Is the world getting bigger?

earth

If you want to find evidence of past civilisations you dig down to uncover it so clearly the world was previously smaller.

slowbike

Although what's really happening is that the surface is constantly sinking and being covered up - so in reality it's the same size ...

capt_slog

It should be getting bigger. The mass of meteorites we attract is estimated to be 37,000 to 78,000 tonnes per year

Giraffoto

It's gaining mass from meteors and space dust, and losing it to bits of the upper atmosphere being blown off by the solar wind. And what does the Juno probe weigh? Couple of tons? We definitely won't see that again. Also the surface is being covered up in some places, but eroded in others (so dinosaurs get buried and then get eroded out of the ground again). For a good example of the ground going up and down, look at the geological history of Ayer's Rock/Uluru.

bobmcstuff

Also fun fact - top of Everest contains sedimentary rock and has fossils from the bottom of the sea in it.

So clearly the bottom of the sea used to be at 8848m, right

earth

Giraffoto wrote:

It's gaining mass from meteors and space dust, and losing it to bits of the upper atmosphere being blown off by the solar wind. And what does the Juno probe weigh? Couple of tons? We definitely won't see that again. Also the surface is being covered up in some places, but eroded in others (so dinosaurs get buried and then get eroded out of the ground again). For a good example of the ground going up and down, look at the geological history of Ayer's Rock/Uluru.

Solar wind doesn't effect us much. Earths iron core gives us a magnetic field around our planet. This protects us from the solar wind. If we had no magnetic field we would have lost our atmosphere long ago as did Mars.

team47b

Yes. With global temperature rises the Earth gains about 160 tonnes of matter a year because if you add energy to a system then the mass must go up according to the laws of thermodynamics.

No. It's getting smaller, cos when I was a lad the village I lived in was huge, I went back there ten years ago and it seemed a lot smaller but now ten years later it fits inside my head

pinno

The earth is flat and because it is pancake shape, bits fall on top of it and fall from underneath it. No one has been brave enough to crawl on the underside to do a study, so we'll never really know what the net affect is.
I think the studios where they film all that space rubbish and moon landing sh1t...

cont p94

capt_slog

Pinno wrote:

The earth is flat and because it is pancake shape, bits fall on top of it and fall from underneath it. No one has been brave enough to crawl on the underside to do a study, so we'll never really know what the net affect is.
I think the studios where they film all that space rubbish and moon landing sh1t...

cont p94

ahhh

I miss him like I miss the second arsehole I never had. :roll:

pblakeney

Capt Slog wrote:

Pinno wrote:

The earth is flat and because it is pancake shape, bits fall on top of it and fall from underneath it. No one has been brave enough to crawl on the underside to do a study, so we'll never really know what the net affect is.
I think the studios where they film all that space rubbish and moon landing sh1t...

cont p94

ahhh

I miss him like I miss the second arsehole I never had. :roll:

And yet you immediately get the reference.
Manc33 is your mind wormhole.

finchy

If you are looking at the average, then there is the possibility that the Earth is getting smaller (i.e. by volume, not mass), because as ice caps and glaciers melt, they form water, which is denser, therefore the distance from the centre of the Earth to the Earth's surface will be falling ever so slightly, as the losses made here will be larger than the gains made by thermal expansion of water. Erm, probably.

EDIT: Although I forgot to factor in isostatic rebound (land rising once the mass of ice is removed), this occurs over millenia, so the above is probably still true. Possibly. Or possibly not.

Giraffoto

Earth wrote:

Solar wind doesn't effect us much. Earths iron core gives us a magnetic field around our planet. This protects us from the solar wind. If we had no magnetic field we would have lost our atmosphere long ago as did Mars.

So you gain weight from the meteors and space dust, and lose a lot less of it from the atmosphere because your magnetic field protects us. Net gain there then.

As an additional question, when a volcano erupts a load of gases are vented (along with the ash, dust and lava), so does that mean the atmosphere is growing?

finchy

Giraffoto wrote:

Earth wrote:

Solar wind doesn't effect us much. Earths iron core gives us a magnetic field around our planet. This protects us from the solar wind. If we had no magnetic field we would have lost our atmosphere long ago as did Mars.

So you gain weight from the meteors and space dust, and lose a lot less of it from the atmosphere because your magnetic field protects us. Net gain there then.

As an additional question, when a volcano erupts a load of gases are vented (along with the ash, dust and lava), so does that mean the atmosphere is growing?

In the very short term, yes, there will be a minute change. In the long term, larger changes happen. In the short term, Earth's natural cycles keep things pretty much in equilibrium, unless some foolish species comes along to completely disrupt the equilibrium, but that would never happen, would it?

Anonymous

Ever since the big bang everything in the universe has been expanding including the earth. At the beginning the universe was probably no bigger than an atom. Every piece of matter from that point on has been expanding and moving further apart. As everyone and everything in it is also expanding you probably don't notice this but its still happening. So technically everything in the world is getting bigger.

pinno

Maglia Rosa wrote:

Ever since the big bang everything in the universe has been expanding including the earth. At the beginning the universe was probably no bigger than an atom.

Total and utter bollox.

briantrumpet

PBlakeney wrote:

Manc33 is your mind wormhole.

Remember that the laws of physics are different out in space, so who knows?

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Are we talking bigger by mass, or bigger by volume, or both?

pinno

The only Wormhole is Mankind's 4rse and he's as far up it is he can possibly get (I think).

Anonymous

Pinno wrote:

Maglia Rosa wrote:

Ever since the big bang everything in the universe has been expanding including the earth. At the beginning the universe was probably no bigger than an atom.

Total and utter bollox.

Explain why

pinno

Maglia Rosa wrote:

Pinno wrote:

Maglia Rosa wrote:

Ever since the big bang everything in the universe has been expanding including the earth. At the beginning the universe was probably no bigger than an atom.

Total and utter bollox.

Explain why

First of all the Big Bang is only a theory.

Secondly, if the Big Bang was true, are you saying that the earth has been expanding after this Big Bang ever since the Big Bang? If so, can you quantify that expansion from when it was formed from it's state as a molten piece of rock?
Are you suggesting that the earth since it's formation as a separate and independent spinning globe orbiting the Sun was smaller than it is now? Again, can you quantify that? If all matter is expanding, does that include our own solar system which is held together by that nucleus called the sun? If it doesn't, how come our Solar system is unique and that would be contrary to you supposition?. If it has, can you quantify how small our solar system was say 4 billion years ago (given that the BB theory says the Universe is 13.7 billion years old*) in comparison to what it is now? How far then, will the earth be from the sun at the point the sun starts expanding and then ultimately contracting into a white dwarf?

9.7 billion years is ample leeway within a theory that claims that all matter was created in a split second, so you have no excuses there.

As far as the BB theory goes, even eminent astro-physicists are veering now towards the infinitely fluctuating Universe which is constantly expanding and contracting.

I don't want to get into an argument about the BB theory, just your supposition that the earth is expanding like all matter since it's apparent inception. I'll need some sort of proof of that.
The BIg Bang theory claims that it all started from an infinitesimally dense object (of a varying assumed sizes) and in the split second that it exploded, all matter was created. So from that, when did the individual pieces of matter stop expanding, or is the matter still expanding? I thought that this dense object once extrapolated out contained all the matter in the Universe and after that, it was simply the space between the matter that has been expanding (according to the BB theory).

Giraffoto

Pinno wrote:

First of all the Big Bang is only a theory.

"Only a theory" is a bit misleading. You should avoid making the mistake of giving equal weight to the Theory of Evolution, the Big Bang Theory, and conspiracy theories expounded by some bloke in the pub. A theory in scientific terms is generally a model, supported by empirical data, that offers an explanation for it.

The Expanding Universe Theory (not a wild guess, it's based on the observation that nearly everything in the Universe is going away from us at a speed proportional to its distance from us) holds that the "space" bit of the Universe is expanding, while the solid bits aren't.

pinno

Giraffoto wrote:

Pinno wrote:

First of all the Big Bang is only a theory.

...holds that the "space" bit of the Universe is expanding, while the solid bits aren't.

I did say that if you had read my post. I also used the Big Bang Theory to contradict MR's statement.

Personally, the Big Bang theory is so riddled with flaws that to me it symbolises mankind's arrogance and it simply massages it's vulnerable ego. I say mankind . - Western schools of thought have a beginning and an end to everything just as in our dominant religions, far eastern schools of thought are cyclical just like dominant religions existent there.

"The Universe was created by... [insert god or the BBT]" It's an odd parallel. Let's replace the religious idea of creation with... creation?!!? Bizarre.

Giraffoto

Pinno wrote:

Personally, the Big Bang theory is so riddled with flaws . . .

The Big Bang theory has one main flaw, exemplified neatly by the flatness problem:

Wikipedia wrote:

The Flatness Problem
The flatness problem (also known as the oldness problem) is an observational problem associated with a Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric. The universe may have positive, negative, or zero spatial curvature depending on its total energy density. Curvature is negative if its density is less than the critical density, positive if greater, and zero at the critical density, in which case space is said to be flat. The problem is that any small departure from the critical density grows with time, and yet the universe today remains very close to flat. Given that a natural timescale for departure from flatness might be the Planck time, 1x10^-43 seconds, the fact that the universe has reached neither a heat death nor a Big Crunch after billions of years requires an explanation. For instance, even at the relatively late age of a few minutes (the time of nucleosynthesis), the universe density must have been within one part in 1x10^14 of its critical value, or it would not exist as it does today

There's the problem, I don't understand stuff like that. A-level maths and physics never covered this sort of thing.

bobmcstuff

The fact the universe is expending is pretty incontrovertible unless you're being deliberately difficult.

What caused that to start is a different matter and probably not worth having a whole 'nother thread about.

Giraffoto

bobmcstuff wrote:

The fact the universe is expending is pretty incontrovertible unless you're being deliberately difficult.

What caused that to start is a different matter and definitely worth having a whole 'nother thread about.

FTFY

I'm getting my Big Bang placards made up right now. I'll be finished way before the Revised Steady State mob.

TheBigBean

There's two problems with all this stuff:

(i) There is no grand unified theory, so small, heavy and quick things aren't really understood.
(ii) It makes my brain hurt, so I avoid thinking about it.

The world needs another Newton* or Einstein.

*He did more than get hit on the head with an apple.

pinno

bobmcstuff wrote:

The fact the universe is expending is pretty incontrovertible unless you're being deliberately difficult.

What caused that to start is a different matter and probably not worth having a whole 'nother thread about.

Contemporary models point towards an eternal expansion and contraction; a sort of ebb and flow, like a tide.

bobmcstuff

Pinno wrote:

bobmcstuff wrote:

The fact the universe is expending is pretty incontrovertible unless you're being deliberately difficult.

What caused that to start is a different matter and probably not worth having a whole 'nother thread about.

Contemporary models point towards an eternal expansion and contraction; a sort of ebb and flow, like a tide.

Some of them do. And most have a big crunch/big bang in the middle.

The universe currently is expanding. Whether it will in future contract again is kind of up for debate. Currently the available evidence suggests there isn't enough mass for it to contract again, but maybe that will change (the available evidence that is)

pinno

Philosophically, I do not know if mankind has the ability to think in terms of infinite. We are organic, we have a finite life cycle.
We've replaced an all encapsulating theory of our existence (by the creative hand of a deity) with another creation theory.
Western theories have a start and a possible finish. Far Eastern theories are cyclical. I see the parallel.

As an extension, I wonder if eventually artificial intelligence would come to some conclusive theory given that AI is not constrained by the frailties of the human being.

bobmcstuff

Pinno wrote:

Philosophically, I do not know if mankind has the ability to think in terms of infinite. We are organic, we have a finite life cycle.
We've replaced an all encapsulating theory of our existence (by the creative hand of a deity) with another creation theory.
Western theories have a start and a possible finish. Far Eastern theories are cyclical. I see the parallel.

As an extension, I wonder if eventually artificial intelligence would come to some conclusive theory given that AI is not constrained by the frailties of the human being.

I can see the parallels too - I am but an observer (and one who had had too many mojitos at that).

There are a lot of parallels and you're for sure not the first person to see that.

Science looks at evidence and tries to draw a conclusion from the evidence. That's it.

meursault

I'd like to have a go at some of these answers, but in general I am with Pinno.

A. Yes, no and all the other possibilities.

This is my unified theory of everything.

B. There is no way of knowing.

There are no facts. No truth and nothing can be proved. All 'reality' is an interpretation of our senses and mind or brain. This could be anything, everything and nothing.

C. The scientific method and other abstractions are woefully inadequate to provide the answers. All these abstractions have been invented by a mind, that as B. explains, is based on no foundations. No measurements are accurate and therefore contain errors, that could disclaim the point of themselves. E.G. The earth. From what we interpret as reality, everything is dynamic and in flux. Matter and energy are the same thing. No thing is even equal to itself, as it is in constant motion. The Earth (and everything else that exists) does not equal itself, at anytime. So one does not equal one. Invalidating all mathematics in reality. We use these abstracts as a guide to make 'sense' of reality, but they do not actually exist. I think there is an important distinction here, and agree with Pinno about things being theories.