, would the lack of heat change the orbit?
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