Earths orbit and loss of mass.
Posted: Sat 22 Jul 2006, 10:41:56
One thing I have wondered about. for a long time now since we started throwing satellites out into space. PO has added to my wondering. Anyone with basic or even advanced astronomical eperience have any idea about this?
Earth has a natural mass. Does the mass have anything to with how and where we orbit the sun, our rotation (day/night cycles). Now I am wondering if mass loss from the earth will have any effect on the earths orbit. Consider we throw millions of tons of marterial into space, making the earth lighter. We extract million, maybe billions of tons of oil and NG out of the ground and do nothing to replace this mass and its gone when we burn it.
Kinda like we are lighter now and get pulled towards the sun, or lose our orbital inertia and end up flying out of the solar system totally.
If you took all the material we have burnt to nothing. Ejected into space (off the earth physically and thus a mass loss) in satellites etc... would that have any impact on the earths ability to maintain its rotational orbit around the sun un-impacted?
Can we screw up earths orbit causing it to fly out of its orbit or stop rotating within its orbit, by lossing mass of the earth? I am just wondering if maybe we are killing our planet in an unobvious way. I can see how we are killing our planet ecologically speaking. But what about astronomically speaking. Anyone have any insight to this or does earth mass not play into the orbital equations.
Earth has a natural mass. Does the mass have anything to with how and where we orbit the sun, our rotation (day/night cycles). Now I am wondering if mass loss from the earth will have any effect on the earths orbit. Consider we throw millions of tons of marterial into space, making the earth lighter. We extract million, maybe billions of tons of oil and NG out of the ground and do nothing to replace this mass and its gone when we burn it.
Kinda like we are lighter now and get pulled towards the sun, or lose our orbital inertia and end up flying out of the solar system totally.
If you took all the material we have burnt to nothing. Ejected into space (off the earth physically and thus a mass loss) in satellites etc... would that have any impact on the earths ability to maintain its rotational orbit around the sun un-impacted?
Can we screw up earths orbit causing it to fly out of its orbit or stop rotating within its orbit, by lossing mass of the earth? I am just wondering if maybe we are killing our planet in an unobvious way. I can see how we are killing our planet ecologically speaking. But what about astronomically speaking. Anyone have any insight to this or does earth mass not play into the orbital equations.