Regarding Old Meteor Question - Are We Getting Heavier?

I was browsing the old SD archives for questions I had missed and came across What are the chances of a huge meteor smashing us flat? and was surprised nobody had asked any of these questions that came to mind:

The part that said “The vaporized matter that passes through the atmosphere adds about ten tons daily to the weight of the earth; ‘micrometeors’–particles about the size of a grain of salt and too small to be seen–account for another 100 tons of acquired mass every day.” made me wonder — if all that mass is accumulating, and the magnitude of gravity is determined my the amount of mass, Are we getting heavier? I mean, is Earth’s gravity increasing?

If so, there are follow-up questions…

Wouldn’t the increase in Earth’s gravity draw the moon closer, hence causing larger waves (which I thought were determined by current)?

And in the future (not specifying how far), will humans peak in height at a shorter height? (since there is more force pulling the body down…)

Yes, the Earth is getting more massive, and the gravity is increasing slightly everyday. But the amount is so small that it is close to unnoticeable, even over geologic time-scales - IIRC, the Moon is actually slowly drifting AWAY from the Earth, and has been doing since it was formed. And I think the Sun will go red giant before the added mass would effect human height.

To futher clalify - the mass of the Earth is currently 5.9742 × 10^21 metric tons. (Thank you google caculator!) Assuming that the earth gains 150 metric tons of material daily, over the course of the next five billion years, the total mass of the Earth will increase by a total of 2.7375 × 10^14 tons, making the total mass when the Earth is engulfed by the Sun 5.97240027 × 10^21 tons, which is a barely noticable change.

That’s 2.7375 x 10[sup]17[/sup].

With the correction above, it’s 5.9745 x 10[sup]21[/sup]. Equally minor, as you suggest, but actually correct. :wink:

Aren’t we also losing ionized atoms in the upper atmosphere due to the Solar wind (and/or for other reasons)? That should help to balance it out a tiny bit.

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Those are just for fun, I don’t know their credentials, just found them on a search engine.

Oops, must have misplaced a couple of zeroes. Ah, whats a couple of orders of magnitude between friends. Thanks for catching my error ** Q.E.D. **

No biggie. Your result was still correct to within 3 decimal places. Good enough for government work.