Would it ever be possible for the sky to fall down?

Question

I'm not very science minded, as you can tell from the question! So, clever scientist peoples, enlighten me - could the sky fall down??

Answer 1

The sky is not solid, so there is nothing to fall down.

Answer 2

Let me make this easy on you, the sky is our air! How can our air fall? I think you need to ask your questions more carefully.

Answer 3

No.  Each particle of air is held up by the ones beneath it, so the upwards push from the ground supports the whole atmosphere right up to space.

Answer 4

no, the sky is all around you. all the sky is is the atmosphere. it is the air that you breath, which gets thinner the higher you get. when you look up, the blue you can see is just light coming from the gases that make up the atmosphere. there is no defined line of where the sky starts.

Answer 5

What might cause this phenomenon would be an increase in gravitational pull.  An increase in gravitational pull might occur if a large enough asteroid (or asteroids) hit and landed on the earth.  

Conversely, a reduction in gravitation pull might cause the atmosphere to drift off into space.  This could happen if the earth stopped rotating, or a large asteroid split the earth in half.

It certainly appears possible, but low in probability over a short timescale. Over an infinite timescale, it is probable.

Answer 6

Well if you're asking if the sky could fall down in chunks... no.

It is not solid, it is just what we call the earth's atmosphere above our heads.

Answer 7

No because the  earth rotates and the universe around it is expanding not collapsing

Answer 8

The sky we see during the day cannot fall, it is already on the ground.  You might even say that it has already fall when the Earth was forming and it's gravity pulled in all the nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and other gasses that our atmosphere is made of.

The stars and other things we see at night also cannot fall.  In order to do so the Earth's gravitational field would have to increase to unimaginable levels, this would defy virtually every law of physics.

But an interesting way to look at this is if we are in a closed universe.  At some point in the future the universe will cease expanding and begin collapse in on itself, which, in a sense, you you call the sky falling.  But this is nothing for us to worry about, from everything I have read scientists are fairly certain we are in an open universe, one that will expand forever.  Even if they are wrong, at the moment the universe is still expanding. Assuming it's speed of collapse is similar to the speed it expanded, even if it began to collapse a half hour from now the sun would burn out long before we would feel any effects of the shrinking universe.

Answer 9

well, the sky consists of air and gases, the colder particles fall down so in some way yes. But as for the visual sky that is gravitationally impossible.

Answer 10

No.

Sky is not a single entity. it has got many things in it...

Answer 11

The "sky" is an optical illusion.  There really isn't a "sky" anymore than there is an acutal, physical rainbow.  The "sky" is blue light from sunlight that is scattered in all directions by the molecules of the air that makes up our atmosphere.  So there is really nothing to fall.

Answer 12

no it isn't, the sky is caused by the atmosphere

Answer 13

No because the sky is made up by water vapor and gases like oxigen, nitrogen and others.

Answer 14

No. The Earth's atmosphere is held in by gravity and held out by its own pressure, and neither the gravity nor the pressure is likely to change significantly anytime in the near future. Above the atmosphere is space. There are a lot of objects out in space, but there is also a LOT of space, and objects don't collide with each other very often (almost all the small objects the Earth collides with disintegrate in the atmosphere before reaching the ground). For the most part, the sky is not a physical thing that can fall down in the sense you're thinking of.

>I am not a physicist and therefore do not understand what sustains gravity or why the sky or air or atmosphere does not compress so much so that it's eventually at our feet and we can't breathe?!

The atmosphere's own pressure holds it up. The entire atmosphere kind of works like a huge spring: It squashes down somewhat under its own weight, but it doesn't just go on collapsing, because it pushes back up as well.

Answer 15

The sky is already on the ground. We live in the sky (aka the atmosphere).

Answer 16

YOUR STUPID!

Answer 17

".....do not understand what sustains gravity or why the sky or air or atmosphere does not compress so much so that it's eventually at our feet and we can't breathe?!"

Don't let the B*st*rds get you down. You have to start somewhere and they forget when they were there.

Everything that has mass has gravity, the more mass the more gravity. The mass of the earth is just right to keep the gases in our atmosphere in just the right place for us.

Gravity tries to make all the mass go to one point in the center.

But gravity actually gets weaker over distances so the "pull" is greater the deeper you go toward the center. Going the other direction, out, it gets weaker and that's why the lighter gases don't get sucked inward.

The same principle of balance is what makes stars the way they are. Stars are almost all gas which is very light. And they are A LOT of gas with a lot of gravity. Being composed of such light elements a star would actually collapse inward as you imagine BUT the huge gravity is balanced by fusion energy radiating outward.

It's all a matter of beautiful balance. Like everything in our wonderful universe. I hope you enjoy it, I do:)