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The Earth is Getting Fatter
murk1e writes "The BBC News service has an article which reveals that the Earth is getting fatter. It is well known that the Earth is slightly wider at the equator than at the poles, it is less well known that for years, the Earth has been becoming more spherical. Now it appears that the trend has reversed, and the Earth is getting more obese (in the sense of shape change rather than changing mass). Perhaps the Earth should sue?"
Like these guys?
If you look at films of liquid 'bubbles' in spaceships you'll see that they make the same movements, only faster and more extreme. I think it's just a natural phenomenon
-- Cheers!
it is less well known that for years, the Earth has been becoming more spherical. Now it appears that the trend has reversed, and the Earth is getting more obese
... that yo-yo dieting just doesn't work. Eat less and exercise.
How long before we finally go to far, and the Earth dissolves entirely?
Oh good lord. You can't "dissolve" a planet, no matter how much sci-fi you watch. You must input enough energy into it to overcome gravity, which no amount of drilling will do.
Please get a clue; I mean this not as an insult, but that I really, really wish there were more environmentally concerned people with a clue. If more environmentalists were fighting rationally, maybe they'd make some progress, instead of worrying about stupid things and then making stupid decisions.
It might be responsibile for the global warming. I mean since the earth is getting bigger; it means it's getting closer to the sun in a way; so perhaps that's why the Earth is warming up.
MILLIMETERS ? I hope you aren't seriously considering that possibility. Our orbit with the sun varies annually by thousands of miles, as it's not a perfect circle. Millimeters won't matter much.
That doesn't change much - just a few millimeters - from year to year. Tiny as that sounds, satellite tracking allows scientists to make extremely precise measurements of the planet's shape.
Changes in the shape influence the strength of the Earth's gravitational pull from place to place, said Benjamin Chao of NASA-Goddard. Those gravitational changes in turn influence the positions of satellites.
And that's something they can measure to within centimeters. "We shoot laser beams to the satellites," he said. The time it takes for the laser light to bounce off reflective surfaces and back to the ground tells them precisely how far their satellites are, said Chao, who collaborated in the findings. He and Cox put the satellite positions into a computer, he said. That's how they got their surprise finding.
This is probably just a normal oscillation the Earth undergoes, driven by the impetus of the various gravitational influences it experiences over time. If we waited around long enough, it would probably start going back.
In fact, just thinking about it, it's virtually inconceivable that it wouldn't oscillate this way. Consider the Earth as a giant drop of water cruising through space. (Note that on a plantary scale, everything is liquid, which is why the surface is smooth. If the Earth were the size of a cue ball, it would be the smoothest cue ball ever made. This is also why blowing up a planet and seeing huge chunks fly away is stupid; it's basically a liquid, it should 'blow up' like one.) Of course it oscillates, what with Saturn and Jupiter and innumerable other influences constantly 'twanging' it.
The only real question is what the period is.
Note that it is utterly inconceivable that humanity has had any significant effect on this process simply by moving mass around. Do a compution on the total mass we've ever moved around, at all. Be generous; go ahead and assume 2002-level industrial output for 10,000 years of human history, which will be an overestimate by about a factor of 5,000. Now divide by the mass of the Earth. Then remember to use your brain when thinking about human effects in the future. (Some things we can and do affect negatively. There are other things we could literally not hope to effect in a million years. Moving a significant fraction of the planet is one of those. Recall the planet is a huge sphere of which "the surface" is itself only a tiny, tiny fraction...)
They made a typo. The earth is getting FLATTER. http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatea rthsociety.htm
- Satellites Reveal a Mystery of Large Change in Earth's Gravity
if you like the globe in the images there's a better one on the same web site called the Blue MarbleSatellite data since 1998 indicates the bulge in the Earth's gravity field at the equator is growing, and scientists think that the ocean may hold the answer to the mystery of how the changes in the trend of Earth's gravity are occurring.
and don't forget to check out the Natural Hazards
.:: proud supporter of dc united
Life isn't a violation of the second law, either. Put energy into a system, and you can reduce entropy locally. The only things that violate the second law are perpetual motion machines. (Small statistical glitches, like those reported last week, aren't violations either, as the second law is statistical.)
Or maybe, just maybe, the studio -itself- is causing the change in the earth's shape, just to generate publicity for the upcoming movie. (Which I have never heard of)
There are Australian midgets?!? That'll revolutionize the humor industry! Just think Crocodile Mini-Dundee. On second thought, let's not.
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
Ummmmmm. Did you consider that is is perhaps just due to slow ossilations triggered by the rotation and its orbit (it isn't exactly in a stationary system)? Frankly I cannot imagine how we could of possibly caused something like this, I mean do you realize just how trivial we and our actions are compared to the ENTIRE PLANET!! Also consider that when drilling for oil they put water and steam back into the ground to fill up the gap (other wise we would be seeing a lot of lawsuits when oil wells started collapsing). We have NOTHING to do with the effects/evils of mankind it is just yet another natural phenomenon I don't understand. Besides I don't see a few millimeters here and there translating into the Earth dissolving in a few hundred years:) In fact looking back was your post just a fairly subtle joke on environmental extremists?
I stole this Sig
NO NO NO, he's right, it is us. To save our planet, we must all move to the poles to keep the earth from tipping over. Start running for the nearest pole!
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
There are Australian midgets?!? That'll revolutionize the humor industry!
I have this mental image of a 3'2" version of Steve Irwin chasing a small lizard through the outback saying "Crikey, look at the size of 'im!"
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Reminds me of a tour guide in West Virginia who advised us to wear extra sunscreen because we'd be "awfully close to the sun" at the top of the ski slope.
I'd make up some quip about that level of intelligence being par for WV, but then again, I was the one visiting a ski slope during the summer.
The sun.
But how can nature put energy into life when life is already, perhaps, of a higher energy state than is the rest of nature?
You shouldn't bandy about terms like "energy state" -- they have precise meanings. Anyhow, "nature" isn't giving our planet energy; the sun is. It is very hot and bright, and spits out lots of photons, some of which hit the Earth. Organisms, directly or indirectly, use that energy to do work and to reduce entropy locally. No violation of physical laws.
And it's no problem to have order arise out of chaos so long as there's energy available to use... and even if there isn't, order can arise spontaneously in small systems out of disorder, thanks to the statistical nature of the second law.