If a lot of water were to enter our atmosphere from the outside, what would happen? (question asked by my 8 year old son).
In other words: if the matter on and around the Earth were to increase considerably, what consequences would this have for our atmosphere?
Answer
A bit of a hard to imagine scenario…
You have to realize that our atmosphere is a very thin shell around the Earth. She is barely 120 km thick. Compare this to the Earth’s 6378 km radius. If you were to replace the atmosphere with water, the total mass of the earth would only increase by 1%.
A person floating on that water would experience even a smaller gravitational acceleration, since it is further from the center of the earth and the density of water is less than the average density of the earth.
http://www.aeronomie.be/nl/thema/aarde/systeemaarde.htm
Answered by
Prof Walter Lauriks
Physics Acoustics
Old Market 13 3000 Leuven
https://www.kuleuven.be/
.