Small words please

Leslie

Leslie

Communistrator
Staff member
This is something that I have always wondered about, and something about which I don't even know where to start looking for information.

Can someone please explain, in small words, and as little mocking as is possible:

How is it that moving millions of tons of earth around, mining, oil drilling, and volcanoes, and earthquakes, and whatever else I'm not thinking about, don't take the earth off course ever, even just the slightest smidge? Or do they? I *think* they can't be sending us off course, as we'd be on a path to hit something or another by now, or going off into the great black yoner, but how can all this stuff all the time not be shifting us over even a small amount?

Is it simply the oceans moving about and balancing things back out?

Signed,

Confused.
 
In small words .... scale.


All the matter moved by humans in the last 10,000 years adds up to about a gnat's fart in a hurricane.
 
I'd have thought that moving a gnat's fart's worth would have affected the path about a gnat's fart's worth, though.

Doesn't it?
 
If it's still on the planet, you haven't really moved it at all. It's still here.

Re prof's scale answer, would you be able to perceive a gnat's fart in a hurricane? How would you measure it?
 
Sure would ... except that it would also move the gnat, countering the majority of the effect. Any remaining effect would be even further beyond immeasurable.
 
Everything that's here now that wasn't here 100 years ago really WAS here, just in a different composition. Unless a thing is utterly destroyed its mass is not gone, simply offset. I might gain 20 pounds but it's because I ingested 19.5 pounds of meat and an order of fries. :D
 
IMO ...
since the earth is spinning at the current rate, it will remain pretty much Round.

If enough material is displaced, the earth will adjust.....
earthquakes, volcanoes, water adjustment...
 
catocom said:
IMO ...
since the earth is spinning at the current rate, it will remain pretty much Round.

If enough material is displaced, the earth will adjust.....
earthquakes, volcanoes, water adjustment...
Click to expand...

Actually cat, the spin has nothing to do with it. It's the mass that keeps it round (well, really spherical).

I once saw a topographical representation of the earth (at the Desert Museum in Tucson), computer carved to an accuracy of .001% if memory serves and 1 meter in diameter. It was as smooth as glass (smoother than glass according to the display sign). Even the Himalayas don't make a discernable bump.
 
I believe the spin Does contribute.
My understanding is that the earth is constantly trying to fly apart because of
the spin, but the mass holds it together, so it is constantly adjusting, and the
intervention of man, although vary minute, changes the way it adjusts. (again very little, comparatively)
 
Perhaps if all of mankinds little happenings as well as all of the volcano eruptions happend at the same point on the globe with about a 10 degree wiggle room in regards to time zones, then perhaps all of that would start to slowly nudge us about. Do remember though that all of these little happenings are all over the friggin place. You almost have to think of it as a million little micro touches originating essentially all over the planet that get dispersed as it goes down towards the core... a core that gets 99.999% of its energy from the tug of war twixt the sun and moon. What we do, even a nuclear armageddon, wouldn't amount to much.

Think of a pin point of severe force... like the meteor that capped off the dinosaurs. That thing was the equivalent of all nuclear bombs in the world going off at once at the same point on the globe. If that couldn't nudge us about, then what can? Perhaps it set up a slight wobble for a million years... but even that would eventually subside.
 
Air has mass, therefore no matter what we move everthing remains constant, it is when we launch stuff to orbit that we are actually changing the mass of the earth
 
Not really .. unless you get it out of the gravity well. Orbit is no really difference in to 'global' picture. A ton in orbit, or 20 tons of snow on Everest's summit, adds up the same.
 
paul_valaru said:
Air has mass, therefore no matter what we move everthing remains constant, it is when we launch stuff to orbit that we are actually changing the mass of the earth
Click to expand...

What prof said, plus the mass of the earth increases all the time. Space dust, meteorites. It doesn't increase much, but it does increase.
 
Moving dirt? Hell, a planet crashed into eatth & all we got was a small size moon.
 
Actually, gravity is harsher towards the center of a mass. Its what makes black holes and dwarf stars so powerful. It's only a skip and a jump form the surface to the core of such things whereas it is quite a few zillion miles from the surface of most stars to the core. A ton of snow in the atmosphere is more than a ton on the ground. One must keep the same amount of mass though. If one merely shrinks the Earth to make the center closer to the surface, then the inverse square law matches the shrink. A dwarf star has the mass of at least a star more massive than our own shrunk down to something mighty small... so that gravity well is a royal biyatch.
 
unclehobart said:
Actually, gravity is harsher towards the center of a mass. Its what makes black holes and dwarf stars so powerful. It's only a skip and a jump form the surface to the core of such things whereas it is quite a few zillion miles from the surface of most stars to the core. A ton of snow in the atmosphere is more than a ton on the ground. One must keep the same amount of mass though. If one merely shrinks the Earth to make the center closer to the surface, then the inverse square law matches the shrink. A dwarf star has the mass of at least a star more massive than our own shrunk down to something mighty small... so that gravity well is a royal biyatch.
Click to expand...

Umm... Except for black holes, and they're strange creatures with rules unto themselves, at the center of a mass there is no gravity (actually, equal gravity in all directions but it amounts to the same thing). As you shrink the volume and keep the mass the same the inverse square law does match the shrink though. At that point it's the tidal force you have to worry about. The gravity differential gets big enough to pull you apart. OTOH, something with the earth's mass and, say, the size of a basketball would probably not have any discernable gravity from a hundred feet away (too lazy to calculate it).

Hey, there are dwarf stars that have less than the mass of the sun. Did you mean a neutron star?
 
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