Heck with the water, I want to know where all of my socks go.

Dryer gremlins

The mass of the Earth and all the objects on it did not change until man sent objects into space, starting with Sputnik.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
The mass of the Earth and all the objects on it did not change until man sent objects into space, starting with Sputnik.

Nope.

How many millions/billions/trillions of meteorites have landed on earth over its lifespan? A quick Google says 17,000 meteorites of various sizes fall to Earth every year. Each of those would be depositing additional material, changing the mass of the Earth.

Going further, the mass of just the water itself on the Earth would be constantly changing/fluctuating, because varying amounts of it are suspended in the atmosphere above the Earth at any given time in the form of clouds and humidity.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
The mass of the Earth and all the objects on it did not change until man sent objects into space, starting with Sputnik.

Nope.

How many millions/billions/trillions of meteorites have landed on earth over its lifespan? A quick Google says 17,000 meteorites of various sizes fall to Earth every year. Each of those would be depositing additional material, changing the mass of the Earth.

Going further, the mass of just the water itself on the Earth would be constantly changing/fluctuating, because varying amounts of it are suspended in the atmosphere above the Earth at any given time in the form of clouds and humidity.

There are bigger source of changing mass than meteorites.

Earth collects space dust as it passes through space, and at the edge of the atmosphere, some of the atmosphere escapes completely and floats off into space (mostly hydrogen and helium, the lightest gasses).

One estimate that shows up repeatedly is a loss of atmosphere to space of about 95,000 metric tons (~200,000,000 pounds) of hydrogen and about 1,600 metric tons (~3,500,000 pounds) of helium per year, and a gain of about 40,000 metric tons (~90,000,000) pounds of space dust and debris.

So the net change in mass would be a loss of ~50,000 metric tons (~110,000,000 pounds) per year and the total exchange of mass is around ~150,000 metric tons (~330,000,000 pounds) per year.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/p...-the-earth-changing/

I can’t find a good estimate of “amount of stuff sent to space by humans,” but estimates of “human made stuff in Earth orbit” (which wouldn’t include stuff like planetary probes and deep space probes) seem to hover around 10,000 metric tons (~22,000,000 pounds).

https://sdup.esoc.esa.int/discosweb/statistics/

So the sum total of everything in space around earth (that we put there and that is still there) adds up to about 1 month of the natural mass exchange between earth and space, or about 3 months of the earth’s natural net loss of mass to space.