Mass of the Earth. The refutation of the theory of an expanding planet

According to the latest astronomical calculations, the Earth's mass is 5.97 × 10 ²⁴ kilograms. Annual measurements of this magnitude clearly show that it is not absolutely constant. Its data fluctuate up to 50 thousand tons per year. The earth is the largest diameter, mass and density among the planets belonging to the terrestrial group. Within the solar system, our planet is the third from the Sun and the fifth largest among all others. It moves along an elliptical orbit around the Sun at an average distance of 149.6 million kilometers from it.

As the mass of the Earth changes, there are a large number of opinions as to the trends of these changes. On the one hand, this value is constantly increasing due to a collision with meteorites, which, burning in the atmosphere, leave a large amount of dust settling on the planet. On the other hand, ultraviolet solar radiation constantly breaks down the water molecules in the upper atmosphere, oxygen and hydrogen. Part of the hydrogen, because of its light weight, escapes from the gravitational field of the planet, which affects its mass.

From the beginning of the 19th century until the last decades of the 20th century, the theory of the expanding Earth was very popular among scientists around the world. The hypothesis of an increase in the volume of the planet has led to the assumption that the mass of the Earth also increases. During the entire existence of this theory, different scientists have proposed five options for its justification. Many famous researchers, such as Kropotkin, Milanovsky, Steyner and Schneider, argued for the expansion of the planet by its cyclic pulsations. Dakill, Myers, Klyub and Napier explained this assumption by the constant addition of meteorites and asteroids to the Earth. The most popular theory of expansion was the assumption that the core of our planet originally consisted of a superdense substance that evolved into a normal material, causing a gradual expansion of the Earth. In the last 50 years of the last century, several outstanding physicists, such as Dirac, Jordan, Dicke, Ivanenko and Saggitov, expressed the view that the gravity decreases with time, and this leads to a natural expansion of the planet. Another hypothesis was the opinion of Kirillov, Neiman, Blinov and Veselov that the expansion of the Earth is caused by a cosmological cause associated with the age-old evolutionary increase in its mass. Today, there is a large amount of evidence that refutes all these assumptions.

The theory of an expanding planet, based on the fact that the mass of the Earth is constantly increasing, today has finally lost its attractiveness. The international group, which included the best scientists of the world, did not finally confirm it, so today this concept can peacefully go to the shelf of scientific archives.

According to the conclusion of a group of geophysicists who conducted research using modern space vehicles, the mass of the planet Earth is relatively constant. Employee of one of the scientific laboratories U. Xiaoping, together with his colleagues, published an article in which he stated that the fixed oscillations of the Earth's radius do not exceed 0.1 millimeter (the thickness of a human hair) per year. Such statistical indicators indicate that the mass of the Earth does not change in values that allow speaking about its expansion.