As the title says. I’m actually thinking about this hard with my friends because everything that’s produced on Earth stays on Earth so it doesn’t change size, but what if it’s not from Earth but it stays on Earth?
As the title says. I’m actually thinking about this hard with my friends because everything that’s produced on Earth stays on Earth so it doesn’t change size, but what if it’s not from Earth but it stays on Earth?
That doesn’t mean energy has a weight.
It means it is physically possible to transition energy to mass and vice versa. Sunlight hitting the earth does not add any weight.
Also, earth radiates heat out to space. At a rate of (aaaaaaaaalmost, because of the greenhouse effect) 100% of the energy we get from the sun. If it didn’t, earth would be a few million degrees hot by now…
Oooh…Good point. And now I have conflicting responses.
This one makes the most intuitive sense to me but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One more thing to connect both responses.
Energy itself doesn’t have mass. Mass is interchangeable. But we do gain mass by a very kittle amount when it is stored (by plants or solar panels you know). So both answers checks out. Mass can be converted to large amount of energy and large amount of energh can be converted to little amount of mass.
Energy don’t have weight but, it does have an effect on the curvature of space the same way matter does. In fact one of the proposed methods to create artificial blackholes is to put enough photons into the same place. It’s easier than getting matter together as photons don’t interact with eachother.
However the point is correct that light energy will only impart an insignificant amount to the earth’s pull.