Earth Gains 5,200 Tons of Dust From Space Every Year

UniverseToday.com ^ | 04/13/2021 | NANCY ATKINSON

[phoneman08]

At this rate of mass gain, the earth will become a black hole in 78 trillion years. Clearly racist!

[chopperk]

That number is very low.

[chiller]

....which might equate to something like an ounce per square mile or some insignificant amount....

...so why are they wondering about this and why am I wasting my time thinking about it. ??

[lowbridge]

How wonderful

[LastDayz]

Wouldn’t all that dust in the atmosphere create a global cooling issue? Quick.... hit the panic button.

[KarlInOhio]

0.85 ounces per square mile.

Now how much of the atmosphere is lost to spece every year?

[Telepathic Intruder]

0.0002 ounces per square mile.

[Red Badger]

That means the Earth is getting more mass, ergo stronger gravity.............

[Telepathic Intruder]

Nevermind... cubed instead of squared.

[gundog]

I thought the moon was looking a little closer.

[Chode]

OK, i’ll prolly get slapped for this, but...

“Ferromagnetic metals are strongly attracted by a magnetic force. The common ferromagnetic metals include iron, nickel, cobalt, gadolinium, dysprosium and alloys such as steel that also contain specific ferromagnetic metals such as iron or nickel.”

so how much of this will travel along magnetic lines and end up at the poles skewing results?

[Ken H]

[Dusty Road]

I’ve read studies that suggested as much as 20 to 50 tons a day.

[Chode]

cause it can’t all fall on my place...

[Seruzawa]

Well, since the Earth’s mass is 13 billion trillion tons this will become a problem about 10 billion years after the Sun expires.

[Nateman]

That wedge of light you see on the right side of this picture is called ' Zodiacal dust ". It's on the opposite side of the Sun in this view. This dust orbits around the Sun in the same plane the Earth does. This is the stuff that falls unto the Earth.

[Vaduz]

But we put triple that amount of weight in space with satellites.

[Clutch Martin]

My calc puts it between 235,000 & 246,000 but my data might have been skewed with meteors and space junk data...

[Chode]

what goes up...

[Magnum44]

Thats an interesting question. One usually thinks of electron and proton fluxes getting trapped in the mag field (causing things like the aurora’s). Thats a charged particle in the field. Will a ferromagnetic particle act similarly? Might not since a magnet has both charges. Might cause an orientation but maybe not trap the particle the way it would a charged particle.