• Question: can the earth get smaller

    Asked by to Alan on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 20 Mar 2014:


      Not really, in fact it gets slightly bigger every year! Whenever we see a shooting star or even a fireball in the sky, that is caused by a rock from space burning up in our atmosphere and being destroyed into individual atoms.

      The atoms from the space rocks don’t leave, but gently fall down through the atmosphere until they land on the ground. About 50,000 tonnes of new atoms lands on Earth from space every year!

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