How many tons of meteors hit earth each year? Does that mean the Earth has gained mass over millions of Years?

Question

Was the Earth smaller millions of years ago?

Answer 1

It's true, planets gain mass through collisions with meteorites, asteroids and comets. This is how planets actually form: they start out as lumps of rock or ice and accumulate more and more mass as things bump into them. Most of this process happened billions of years ago: we have overwhelming evidence (the craters on the moon and every other satellite in the solar system, plus the rocky planets) that this bombardment was intense for the first few hundred millions years of planet formation.

It's much less intense now but still goes. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a great example of this process in action.

Answer 2

yes, yes and yes.  the earth gains most of it's new mas form dust falling from space.

Answer 3

2900-7300 kilograms per year hit Earth. However, this does not include the small dust particles. Scientists also estimate between 36 and 166 meteorites larger than 10 grams fall to Earth per million square kilometers per year. Over the whole surface area of Earth, that translates to 18,000 to 84,000 meteorites bigger than 10 grams per year. But most meteorites are too small to actually fall all the way to the surface. Estimates for the total mass of material that falls on Earth each year range from 37,000-78,000 tons. Most of this mass would come from dust-sized particles. (This study was led by P. A. Bland and was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.)

Answer 4

about 100-110 tons of dust-meteorites hit the earth every day

thats why arqueoligist have to dig so much. its about 12 million tons a year

but, such weight (mass, really) is not significant

earth is 6 trillion tons (spanish trillion)

6 millions of millions of millions tons

thats a zillion in english, jeje

to gain a 1/100th of the mass of the earth its needed 1,5 billion years at that rate (american billion)

so the least, we were 2% smaller only, in the past, not significant really

Answer 5

yes the earth's mass is constantly increasing. About 10 tons of space dust falls on earth each day and an estimated 500 meteorites hit earth each year

Answer 6

Yes to all 3 questions

Answer 7

If you take the value of 100 tons per year from dust and meteors, and add it up for 1 billion years, you will find that the Earth is more massive now by about 10 parts per billion.

So if you weigh 100 kg now, you would have been 99.9999999 kg back then.  (Yeah, I know kg are not weight, but that's how most scales are calibrated.)

All that dust and rock coming in for a billion years, adds up to a layer about 4 cm thick on average.

Answer 8

Yes, the earth is constantly gaining mass.  BUT the mass gained from all the meteors and space dust is insignificant compared to the mass of the earth itself.  So technically, yes it's bigger and has more gravity today than it did in the past.  But for practical purposes it's still the same size and same gravity.

Answer 9

Earth gains about 40,000 metric tons of mass each year from infalling material.