© NASA / JPLVerdict: A planet without a secret weight problem. View of Earth from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.
At long last, scientists have laid to rest the vicious rumors that Earth is getting fatter.
Since Darwin's time, scientists have speculated the
planet might be expanding or contracting. Even with the acceptance of plate tectonics half a century ago, which explained the large-scale motions of Earth's outermost shell, the accusations persisted; some Earth and space scientists continued to speculate on Earth's possible expansion or contraction on various scientific grounds.
Now, those speculations and rumors have been put to rest.
"Our study provides an independent confirmation that the solid Earth is not getting larger at present, within current measurement uncertainties," said Xiaoping Wu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Using a cadre of space measurement tools and a new data calculation technique, a team of NASA scientists detected no statistically significant expansion of the solid Earth.
However, they did estimate the planet's radius changes, on average, by about 0.004 inches (0.1 millimeters) per year, or about the thickness of a human hair - a rate considered statistically insignificant.
